Posted October, 2026
For the Wildey family, building a lasting business means knowing when to change course — and remembering who helped them get there.
Ask the three Wildeys to name their favorite game, and you get three different answers. Doug still loves pinball. Eric, an avid golfer, picks Golden Tee. Brian likes the social side of darts.
Walk through the Game Room Guys showroom in Comstock Park, and all three make sense. Pinball machines, arcade games, air hockey tables, and electronic dartboards fill a space that serves customers far beyond West Michigan. Some products arrive from other manufacturers. Others are assembled nearby, with help from local suppliers, under brands the family now owns.
It is a long way from the 13-location amusement route Doug Wildey operated out of his garage. Then again, staying in one place was never really an option.
Starting with 13 Locations
After retiring from a career at AT&T, Doug purchased a small business that placed games in bars, hotels, and restaurants. Game Room Guys owned and maintained the machines, while the venues provided the customers. The two sides shared the revenue.
Doug and Carl Reed, the company’s first employee, kept the games running as the route grew across West Michigan. One challenge was that successful customers opened more locations. Doug had to grow with them. Eventually, the route expanded from 13 sites to more than 80.
Then people began showing up with a different request: Could they buy a pinball machine or a Golden Tee game for themselves?
The company opened a small retail store in Comstock Park. As online shopping grew, Game Room Guys began selling through its own website and marketplaces, reaching customers well beyond the bars and hotels where it started. Today, nearly 90 percent of its business is outside Michigan. Its games go into homes, apartment communities, college spaces, and corporate break rooms.
Each new market brought a choice about where to put the family’s time and resources. By 2016, the amusement route and retail operation needed different skills and investments. The Wildeys sold the original route to focus on retail and online sales.
“It just became two totally different operations,” Eric explains. At some point, the family had to commit to the one it could best grow.
Making Room for the Next Generation
Eric did not arrive with a grand plan to lead the family business. Doug needed help, Eric needed work, and he joined the company. Even after becoming an owner, he says, it took several years to understand what ownership asked of him.
“I don’t know that I even knew what that meant,” he says, reflecting on the responsibility that came with it. Learning his role, and learning how to work together as a family, took time.
Brian took another path. He was working out of state in government roles when the pace of a family business began to appeal to him. The flexibility to learn something new, make decisions, and move quickly drew him home. Today, he runs operations, including work tied to manufacturing.
Doug watched his sons develop different strengths and bring fresh ideas to the company. Their growing responsibilities also gave him room to step back. He has since retired and sold the majority of the business to them, trusting them to take it further.
That transition was discussed carefully. The family considered more than ownership interests: employees, customers, and suppliers had built relationships with Game Room Guys over decades. Eric says a succession plan has to account for those people, too.
A New Kind of Game Room
In 2022, Game Room Guys purchased Shelti/Gold Standard Games, a Michigan manufacturer of air hockey tables, pool tables, electronic dartboards, and other games. The family first operated the manufacturing business in Bay City, then moved the work to the Comstock Park area in 2024.
The move brought the operation closer to the Wildeys and to West Michigan companies with the equipment and expertise to make components. Rather than purchase machinery that might run for only a small batch, Game Room Guys works with specialized partners and completes final assembly itself.
One of those partners is fellow FBA member Master Finish, which makes chrome corners for the company’s pool tables. Other local partners help produce cabinets and components. The result is a business that distributes games nationally and builds some of its own products with a network close to home.
“It takes a community,” Eric says. “You find the connections are tighter than you realize the longer you’re in it.” The work still comes down to people gathered around a game. Customers want something friends, coworkers, parents, and children can enjoy together, Eric says — an experience that can draw them away from their phones. Game Room Guys helps them choose the games, plan the space, and solve the practical problems that come with getting a shuffleboard upstairs or a machine around a basement corner.
What Counts as A Win?
Working together has required rules of its own. The family decided years ago to leave routine business talk at work. It is a boundary they do not keep perfectly every day, but one that has helped them remain a family when the workday ends.
They also try to speak openly when they disagree. Doug sees honesty and respect as the basis for trust with employees, customers, and one another. For Eric, a good decision is one that considers everyone affected by it.
When asked what winning looks like, he returns to the people around the business. “It’s successful when everybody wins,” he says. Doug agrees: family members who do not work there, employees, and the people who depend on the company should all have a place in that picture.
Eric is especially quick to credit the team. Carl has been there since 2003. Other employees spent years repairing games on the old route, serving customers, and shipping orders, even if their paths later led elsewhere. “We wouldn’t be here without all of those employees,” he says.
Doug describes his family business journey as, “Donkey Kong. Every time a player climbs to another level, more barrels come down.”
For Game Room Guys, those barrels have included recessions, a pandemic, staffing challenges, and decisions about which version of the business to build next.
The family kept climbing. Now, Doug gets to watch Eric and Brian find their own route upward. They may choose different games and different ways to play, but they share an understanding of the goal: reach the next level together, and remember everyone who helped them get there.
To learn more about Game Room Guys, visit their website.
Family Business Alliance provides tools, resources, and connections to help family businesses succeed. Learn more about our resources including Leading Forward, Succeeding at Succession, and Forging Frameworks of Governance that help to advance family business in our community.
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