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Building The Ideal Geek Gaming Center?
MongooseCN writes "After seeing the popularity of multiplayer gaming and the desire for fellow geeks to find better means of socializing, I've decided to open up a geek gaming center. It would allow people to play games together in the same building, and to talk and hang out too. I know there are a few of these places already, but few of them have taken into consideration what people want to see in these centers. Most of them open with only the owner's opinion of what would make the place fun. Some don't even allow people to hang out, since they charge by the hour. So what I want to know is what the /. community would like to see in a place like this. I want to start a gathering place for other like minded, techno-savvy geeks. What games, gaming systems/hardware, etc should it have? What would make it a fun place to hang out and meet other people?"
As a younger geek businessman I ran the numbers on such a place and tried to operate one back in the days of 386/486s. It may seem easy on the surface to run such a center, but make sure you factor in administration (some automated method to reload the machines from images in particular), hardware replacement costs (these centers are *hard* on equipment, due to the "it isn't mine attitude") and general manpower requirement to supervise sales and usage.
If you have already considered these things, there are some things you can do that increase your revenue and customer retention:
#1 - Snack bar/coffee shop (depending on your demographic). This should be a separate space adjacent to the computers (allowing drinks and electronics to coexist is not for the weak). You will need a different license to serve food.
#2 - Adequate space for people to chill out. Atmosphere is key here to retain people and bring them back. Consider TVs like you see in sports bars, except maybe some can be showing the action in the game area. Remember the restrooms: don't make them some pit of dispair... people will avoid coming back.
#3 - Special events. People will filter in and out, but on those slow days (Monday through Thursday, normally) having special events like tournaments is key to keeping an adequate number of paying customers.
As far as hardware, you need to run games well, but not to bleeding edge. Since you will replace hardware every year (although the old hardware can then be tasked with server duty or older games), buy something in the mid range. Don't skimp on monitors though: large displays are a good investment, as they will last 3-5 years. Optical mice (no cleaning required, more precision) and throwaway keyboards (they take tons of abuse). Forget about joysticks, they are mostly obsolete, and were a huge expense back in the day.
You can also consider consoles to augment the PCs: many have great multiplayer support, and on a LAN they rock. Just remember that console or PC, it has to be in a locked cabnets and thus is a pain to change out games), or you can kiss your investment goodbye. (Even with locked cabnets we lost games all the time, usually to brute force attacks, but sometimes to "could you switch this game/distraction created" events).
As far as layout of the game area, I personally prefer semi private quarter cubicles (obscures line of site to the monitor, but not the people) arranged in circles. Remember good office chairs if you want people to remain for long periods of time.
Sig under construction since 1998.
You're going to want some sort of pricing range that keeps things profitable for you, but doesn't keep gamers away that might not be able to afford games at home. You will probably want to go for more customers at a lower price, because the social "LAN-party" atmosphere is what makes such places fun. You probably won't want to do it on a hourly basis (who wants a time limit playing games?), and maybe have a monthly or yearly pass option available to those that want it. Really, your main profit should come from extras like snacks, just like movie theaters do.
Also, if you aren't setting this up in a town big enough, you can pretty much bet that it's going to fail relatively quickly.
Good luck,
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Geeks need a place that embraces all the major echelons of geekery.
Do not go all PC or all Mac or all Unix or all Linux.
Have a variety of games availiable on the computers, from FPS to MMORPGs.
Have consoles!
Charge when they leave, have memberships, give the first hour free.
Allow them to have bottled drinks. (have cupholders, away from the keyboard).
You may gain extra income by selling video games too, and if you name it right, merchandise will sell.
Good luck!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
A favorite place for me and my fellow IT'ers to hang out at after work is a place called GameTime Nation. What they offer are lots of comfy couches and flat screen (not panel) displays to play the games on. The hardware is a choice of X-Box and PS2 on each machine. With soda/candy for sale and booming hip hop music plus eps of Red Vs Blue projected on the wall the place is a great geek hangout. It has apparently developed a large-ish social network of young hip-hopsters who play (what seems to be) mostly Halo and cheer and jeer each other on voiciferously. It'd be nice to find a correlate that had networked PC hardware, but thus far this place is the best I've found of this type. The one I go to (I think it's a chain) is on 13th (12th? don't go there that often) street between 3rd and 4th Aves in the best city in the world. Close to the Astor Place subway, walkable from Union Square.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Be wary that the licenses for most games don't allow you to just install them on the computers and char people to play. You will need to make special deals with the software publishers, or else just keep quiet and hope they don't sue you. =)
Also remember that many geeks genuinely prefer the oz curtain of sitting behind a terminal with nobody else around.
