When Jacob Guild and his wife Nicole Frascino opened Guildhall Games at Boxyard RTP, they weren’t just launching a business, they were creating a safe, welcoming haven for underrepresented gamers and fostering a model for what accessible, inclusive retail can look like.
Inspired by their own experiences navigating disability – compounded by the challenges of long COVID – they saw an urgent need for a game store that not only embraced accessibility but actively championed it. The result is one of the Triangle’s most thoughtful and community-centered new businesses.
For them, the path to entrepreneurship wasn’t driven by profit margins or retail trends, but by a desire to serve people too often left out of the conversation. “Disabilities are just such a hard thing to understand without either you or a loved one showing that experience,” Jacob explains. With Guildhall Games, they’re working to change that – offering a gaming space that serves the neurodivergent, queer, and disabled communities, and educating fellow business owners on how to make their own spaces more accessible in meaningful, cost-effective ways.
Boxyard RTP turned out to be the perfect launching pad. Its small retail footprint allowed the Guilds to start small while tapping into a diverse customer base, and the collaborative energy of fellow Boxyard businesses made it feel like a true community endeavor. “We all work together to create a really special experience,” Jacob says – an ethos that mirrors Guildhall Games’ broader mission: building connection, community, and a better future for everyone who walks through their door.
Southpoint Access recently had the chance to hear from the game store owners about their roll of the dice at Boxyard RTP.
Southpoint Access: What inspired you to start your business, and how did you end up at Boxyard RTP?
Jacob Guild: The inspiration for Guildhall Games came from a rather morbid place. My wife and I both have had our chronic disabilities get a lot worse in the last few years, especially so after we came down with COVID in 2022. It was eye opening to see how things were experienced by someone in a wheelchair or someone with serious sensory issues. Disabilities are just such a hard thing to understand without either you or a loved one showing that experience.
Lots of business owners *want* to make their stores more disability friendly, but lack the knowledge to know what would actually help those and how they can do it on a budget. Most store owners immediately think of a ramp as a thing to help make things easier for those with physical disabilities, which is absolutely true, but it is often way too expensive an investment. We want to use our store as a platform to help educate our local community of store owners as well as game store owners across the country, about how they can make simple changes that will have a huge impact on the accessibility of their establishments.
We hope to, someday, start a non-profit that will consult with local businesses and bring in ~5 people with differing disabilities to come into their business and provide feedback on what was difficult for them and what could be easily improved. We also want to get across to store owners that the disabled community can still be a lucrative customer-base. While the community might be small and not as wealthy as other communities, because so many businesses are *not* accessible, if you make yours accessible, you might only get 10 new customers. But those customers have nowhere else to go, so they will patronize your business every week and become those highly sought after *regular* customers. We go to as many industry events as Nicole and I’s disabilities allow us to, to push those ideals out to the greater gaming community.
Boxyard was the perfect place for us to start our business. Since Nicole and I are disabled, opening up a brand new store with no experience is a daunting task. The small footprint of our store at Boxyard meant we could dip our toes in the water instead of immediately cannonballing into the pool. I also absolutely love the idea of Boxyard. It’s a place where you have access to customers that wouldn’t normally come into a game store, but I especially love the camaraderie among the businesses, working together for the great good of Boxyard. We are all working together to create a really special experience for the Boxyard patrons.
Southpoint Access: What makes your product, service, or experience unique to the Triangle – or even just to Boxyard?
Jacob Guild: Guildhall Games provides a unique experience for a game store. While everyone is welcome, we focus specifically on some of the underserved populations in our community. Namely the neurodivergent, disability and queer communities. There are not many ‘third’ places available for people to hang out at anymore, so we are striving to be that third place for those that haven’t been able to find one that fits yet. These communities aren’t priorities for most businesses as the queer community is only a small slice of the population, the neurodivergent community is hard to understand and market towards if you are not personally neurodivergent and the disabled community is kept artificially poor by the government and are thusly not a big money making opportunity for businesses.
The board game selection at Guildhall Games rivals that of even massive game stores. It is a highly curated selection as I (Jake Guild) have personally played 85+% of the games we stock and have either heavily researched or had trusted friends or customers recommend them. Since we are doing the quality control to make sure we only stock *good* games, that means that our job is just to match you with the best fit for your personality and use case. So, while we can’t quite match the prices at Amazon or Target, you’ll be able to confidently walk away with a game you know you’ll love instead of taking a chance on a game you’ve only seen a review of.
For Boxyard, we provide the entertainment that the food and bev spots are lacking. We work harmoniously with our friends at Fullsteam and Bulkogi every day, but especially on Sundays, where the three of us have decided to open independently of Boxyard. We bring the people in with our Sunday events and they keep them full, hydrated, and happy.
Southpoint Access: How do you engage with the local community, and what does being part of South Durham mean to your business?
Jacob Guild: Our first tagline is “community”, so the local Durham community has always been a strong focus of ours. I was born and raised in Durham, and went through the Durham Public Schools (DPS) system. My father was a DPS math teacher, teaching at both Shepard Middle School and Durham School of the Arts. My mother has worked 30+ years at UNC-CH handling the town gown relationship (the relationship between the university and the city of Chapel Hill), which has extended to work all over the triangle. So Durham has always been home for me, even when I left for seven years to live in a variety of other places. I came back because I loved Durham more than any of the other places I have lived, and I think Durham has even more potential beyond the great city it has already grown in to.
We host as many events as we can to give Durhamites a place to meet new people, relax, and have fun in a safe and welcoming environment. From our regular Sunday board game days to our popular monthly Speed Puzzling event, we pull from all sorts of groups and act as the catalyst to bring people from different walks of life together.
Southpoint Access: What’s something people might not know about your business, your team, or your process, but should?
Jacob Guild: Most people don’t know that Guildhall Games is a family business; our employees include my brother David, father Bruce and mother Linda, our dogs TIllie and Gizmo, and David’s dog Ellie. It has brought my family even closer together than we already were and I couldn’t be happier with the level of support my family has given me throughout this journey, and my entire life. I’m so proud of how they have stepped up to help make my vision a reality. But most importantly, everyone pronounces Guildhall Games wrong. My last name is Guild, but, as my dad used to say in his teaching days, “it rhymes with wild or mild, depending on how I’m feeling”. So the store is actually Guy-ld hall Games, but we’ve kept that as a “if you know, you know” secret
Southpoint Access: What are your current goals or upcoming plans – anything exciting on the horizon?
Jacob Guild: We are planning on expanding our business to a second, larger location in the near-ish future. We’ve actually had a lease lined up for months, but the sudden change in government and the following tariff policy changes have left the entire gaming industry in a state of free-fall. Since China is home to the only people in the world that have the expertise and equipment to make customized castes for game pieces and manufacture cardboard pieces at a high volume, it has left the industry scrambling and uncertain of the future, leading to many game stores and publishers folding. So we are hoping to expand once things settle down and we have a clear idea of pricing changes that may be coming. We also plan to continue rolling any profits back in to support our growth and educational initiatives.
Boxyard RTP is at 900 Park Offices Dr. Guildhall Games is open Tuesday to Saturday, 12 to 8 p.m., and 12 to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
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Author: Wes Platt
Lead storyteller. Game designer and journalist. Recovering Floridian. Email: southpointaccessnews@gmail.com.
