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Starting a LAN Gaming Centre?
A not-s- Anonymous Coward asks: "I've been given the opportunity to pitch a group of investors to open a LAN gaming centre (or centres, depending on how things go). These centres will be opening in an area that has little to no high-speed net access (and will be unlikely to in the future), very cheap equipment and labour, and a good core of 300-400K potential customers (right age groups, well-developed gaming culture, and plenty of disposable income). Anyone have any experience running a gaming centre, or any ideas of potential gotchas? We have written up the proposals and plans including the standard things (PCs, networking equipment, servers, furniture, fixtures, techs, games, etc), but were wondering if the community has anything to contribute? Oh, and there are none of these centres where we are planning on opening them..."
in places as 'backwoods' as Martinsburg, WV that were nothing more than regular computer video games with "VR Goggles" attached to the video output. The one here seems to be doing OK business, but apparently mostly among the 8-13 year old kids whose parents won't buy them high-end gaming systems. They spend what would have been their regular arcade money in this eight-unit place now, which is fine because the arcade has pretty much the same games it had five years ago and will probably continue to do so.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
If you try to have 100 PCs that people can use, you're going to run into a nightmare of dealing with the abuse, complaints (this 3 month old system isn't as fast as my home one that I got yesterday!) and cost. Instead, I'd say have some decent rigs available for rental for the newbie games who got dragged along with their friends, or for those who have crap boxes at home. And to keep the paintball analogy, charge for the network like they do paint. That means you can't bring your own (hubs, etc) - everyone pays per drop per hour (or whatever).
I'd also suggest you consider how you're going to do setup. If it's just one large room it's going to be really loud during peak hours, and rather evidently embarrasing when you only have 8 or so people there at a time. Other places put the players into small groups, and then assign them a room(s) to use. That way, you can make it look as busy as you'd like, since they would "fill" the room they're in.
One last suggestion, if it didn't seem obvious: whatever you're charging, include unlimited fountain drinks somehow. They'd be cheap, get people to play longer (more $$), and show off that you really do understand geeks. There was a pretty cool (Magic Edge in Mt. View) place that used to do virtual reality dogfights, but they charged bar prices for food & drinks, so I never stayed to eat/drink there. That would definitely be a problem for any place I would see myself spending more than 4 hours.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
I'm not sure I follow you on what this "Gaming Center" does. Do you rent out space and everybody brings in their own computers, software and stuff or do you actually have the computers, games and infrastructure and you rent time playing said games?
If it's the former, other than normal marketing and liability/insurance issues, I don't really see any problems.
However, if you're renting time using the games, you might run into some legal issues. I seem to remember several Internet Cafe-type establishments being shut down because they were reselling game time. This might have been because they only had one copy, or there might have been some verbage in the EULA that prohibited renting, selling or otherwise publicly performing with the software. Be sure to get your lawyers to check this out.
Regardless of which way you're going, make sure you have comfortable, adjustable height chairs, geek-friendly lighting (no flourescent light fixtures shining right onto monitors), a snack bar with the usual staples (Junk & Jolt/Mt. Dew), abundant power (not the whole room running off of two breakers), and a good network infrastructure.
Personally, on the electrical and network side, I'd build the gaming stations with 8 seats, an 8-port, 100 megabit switch for each and at least a 15 amp breaker for every 4 stations. Each station should have a nice surge protector molded in where with a couple of extra outlets for the "wall wart" transformers common with speakers.
Sounds like an interesting idea, either way. I'd really like to know when and where it'll be opening.
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
Consider selling the games being played.
You could probably get away with charging higher prices than retail stores.
(Kind of like buying a golf shirt from the pro shop)
Do some research on what it takes to be a distributor.
Make sure you have accounted for the physical security of the building, it's contents, and it's visitors. I would highly recommend a hired deputy or two at the door; it does wonders for the level of confidence that your patrons have in your establishment. You'll also want to consider security cameras or some form of access controls with all of that nice equipment getting lugged around, if you haven't done so already. What do your business plans say about casual theft of patron property?
_____
If you can't hear the voices in my head, then you're just not listening hard enough.
I haven't done this, but a couple of buddies and I took a pretty hard look at it a couple of years ago, and ultimately decided we'd missed the window of opportunity, even back then.
Why? Broadband. Gaming centers were all the rage when everyone was on 56K--it was a night and day difference to go in and play on the T1 line at a game shop. But then broadband penetration started going up in our market, and we decided it would pretty much be all downhill from there as far as the gaming cafe business was concerned.
