FREO’S tabletop gaming community officially has a place to call home with the opening of Hightide on Josephson Street this week.
Hightide is a gaming space open to the public with a small entrance fee or membership options where gamers can come to play anything from classic boardgames to Pokémon card trading to intense role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering and Warhammer.
Lifelong gamer Nick Petrou along with six other core members of the gaming community decided it was time to move into their own space.
“We need our own home. We need our own space that we can really grow into and protect the community that we have and allow the community to expand to new heights,” Mr Petrou said.
Mr Petrou said tabletop gaming offers a unique opportunity for people to come together away from technology and alcohol, to get face to face with people and just play games, though the venue is licensed.
“We get so caught up on our phones and social media and all that crap. There’s so much bad stuff happening around us and it’s easy to let it pull you down,” Mr Petrou said.
“The games are a social lubricant instead of alcohol. It allows you to have something instantly in common with someone and you build friendships really quickly in this space.”
“A lot of people who do come down here don’t have social groups and they find that here. A lot of people will come out of their shell and really flourish because of it.”
Founder of D&D Freo and Hightide core member Mike Bullen said tabletop gaming was all about social connection and the need for a third space that people could be themselves.
“I need it. I need the social aspect. It’s that third space. I’ve got home. I’ve got work. This is somewhere else I can go hang out and just be my nerdy self,” Mr Bullen said.
“There’s not a lot of things done for nerds, right? This is for us.”
The tabletop gaming community is the biggest it’s ever been so it offers a range of diversity from parent-child groups, retirees, all female groups and those with impaired abilities.
Self-acclaimed board game nerd Brendon Humphries brought the tabletop gaming community to the Herald’s attention earlier this week to shine a light on the “vibrant” and “healthy” community.
“It’s a safe place that people find and go, ‘oh cool, here’s my people’,” Mr Humphries said.
“It’s an antidote to the very heavily digitalised lives that we live. The joy of just sitting down at a table with a bunch of people, strangers or otherwise, and having a really great, interactive human experience. It’s invaluable.”
Mr Humphries is running family-friendly all-day board game event at Hybrid Warehouse on August 29 called Bastardcon, it’s title sparked by the occasional ‘you bastard!’ from players.
Other tabletop gaming events have been held by the non-for-profit community association Table Top Fremantle at Hybrid Warehouse, before the opening of Hightide, with their biggest event Roll For It having over 300 participants, as well as weekly gaming sessions getting upwards of 60 players each week.
by IMOGEN WALSH