The August meeting of the Rochester Board Gaming Society had 50 people in attendance, celebrating the group's 10-year anniversary. Bill Peeck and Stephen Cuyler brought celebratory sandwiches and drinks. Many games were played, and fun was had.

The meeting drew gamers from all over western NY. At least 5 gamers came from Buffalo. Another 4 came from as far as Syracuse. This is fairly normal for our meetings. People bring the fun from all over.

Millennium Games & Hobbies hosted us as they have for the past 10 years. (Thank you Travis!) Millennium's move to its new location is complete. August marks the second month when we have been able to enjoy the clean, well–decorated atmosphere of the new facility. And, may I say, it looks fine.

On Friday, Feb 19 of this year, Ed Fear sold Millennium Games & Hobbies to Knight Life Enterprises, a privately held corporation wholly owned by Travis Severance and Robert Harrington. Travis plans a lot of changes for the store, and the RochGamers have seen some of these changes take place over the last couple of months.

Travis and Robert run two separate retail stores that share brick and mortar space in Henrietta Townline Plaza and share cyberspace at http://www.cyberstormgaming.com. Travis runs Millennium Games & Hobbies, which has been in business for a good number of years. Next door, Robert runs the brand new Cyberstorm, which provides a location for computer gamers to meet and play group-oriented computer games. Cyberstorm is located in the 6300 square feet of retail space that was formerly a Dollar General. This space has been vacant for the last few years, and the RochGamers were often allowed to hold our monthly meetings there. That had to stop while Robert was doing his renovations, and our meetings were moved back into Millennium's 9600 square feet of space during that time.

I asked Travis about his plans for Millennium. He plans to move his store next door into the newly renovated space and share it with Cyberstorm. He said that Cyberstorm's business model requires only a fraction of the space it occupies. Millennium can likewise make do with less space if its stock were displayed more efficiently. To help make this relocation possible, he is moving one of the walls that separates the two spaces. This will enlarge the new space to 8400 square feet.

When the RochGamers met in May, we witnessed evidence of the wall being moved. We also got a chance to hold our meeting in Cyberstorm. Robert allowed us to play in the half of the store that Millennium is going to occupy. Robert's half is already fully decorated, and I found it to be stylish and modern. The Millennium half is still being renovated, but I anticipate that it will look great.

I asked Travis, "What do you foresee for the future of RochGamer's monthly meetings in Millennium?"

Growth of numbers, hopefully. I think board games are one of the fastest growing hobbies out there. The [Boomer Generation] was full of collectors. They liked to collect stamps, coins, baseball cards etc. The generation coming up is more about experiences. They want to get out and try something that they haven't ever done before. Well, if you look at a new board game it is exactly that, a brand new experience. While every experience isn't your favorite, at least you can say you tried it. I may like to hang glide but I would never want to go BASE jumping. The new space will be much cleaner and player friendly. We are in the process of getting the space finished as well as adding in some extras to make the environment more inviting. The new space will be very different from what people are used to with Millennium. Rob worked in the construction field for several years before opening Cyberstorm. His work is very eye appealing and practical. My hope is to continue to have RBS be a large part of our gaming community. I enjoy the weekends when they are here because they all have a ton of passion for what they are playing. I can understand and respect that and sometimes need to see it in action. When your hobby becomes your way of living it's easy to forget sometimes how much fun this industry is. Sometimes I have to sit down and play a game or two. I feel very fortunate to be able to have that with the business that I am in. Not be tacky, but it truly is what I have wanted to do for the better part of my life.