Game Haven opens in Waunakee, creating local space for in-person community and connections.
I had the chance to spend an hour in Kevin Thornberg’s new store, Game Haven, last week. While Thornberg’s interest and talent in sales is obvious upon first meeting him, if he was trying to sell me on anything beyond being a completely positive addition to the local community, I’d be very surprised.
An obvious labor of love, Thornberg’s long-time interest in gaming led him to opening Game Haven, a new retailer of RPGs (role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons), standard board games (think Monopoly, Catan, etc.), card games (Pokemon) and other table-top games (i.e. Warhammer 40K). In addition to providing the community’s new (and only) local option for such hobbies, Game Haven provides the only source for everyone to try out games, meet up with friends to play, and to have space for new experiences in person and in real life, rather than meeting up with friends to game online. The store includes ample space in the former Salt Therapy location next to Papa Murphy’s, the UPS store and Ace Hardware in the Village Mall.
In our current atomized and dissociated communities where isolation is rampant among far too many young people, Kevin spoke of providing an outlet for people to be together, to have fun, and create actual human connections. Not to put too fine of a point on it, this is something that is otherwise completely lacking in the Waunakee community. While there are ample opportunities for athletics, for senior citizens, and for anyone who wants to get drunk, there is effectively nowhere for people to meet new people or to gather with friends in a quasi-public community space that doesn’t involve alcohol or athletics. For all the crusading done by well-intentioned local organizations, I’ve never heard anyone (other than churches) pitch anything to confront social isolation.
Doffing a black fedora, I got the sense that Thornberg has little interest in being anything but completely authentic. No one wearing a fedora in 2024 can truly care overmuch about controlling what other people think of them. From handling impromptu pleas for local athletic fundraisers and local civic groups, to dealing with lawyers, to watching his kids while at the store, and even in taking brief phone calls, he moves through his day to day life with a palpable intent to create positive social space.
Robert Putnam wrote in his foundational work, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital, that there “is reason to believe that deep-seated technological trends are radically “privatizing” or “individualizing” our use of leisure time and thus disrupting many opportunities for social-capital formation.” When Putnam wrote that in 1995, the technological trend away from social leisure time was pinned on television. Today, the obvious culprit is the internet, with social media, online gaming, and whatever is the latest-greatest dopamine distributor pulling our attention away from in-person interactions.
Thornberg, via Game Haven, expressly intends to give the Waunakee community a place to be with others, without judgment, expectation or exclusion and above-all-else: in person. He doesn’t even have aggressively capitalistic intentions, in that he is not banking his financial well-being on this store and is not intent on extracting immediate profits from the venture. In short, he’s not quitting his day job just to make a business. When he shows he wants to provide valuable social capital to the community, I believe it.
What I find most interesting about the use of gaming to create social capital, lies precisely in what in-person games are at their core: expressions of freedom and power within the confines of specific rules.
“We’re not fuckin’ animals. We live in a society.“
- Jim Jefferies
Take for example my personal favorite role-playing game: Call of Cthluhu, based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. In a standard game, players create a character and pretend to be that individual through the entirety of the game (role-playing). The game, usually a set scenario, is run by a game master (known in Cthulhu as the “Keeper of Arcane Lore” or simply “The Keeper”). The rules are fairly straightforward, in that the players are usually investigating some sort of mystery or event of note, usually ending in some or all of the players’ characters going insane or killed through exposure to eldritch horrors (or are otherwise successful in their quests).
Regardless of the outcomes, what RPGs like Call of Cthluhu (or the far more well-known Dungeons and Dragons) provide is the opportunity to be something beyond yourself while still being social with other people, all with the goal to create amusement, fun and positive experiences. And while I cynically point out these games are owned by corporations that are really seeking your money, from the multi-national Hasbro, to international companies like Games Workshop, to small companies like Chaosium, they are all focused on sales involving human interaction at their core. And they make money by ensuring they keep the fun going.
If you “lose” a board game, you just pick up the pieces and play again. If your RPG character “dies” you can probably find some way to revive them, and if you can’t, you get to create a whole new character. This is no different from the other games offered at Game Haven, from the Pokemon Trading Card Game or standard board games. Game Haven even offers a pathway into deeper hobbies, like the insanely intricate (and expensive) mini universe of Warhammer 40K.
I don’t write much about entirely positive subjects, so I’m thrilled spread a little bit of attention to something that is not only entirely positive, but one that needs the community’s support. If our community values social well-being, and if it wants to be more than simply a bedroom community, it needs people like Thornberg and places like Game Haven.
I wouldn’t have initially thought that a guy like Kevin Thornberg would look like all Waunakee needs, but meeting him and touring Game Haven left me positively considering the possibilities of an expanding community with spaces for everyone.
Waunakee & Friends 