Obviously GAMA and Flying Buffalo Inc would be interested in the results of an "investigation" (of the number of gamers). Estimating the cash flow "needed" to stay in business might not be useful. any hobby or game stores are just a hobby for the owners, and they keep running them even though they don't make enough money to pay for the time of the person sitting behind the counter. I've seen game stores where the owner only opens when he isn't at his "real" job, and gets volunteers to man the store for him sometimes in return for free merchandise. Also the cash flow "needed" varies wildly according to the rent the store has to pay. You can get really cheap rent at a dying mall or strip mall, or you can pay a lot at an upscale location. Also varies with the area of the country. Seems like it would be very difficult to get a handle on this. Then of course there is the notorious example of the guy I know who sells games out of his lumber yard. How many customers does he have, and how would you find shops like his to include in your survey?

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just take a survey of the game companies and see how many copies of their games they are selling? You may assume that they wouldn't tell you this proprietary information, but GAMA has been wanting to do a survey like this for a long time. We need a volunteer to gather the information for us. If you were interested in doing an official market survey, you could contact the game companies by saying you were gathering official and confidential information for GAMA and I think you would be more likely to get a response.