There are still a few around but they don't do very well and several that were in operation then have folded now. It's cheaper and more convenient for most of the hardcore crowd to sit at home and run at nearly the same speeds on their cable or DSL connections, which they would be paying for anyway.
The only real option left is to sell it as an 'experience' or a sort of party destination--like how you might pop open a beer at home, but sometimes you still want to go chill at a bar and play some pool. Gaming isn't really that social, though, at least not in the face to face sense, so that's a hard sell.
You may still have a shot at this, if your market area does not have significant broadband penetration. Otherwise, I'd say stay away from it. It's an expensive business to be in--you have a lot of equipment expenses because you need to keep your machines state of the art, you're going to have people spilling crap on them and generally treating them like dung, and the support is pretty intensive--and all that on top of just running the business, which is not much of a picnic in the first place. You'll be hard pressed to compete with broadband when you have to charge as much in one night as a telco charges for a whole month for the same service.
Good luck, whatever your decision.
No relation to Happy Monkey
regular arcade machines
dance, dance revolution for the "chicks"
internet cafe type of access
bagels and mochas for the foo-foo poo-poo types
Pardon my pessimism, but you will never get enough geeks in the door to pay the bills. This plan is doomed to failure, so I suggest an alternative: just send all of the investors' money directly to me. The result will be just the same, in that they will lose all of their money. This way, they will be helping my kids to eat!
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
You've got 300,000 to 400,000 potential customers, but no chance of high speed networking in the near future? What bizarro world is this?
Consider that computer gamers are a small subset of the computer using public. No idea of the percentages, so I'll say %50. So double that number you quoted, fudge it a little bit...
You have a million potential customers for high speed networking? Drop the gaming crap, and run, run as fast as you can to set up an independent DSL provider. Get in there fast, before the ILEC beats you to it.
Or how about just opening a plain-jane cybercafe? If there are this many people wanting net access (again, I doubt it. Go back and double-check your analysis thus far) you can setup a cybercafe with your choice of T-1 or private satellite connection.
Ignore the comments about free drinks. That's completely idiotic. Bowling alleys give away the games (almost) in an attempt to sell sodas and nachos. I would also be careful of food in/around the games. Personally, I would outfit the place with USB equipment. With the 6-10 foot range, you can keep the computers locked up, or at least away from cokes and chips (and cigarettes. When you aren't looking, someone will light up). And when someone dumps a coke on the keyboard, with USB, you can replace it without a hitch. Or even a reboot.
What about software? Are you going to make sure someone shows up with legit copies? Or are you going to rent copies? Call out the attorneys in either case.
Someone talked about quality of gaming rigs. There's a few ways to handle this. First, I would check with Alienware and similar companies, and see if you can get reasonable lease terms. Try to get into a situation where you are replacing the top of the line machines every six months (shortly after the latest and greatest video cards come out?) Older machines can then be either sold for reduced rates, or donated for a tax write off. Sooner or later, you will have new machines and old ones. Charge more for the more expensive machines.
They do at Kinko's. Speaking of Kinko's, a self service payment system would be something I would like.
Reservations? I'd charge a fee. Require a deposit of 30 minutes time. If they show, it is applied to the cost of the session. If not, you keep the money. This also gets you credit cards, which you'll surely want for someone who might hose the machine.
Again, I'd like to say that if there are that many potential customers, there are more lucrative things to do. But if it works, let us know.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I would put the hard drive in a removable tray. With identical hardware configuration, just keep a supply of ghosted drives. When someone hoses it, power off, turn key, remove tray, insert new, turn key, power on.
You could even work this in to licensing issues: 10 copies of Quake means 10 drives with Quake installed. Once they are rented out, no more rentals of Quake.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Actually, if they just skip the plywood and let the cube walls do their job, it will cut down on sound a lot. Problem is you want sight lines to make it look "cool," while at the same time hiding how crowded/not it is.
All the places I have seen in SE Asia have been loud and obnoxious for "adults," but I guess the "kids" like it.
Main trick would be high ceilings with acoustic tile ceilings, block line-of sight to the speakers with interior partitions, with some kind of background music and white noise. There isn't much low frequency rumble to make it too rough on whomever would use the place.
