RIP Playin' Games

On the way back from an errand in the Tottenham Court Road area I took a slight detour to pop into two of my favourite shops in the area - Gosh Comics and the Playin' Games boardgame and RPG shop. The former is still doing fine (and I picked up a couple of new Mike Mignola collections - BPRD #12 and Witchfinder.) But round the corner to Museum Street and Playin' Games was signless, empty and bare. Looking online I've found a comment on a gaming site that it has indeed closed, which is a deep shame as it was one of the best gaming shops in London or indeed this end of the country - it was second IMHO only to The Games Shop in Aldershot*.

Presumably it fell to the combined onslaught of online retailers, Games Workshop and their monoculture shops ("There is no other games system than Warhammer, to suggest others is HERESY!") and, quite probably, Forbidden Planet's growing Games section. FP can't compete on range, but they can compete in terms of sucking in customers, and that's probably what counts.

(*Probably the only time I ever have or ever will recommend Aldershot or something in it.)