San Diego's Game Empire is a lair of love

Game Empire owner Cliff Robbins is serious about gaming.
- Photo by Kinsee Morlan

As soon as you walk through the door, you’re bombarded with some odd, heated discourse.

“That’s going to kill my wizards,” a voice shouts from the back.

“Deep in the caverns of lepers,” another says with a hint of pride.

All around are intricate models of castles, cityscapes (albeit mostly of the medieval design) and figurines of everything from Civil War soldiers on horseback to demonic creatures riding—wait, what is that thing? A note on the bulletin board reads, “I have Skaven and Nids that I am looking to trade for Dark Elves or Eldav.” And, sure, there are some beautifully made chess boards, but who wants that when you can buy a T-shirt that says, “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons”?

It’s just another day at Game Empire (7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.), the Kearny Mesa store where people with a predilection for roleplaying and fantasy-style games have been congregating for more than a decade. Some customers prefer the portability of card games like Magic: The Gathering while others tote in cases of figurines and thick rule manuals for games like Warhammer and Hordes. There’s an entire display case devoted exclusively to dice. Yeah, just dice.

While most guys their age would be watching football on a Sunday, Jason Hickle and Dan Billey—who’ve been coming to Empire for more than 15 years—have just started a game of Warhammer Fantasy. Hickle is playing with an army of human figurines while Billey is playing with the “big, bad orcs,” which, he confides, he feels embarrassed about because the figurines aren’t fully painted. They haven’t even begun playing when Hickle, already strategizing, offers his friend some advice.

“Now, I have a recommendation for you,” Hickle tells Billey. “These guys have a normal arc of fire, so what they’re really good at killing are guys like these. If you concentrate your fire on these guys here, they have one-plus armor, and they’re only toughness-three, so you’d be wounding them on twos. I’d recommend concentrating your fire on just one unit, but, hey, that’s just me.”

Uh. What? The intricacies of the game are complex to a newbie, but most of it depends on a mix of chance (a roll of the dice) and logistics (what to do with the numbers you roll). Attack? Charge? Retreat? Billey ultimately decides to ignore his friend’s advice.

“I’m gonna leave that unit alone ’cause I’ll deal with them later,” he says.

The story of Game Empire is the story of family, blood-related and otherwise. Owner Cliff Robbins says he got into gaming when he and his older brother, Chuck, would use Star Wars figures to reimagine famous battles using one die and a simple rule system. Rolling a one, two or three and you miss. Rolling a four, five or six and you hit your target. Pretty soon they got even more elaborate with their battles, and it was only a matter of time before Cliff started getting into the more mainstream role-playing games Chuck was into.

“I always knew I wanted to keep doing this,” Robbins says. “It wasn’t until college that I realized that it was the industry I wanted to work in.”

He started Game Empire in a tent at Kobey’s Swap Meet in 1992. He was renting a house in Del Cerro and had converted the garage into what he called the “clubhouse,” which was filled with gamers every night. Seeing the need for a larger space, he bought his first storefront a couple years later at Hazard Center in Mission Valley, eventually moving to the larger Kearny Mesa location in 2002. Robbins even met his wife through gaming.

“She came into the store in Hazard Center, and she was into Magic: The Gathering,” he said. “She’d lost a couple of games to different players. They pointed to me and said, ‘Hey, you should go play him, because he’s not any good, either.’” She beat him at the game, and they were married about a year-and-a-half later.

Married for 10 years and the father of two children, Robbins says he wanted to bring an emphasis on family to the store. He works with the YMCA, teaching kids not only how to play the game, but also what he calls “competitive interaction.”

A visit to the game room on a weekend proves this point.

Michael Chavez comes every other week, and this week he brought his 8-year-old daughter. Both were playing a number of games, including the intricate Dominion with store employee Desiree Snider.

“I have three daughters, and they all love games,” Chavez says. “We play Warhammer, Ascension, Warmachine, and we’re probably going to start Tombstone pretty soon.”

And Robbins’ own family story continues. Most of his employees have been there for years; the few I talked with say they might be able to make more money elsewhere, but love the job too much to leave. And what about Robbins’ brother, Chuck? Is he still a gamer?

“Interestingly enough, he became a very successful bankruptcy attorney,” Robbins says. “He made a fortune, but he had five ulcers, and the stress of the job was killing him. One day, he came to me and said, ‘I want your life,’ so he quit the attorney job and we built a second Game Empire in Pasadena, and now he runs that location. They’re filming a reality-show pilot there, and three networks are bidding on it. He’s much happier now, and all his ulcers have gone away. He still has the stress of being a business owner, but it’s a good stress—like the stress you get when playing a game. A happy stress.”