I hope you include how you are going to make money, and how long it will take to become profitable. This may sound obvious, but many geeks spend lots of time planning hardware and software, but forget the business plan. If you are new to this, I recommend that you spend the money to hire someone to review it, and/or get some good books on the subject. The more you know ahead of time (plans, failsafes, even what criteria you will use to decide when to give up) will improve your chances in may ways.
The Stomping Grounds is one. Perhaps they can offer some advice, if you aren't directly competing with them.
Back in the day, (1997, such a heady time) I setup and ran a small cyber-cafe and game room. My observations and suggestions: :-) We had the entire Office suite on the two machines with access to the scanner. All the machines were able to print to the Epsons and we charged a minimal charge per page printed to cover ink on those thirsty ink jets. :-)
1) We had a our pcs locked up in another room away from the game room. In the cafe area they were behind a partition with a small locked walkway to provide access and airflow, big enough to get in and switch the system out or at least pop a ghost boot floppy in and hit reset. The game PC's were in a locked area with a 100mb switched network between the 8 boxes and the dedicated server for glQuake. there were holes in the walls big enough for the various KVM/Sound cables. We also had Thunderseats setup in the individual booths, each hooked to an individual 100 watt amp.
2) Black light in the Game room is cool. Throws enough light to see, and gives a nice ambeiance for multiplayer games.
3) Offer other services. We had a nice fast SCSI auto feeding scanner and nice (for the time) Epson color ink jet printers out front in the net cafe area. These got a pretty fair amount of use from our walk-in traffic..i.e. Older people who did not have a computer but heard through the grapevine that we could help them scan a picture and help them send it to a loved one.
3) Good control software makes the hourly charges easy. I had a good friend who we contracted with to write a client server package to control access to all the pcs in the building. We replaced Explorer with our custom shell that only allowed access to certain programs (IE, Solitare, Freecell on the Internet machines. Quake, Outlaws, Nascar Racing on the game machines) It had a little intigrated timer that ran in the program and it would dump you out of the game/program when whatever time you purchaced ran out and come up with a little login prompt that started the timer and shell program. Also in the program was a button to add one or more hours to your current session so that you would not have to come running back to the register to request more time. This software also ran our POS and inventory system. It was fairly robust for being written over the course of two weeks.
4) Choose your staff wisely. You need at least one person with a solid hardware/software background on hand at all times to minimize downtime and keep the customers happy. Also someone who can be cannon fodder when you have only one or two people wanting to play doesn't hurt either. You also want to make sure your folks are not farking off in CS during the time they should be mopping the floor.
5) Tournaments Tournaments Tournaments. Our biggest day was a 14-18 year old only double elimination Quake tournament. We had lots of nice prizes and had a big party afterwards with food and dj. This was our 2nd tournament it went off without a hitch.
Now for the bad news. You are going to fight with broadband sooner or later. You will loose unless you have enough bandwidth of your own. Along these lines, if you can get enough capital, you might want to look at rolling your own DSL service for some folks. If you can sell the dsl service you can buy a bigger pipe for the cafe and the dsl customers.
Also think about leasing your hardware. New pcs every three years is a good thing, especially for gaming systems as 3 years is about the life of todays state of the art. Your not going to be able to compete with the childgeek with a new box in a year and a half, but your selling the environment for multiplayer gaming, rather than the machines the games run on, so having the absolute latest and greatest is not totally required. If latest and greatest is require, roll the upgrades around the place, i.e. this year and a halfs game machine is the last year and a halfs internet access box. Only thing this requires is a couple of intenet access boxes that your consider disposable, which in this day of less than $700 pca, is pretty freakin easy.
Well thats all I can think of for now. Hope I've provided a little info you can use. And I hope you have a better backer than we did, he bankrupted the computer store he owned and took the cafe with it, even though we only had two months where we did not turn a profit in the eight months we were open.
The trick is to bind you're customers to you. A bar is a stupid place to go to to get drunk. You can get you're alcohol much cheaper at home, you can get it at home 24/7 and there is no problem with getting home afterwards. So why do bars still exist?
Well they are more fun, they will have a lot more different drinks then you have at home, potential to meet new people and so on.
A good lan center would allow you to play new games without first having to buy them. (Lawyer check!) It should make it a lot easier to simply go gaming and find other people ready, biggest headache of home lan parties is getting all the people on the same date.