Their benefits? They're cheap and still loads of fun. And you could make the older consoles cheaper to play, if you so desired. In any case, it wouldn't take too long to get a return on your investment.
At the very least, I'd suggest getting an N64 and a Dreamcast, each with some of the best multiplayer games available. The N64 has a ton of awesome games, but the four required titles are Super Smash Brothers, Goldeneye, Mario Kart 64, and Perfect Dark. Those four alone have given millions of hours of entertainment to gamers worldwide.
I don't have very much Dreamcast experience, but having a console running the old Capcom fighters (I particularly like the Marvel Vs. Capcom and Street Fighter Alpha series for the DC) would be a great thing.
Heck, if you really wanted to, get a Genesis with all of the old sports games. Get an NES with all of the classic games - Mario, Ice Climbers, Excitebike, Tetris...Go wild! No matter what, older consoles will STILL be cheaper for you than the newer ones, even if the supply of new games is nonexistent.
Go retro...it's cheap, and there are still plenty of gamers who love older consoles. Besides...a game never loses its fun as it ages. :)
Goo goo g'joob.
You should run Counterstrike, etc tournaments every once in a while. Helps bring in the people. And people are going to be hard on equipment, so standardize. Select a good gaming system, and buy a lot of them. When you do this, call around. If Dell, Gateway, HP know that you're standardizing on their equipment, they might give you a discount, because their name is going to be all over the place. Take one computer, install what you want on the hard drive, then Ghost the installation to all the other computers. If a computer happens to get a virus or something, just reGhost it.
/. article a while back about a failed tourny, learn from it's failures. Numero uno, cache server. If you're running Steam or something and it needs updates, download the update to a local cache server, then have the client machines "pull" it from the cache server. Two, huge pipeline to the Net. Games like CS can take up a LOT of bandwidth.
There was a
You probably won't make too much money off the computer and game usage; make the most money off refreshments, etc. In the hours that gamers are gone (school) perhaps turn it into a Net Cafe. And atmosphere is key. A little on the dark side, toned down colors, flashy lights, etc. And remember, sell Bawls. This stuff is so full of caffeine I know gamers who live off it, and think nothing of drinking 6-7 of them in one sitting.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
As much as many geeks like to claim form follows function, a lot of us are closet artists. Sure, that extra fan keeps your machine cooler, but admit it, the window was just for show!
The first gaming center I ever visited was Dig' Ops in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They're located downstairs in one of those little hole-in-the-wall spaces you find in an old city. It was less than brightly lit inside, which seems camp now, but it honestly added to the atmosphere then. You see, the dim lighting made it just a bit hard to discern the strange shapes of the black metal cube that dominated the center of the room.
The cube had people sitting in it. Four on the bottom, and four mostly on top. The design supported stairs, monitors, keyboards, mouse shelves, and the most interesting seats I've ever experienced. Down the central column were the computers and all the wiring for the audio comm system. The whole thing was made of black iron pipe, and it just exuded an intense feel of industrial tech.
I've never been much of a gamer, but I'd go there just because it had such an amazingly cool atmosphere. I ended up playing more than my share of Action Quake because of it. The midnight-to-whenever time block, which had to be specially reserved, was my usual excuse to indulge in way too much caffeine.
At some point, D. Ops decided to dismantle the cube and replace it with much more mundane seating arrangements based on aluminum channel frames. The games were still fun but I couldn't find an excuse just to show up and play. I haven't been back in a year or two so I don't know what they've been up to lately.
Lately, I've been visiting LanLords in Howell, Michigan. They've also got an odd sort of interior design, with the seating "cubicles" made of ribbed steel sheet material. The machines are well equipped, and Sennheiser headsets make for an immensely comfortable gaming experience. I'm mostly there for the people rather than the games, though. The geek running the show picks the muzak, which is quiet enough that it's not distracting once you have the headphones on, but it keeps things interesting if you're just hanging out.
