Well, we made it. Welcome to the end of the year! I love this time of year because it’s full of reflection, planning, and renewed hope for the future. As we say goodbye to 2023 and hello to a new year and new possibilities in 2024, it makes sense for me to share and discuss our upcoming plans for what Owl Central Games is planning to accomplish in the new year.
This past year, we’ve set a wide variety of goals, and I’m proud to say that we accomplished many of them. Whether these goals were in-store, online, or behind the scenes, one thing that factored into our goals and decision making is our community. We are constantly thinking about how our decisions impact our community and players. Those that call Owl Central Games their FLGS are the driving force behind the incredible experience and welcoming environment that we’ve worked hard to build here at our Game Center, and we will stand by that approach indefinitely!
With all that in mind, let’s talk about what we want to do over the course of the next year.
Grow The Owl Central Games Community
In 2023, we wanted to focus on growing our in-store game communities, and we’ve made a ton of new friends over the course of the year. In 2024, we hope to continue to serve as a place for players to come and play their favorite games. We are aiming to do this in a variety of ways; including hosting the most popular events we can and maximizing as many events as we can fit into our Game Center in Lancaster.
Owl Central Games also wants to make a serious effort to further grow our voice in 2024. Our plan is to reach communities throughout the mid-Atlantic with premier events, stellar deals, and of course, our inclusive and people-first store atmosphere. We want to serve as a pillar of quality events alongside other staple locations throughout the greater Northeast Region.
Bring More Features to Our New Website
Our new website launched less than a month ago, but we are already hard at work to bring more features into our cleaner, easier to navigate website. Some of these features have been planned from the beginning, while others have come directly from community feedback and suggestions. These will take time, but we are excited to see all that we accomplish in terms of improvements over the next 12 months.
One of our first steps is to move all in-store events completely to the new website, removing the need to revisit portions of our old website to pre-register and pay for any in-store events! We also have planned improvements to other aspects of the website, including a better experience shopping for TCG singles, more features for your personal account, and more resources to help you in your TCG journey!
Support Our Emerging Communities
While Magic: the Gathering is the largest community at Owl Central, we have a lot of different game communities that we support at Owl Central Games, and we want to see these communities continue to grow in the new year. We plan to not only evaluate and upgrade our in-store event offerings, but also give more exposure to these communities through our social channels, like Facebook, Instagram, our weekly newsletter, and more!
One of these fast-growing communities that come to mind is our Lorcana community. We are excited to have curated such a dedicated group of Lorcana fans and are excited to see the game grow in popularity as we approach the third ever set in the early new year. We are also ready to stand behind the game’s competitive scene by hosting high stakes tournaments, including our first Lorcana $2k, that’s coming this February!
Support and Reintroduce MTG Standard to Our In-Store Community
For Magic, one of Wizard’s stated goals is to revitalize Standard in 2024. We also want to support Wizards in this goal. Many of us who work at Owl Central Games learned Magic through the Standard format (or Type 2 as it was called for some of us!), and we see the benefit of Standard as a lower-cost way of introducing new players to the game of Magic and introducing MTG Arena players to the wonderful world of playing at their Local Game Store.
Wizards of the Coast has made it abundantly clear that they are going to be providing a ton of awesome prizing, promos, and additional goodies for us to provide with our Standard events, and that’s on top of the prizing that we will provide. In 2024, we are going to bring Standard events back with weekly offerings, on top of upcoming premier events, such as our upcoming Season 6 Regional Championship Qualifiers and our Store Championship for Murders at Karlov Manor.
We want 2024 to be the year of Standard’s revival at Owl Central Games, and now is the perfect time to prepare by building your Standard deck before prices increase due to the RCQ season on the horizon!
In Conclusion
To summarize, we have a lot that we want to accomplish in 2024, and we can’t wait to get started. Look out for updates throughout the year right here, and don’t forget to stay up to date with everything happening at Owl Central Games by subscribing to our weekly newsletter. It’s the perfect way to keep in touch with all the news, events, and releases for your favorite games!