One little tip that I have seen many cyber-cafe type setups make here. Keep the entry level low. Sure having regular game freak players may seem nice but if they create an atmosphere where newbies are turned off you will eventually run out of players as the freaks grow up.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Thus far I've seen some good argumenst and they come in a these 3 main topics:
:)
Legal
Food
Asthetic
Now my points
Legal - All the games you want to have can be played with out much hassle and legaly too. Most FPS games have a contacn number where you can purcahs a site copy for much less than the sum of all the computers you will have. And all the Blizzard games(Starcraft Warcraft III Diablo II) have an even better deal because they want to start a cafe movement. I word of warning you want to be open late but but many of your customers are under 18 so look at curfew laws around you and post a sign about your policy you don't want to get shut down for contributing to the deliquency of a minor (you know that's half the point of having this lan cafe but you don't want any proof to haunt you
Food - ONLY ALLOW WHAT YOU SELL, and then only sell bottles of pop so people can keep lids on and make sure you post a policy about $25 for replacing a spilled on keyboard or such, no big deal. Oh and those cold frapachino thingies can keep customers awake and paying for a few hours. For snacks avoid chips because of the grease and other residues. But you do need something. I haven't figured out what yet but it is a must. This place in Niles, Illinois Called G-Zone is run by a Korean family and they have bags of non-greasy ethnic snacks I love em... but I think individual chex mix bag arerelativly grease free, but work with what you have.
Asthetic - Get comfortable chairs this is greatly important. Also I reccomed an area with a couch and some chairs for little kids mothers to sit and for burnt out gamers to rest for a few mins after a huge frag fest. Free coffie here would be a good idea(like a quick lube's waiting room)
I love cyber cafes because the give me a chance to get out of the house and beat some people's faces I can see. So have late night parties on the weekends, people will stay.
A word on staff now do not hire regulars they will be more interrsted in playing than doing work I know I was one for a while.
-Ben
---PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE---
"Now, where's the damn 'any' key?"
We went to a gaming centre and paid $12 per person per hour. We play pool as a group paying just $7 an hour for the table. Needless to say, we only went to the gaming centre once, and it closed down within months.
I'm honestly not sure whether it's the ceiling, the cube walls, or both, but there's a decent amount of sound dampening in the office where I work.
My floor is basically one huge room, except for two conference rooms and proper offices on the exterior of the building at the corners. I would've thought the sound would be horrible, but there's a LOT of dampening somewhere, I can only hear things less than 2-3 cubicles away. Things die off very quickly after that.
Here the cube walls have some sort of thick fabric lining them, I believe it has some decent dampening properties. Don't get cube walls that are purely solid (plastic|wood|metal), they won't absorb any sound whatsoever.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I just wrote a whole journal entry on this. My idea is a little bit $$$, but it's good.
http://slashdot.org/~TibbonZero/journal/11517
Check it out. Basically I am selling the experience, but alot more too.
Make sure that you have security there, they have had some problems with people before.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Ping Time has been running in madison wi for over a year. So it at least has moderate success. They spec out their machines prices and policies on their website. They also let players outside join on lan games they are playing so that friends without high speed access or the newest 50$ game du jour can play with their friends that do without hauling their machine around and pirating copies. I also know that they use a cloning product that rebuilds the machines automatically every night. It also lets them rebuild ones that go down quickly. I'm not sure what they do about hardware security. Every smart public lab has at least some kind of case locks and cable down components. I would also install something like VNC so I can see what is going on, on any machine and make sure that people aren't doing thing that are illegal from machines you are responsible for. They sell copies of all of the games they have available as well as gaming mice and keyboards and video cards. Not a large stock but it is the pro shop concept. They also do some console games. It's a nice pretty professionally organized place.
In addition to using VNC, I'd put on Servers Alive and monitor that VNC process. If some fuck gets clever and disables it, you will know in a matter of seconds.
Offer free fountain sodas. This will cost you only pennies and will add to the atmosphere.
Sell other bottled drinks at a premium (Jones soda, beer (if legal), *insert supercaffeinated beverage here*, juices, etc.).
You want them there forgetting about the time.
This may be too obvious, but I recommend bringing on board some sort of financial beancounter that you trust.
With all this technology, it's easy to lose site of whether or not your business is turning a profit. You never know. The bean counter may have some financing and cash flow tricks up her sleave that you had never even thought of.
I love technology. I could easily spend a few grand on the latest and greatest systems. Someone like me would need a beancounter to make sure that every decision I make makes sense $$$-wise.