Digital Ops started out with an isolated network, but they added an internet connection before too long. Lanlords has had a fast pipe from day one, but some games still run locally to keep the pings absurdly low. Once in a while, the two centers will hold us-vs-them games across the internet, and the sense of local comradery is intense. If you're in the area, I highly encourage you to stop in.
Both places do a number of things right: Keep a fridge well stocked with various caffeinated and unleaded beverages. Let newcomers wander around for a while and watch before trying to turn them into customers. Wait for a break in the action before trying to organize a collective pizza order. Strictly enforce the no nose-picking rule.
The biggest factor that will keep people coming back to your center is the hardest one to control: If the "regular" gang is friendly, or if it's hostile to newbies, how do you encourage or change that behavior?
Good luck!
We had one place near us that was run by some college students. They rented a two-story auto center that had empty for about two years. The owner was willing to get anybody in there at that point.
They put folding tables in rows in what was the showroom area. Half of these tables were filled with gaming PCs. The other half of the tables had networking run to them and were left empty for BYOC gaming.
They turned the counter into a snack/coffee bar and sold geeks drinks like Jolt Cola. They put a couple racks in to sell gamer crack, oops, I mean Magic cards, and gaming books (D&D, Vampire, etc.). They also put more folding tables downstairs in the autobays and put used partitions up between the bays.
They charged three different hourly rates:
1) you could rent a place for your PC at one of the open tables.
2) You could rent one of their PCs.
3) You could rent one of the gaming rooms downstairs for role-playing or collectible card games. You got a discount if you paid a month at a time.
They also had monthly membership where you got unlimited play on one of their PCs for one monthly price.
They did very well for a year and the owner seriously jacked up the rent. About six months later, they graduated and closed shop.
I can't remember their pricing for the gaming (I went for RPG downstairs, not computer gaming), but I seem to remember $6 an hour? The gaming tables downstairs were $15-25 for a four hour block depending on the size of the area. The $25 area was usually used by the Warhammer guys.
Hope that gives you some ideas.
There are also 2 projectors which can either have PCs connected to them for movies or one on one comps, or for the inhouse PS2's.
People do hang out there occassionally who aren't playing, but there's no lounging space set aside.
Cameras are operated in all corners of the room for security and the images are available on the website so people who aren't there can see what's going on.
I won't give the URL in case it gets slashdotted. But if you're in wellington, you already know about it.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
You'll want to make sure that you can find a way to keep lots of people interested, not just the FPS/RTS crowd.
Social games such as Dance Dance Revolution are good to increase clients of both genders, and across many ages. This also works well with some kind of snack bar since it will work up a good appitite.
You will never be a replacement for people who do their own home gaming. Be free with advice and information regading system upgrades and maintenance.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Since this is the most correct post so far, I'd just like to add some stuff to this post.
First, off, have adequate lighting in the computer room. The only places I'd seen that run LAN gaming always turn the damn lights off. Remember that you're not only trying to get geeks in the building, you're trying to get the common man in there too (operating a business trying to specficially target a niche is like trying to run a marathon after shooting yourself in the foot. You can do it, it's just gotten a lot less likely now.) as well as help change the overall perception of geekiness.
While I'll game with the lights low at home, that's not generally what we'd consider a "friendly" environment for younger gamers, or non-gamers. Plus, even gamers don't really want to be in dimly lit surroundings that aren't their own. You can save on the electric bills by getting some of the low-energy, longer lasting bulbs, while keeping the place nicely lit.
I'd combine your snack area and the break area. In Japan the internet/gaming cafes I went to brought food to you, but considering they, as a society tend to keep businesses and such fetishistically clean, I'd concur with the above post and keep food and CPUs in seperate areas.
Stock all the consoles. Offer buybacks for games for store credit. Sell the buyback games you don't need on Ebay for a profit.
You probably want to staff a short-order cook. (Not a fancy-shmancy guy...someone who can be trusted to make smoothies, burgers, breakfast burritos, and nachos.) TV screens with a tethered remote (VERY important. If I'm the guy with the screen showing the CS action, and I'm the Average Joe trying to watch the Lakers game, I'm going to be less-than-thrilled...the tether keeps the remote from accidentally wandering off.) make the place friendly. Stock some magazines.
Also, hire janitors. Janitors do a much better job of cleaning stuff than the standard apathetic high-school student forced to wear the cashier hat and the janitor hat. Cleanliness makes your place much more conducive to return visits.
While we're on the topic of hiring, hire some women. Don't go all out trying to hire really good looking ones, just some decent looking women who have a knowledge of things geek. If they main adequate decorum, they can be a boost to return rates, without you having to be exploitative..just get a good mix of people in there. People who like your business idea, but aren't misanthropes. Simpsons Comic Book Guy is just going to get jumped in under a week.
On the other side of the coin, the people who don't know anything about games and don't care to learn are going to get chided out of the building. Have the right people on board is going to be key. You don't want EB syndrome, either.
Have people smoke outside, and make sure there's adequate ventilation. Computers + tons of bodies in seats = lots of hot air.
Most importantly...calculate out the numbers beforehand. Figure out what you're going to need to break even after determining exact operational costs and make sure you're charging enough. Have a promotional thing with a nearby school, or community college that has a draconian computer lab, and get people in to "beta" the store for you. That'll spread word of mouth, and you're set after that.
Good luck. Fight the good fight.
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There's a local arcade around here, that does most of the things right...
I suppose, first of all, it provides a very comfortable atmosphere. Couches, lounge chairs, and carpeting are pretty much necessary. Also, it is very well lit.
I don't quite understand what the hell people are thinking when they say, "Give it atmosphere, make it a little on the dark side." Or whatever. That's crap. It's horrible when you're trying to play a PC game for the first time and you can't see shit because the place has "atmosphere." You want to be able to see if people are jacking your stuff and whatever else is going on in the place anyway.
The kind of atmosphere that a hang out really needs is one of like a room at home. Living room, your room, whatever. Give it lots of comfortable sofas and lounge chairs, ones that can be moved around at will. Keep the lights ON and up high so that you can see everything in the place. The music should stay down low enough so that you can hear other people, and what is going on in game.
Games that would be necessary... I'd say... go with DDR first of all. Give DDR an area and a couches for sweaty people to hang out on after doing all that work on the machine, or for people who just like to watch the asians go crazy on it. It's a fun social game, so give it what it needs.
As for the PC side, I suppose there's really no wrong way to set it up, as long as the games are easily accessible, and it's clear what you can do and what you can't do just by looking at the desktop on screen. Headphones would be good.
Consoles are also great fun, chain a few xboxes or ps2s together.. a lot of this stuff is probably easy for you to come up with. Pay by the hour, whatever.
Hey, it's my OPINION that dogs have eight legs and make a sound like a car horn every time they take a piss.
Right now, Foo is in trouble. The only people comfortable hanging out there are teenaged males tired of thrashing in the parking lot. As a result, the place is packed Friday and Saturday nights, and virtually abandoned the rest of the week. This despite Foo being two doors down from a fairly major movie theatre. The straw that's breaking Foo's back is that these mall-rats really don't have a lot of money to spend, so they buy an hour of game time, then sit around and talk and scare off potential customers.
In contrast, there's another place a few dozen miles away that has taken many of Slashdot's suggestions to heart. Blah (again, names changed), is a fairly large place with cream colored walls, potted plants, windows at the front of the store, a variety of seating arrangements, and the owners have even gone as far as to reward students with good report cards with free time on the computers. Right now, it's maybe 70% occupied every day with a nice mix of kids, adults and seniors, male and female. The only reason Blah isn't doing better is because Blah is tucked away in a strip mall in the midst of surbania.
I'm sure if you reversed Foo's and Blah's locales, both places would be doing a hell of a lot better than they are now.
I'd suggest using a membership model, like a YMCA, for several reasons.
1) People hate paying money. If you only ask them to do it once a month, they'll be happier.
2) If people make an investment for one month, they will keep coming back, making friends and getting attached to the place. Suddenly you have a returning customer base.
3) This gives you membership promotion models, like bring in a friend and get a month free.
4) You have a much better grasp of your financial status because you can say pretty much what your income is for each month.
5) You know who's coming in and out of the building - theft becomes harder.
6) If you want, you can let people charge drinks and snacks against their accounts, bring guests for $5 bucks a visit, and all of this convenience makes your customers happy.
Remember, most geeks have to have plenty of money to support their geekery, so they'll be happy to pay you reasonable fees for services and convenience. I believe there was another thread recently where someone cast the slashdot community as valuing their time much more than their money - I would posit that this is true of your target audience in general.
Yvan Eht Nioj!