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Games Entertainment

Starting a LAN Gaming Centre? 82

Posted by Cliff from the 21st-century-arcades dept.
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..."
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Starting a LAN Gaming Centre? More

Starting a LAN Gaming Centre?

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  • Hi Slashdot: (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I just got a new job. I'm really nervous about it, and I'm also new to the internet. Some of my friends recommended google to me, but I can barely form a grammatically correct sentence, so that hasn't been much help.

    Help me do my job please!

  • I have seen 'VR Arcades' recently (Score:3, Informative)

    by krinsh ( 94283 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @07:57PM (#4108467)
    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.
  • Just curious, where are you planning to open these centres?

  • Try running it like a paintball shop (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KurdtX ( 207196 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @08:07PM (#4108512)
    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.
    • Space partitioning has a simple solution: cubicle walls. Just buy 'em off any failed company, then drill some particle board to 'em that's painted up in various, uh, gnarly motifs (I really am approaching my geezer years to be saying "gnarly" for lack of another word). Just don't go lugging them around yourself when you do setup if you value your back, get some real dollies and handcarts. Adorn with more stuff like fake razor wire (I rather strontly suggest not using the real stuff) and you have *atmosphere*.

      The PC upgrade cycle isn't quite as bad as you think it'd be -- mostly you need to upgrade to newer video cards, less often the PC itself. Even a TNT2 will render counterstrike just fine, and its requirements are never going to increase. Obviously newer games will need newer video cards, but I bet just paying lab assistants (no you can't run it on all volunteer labor from kiddies who want free games) will come out to more than equipment costs.

      As for fountain drinks, you have something to learn about concessions -- that stuff eats into your margin quick, and the only way you're going to get away with free drinks or even free refills is to bump up rates. Though that might not be a bad idea...
      • How about like the movie theatres ? Buy a 4$ bucket-o-pop, get free refills for the night.
      • Cubicle walls will take down the cluttered look and let you partition into groups, but you'll still have the problem with sound. 'twould be a good idea though if you are renting a large room or couple large rooms and the rent agreement doesn't let you actually make mods to the actual structure, like making actual walls.

        If you are gonna put up actual walls and make rooms though, make sure you do it right and put some decent soundproofing in...

        I agree with the drinks thing, although to get a little out of drinks you can charge something like $2.50 for all you can drink, normal prices otherwise. Just make sure you have plenty of spare keyboards and mice on hand (speaking of mice, go optical, not ball or track... less gunk build-up, and the stuff that does build up, easier to clean off)

        • Cube walls and Sound (Score:3, Insightful)

          by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 )
          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.
          • A thought I just had; Multiplayer cooperative games, like Tribes 2, you're going to want the team to be able to communicate with each other easily, probably by sitting near each other (shared headsets have their problems). But you don't want a team to be able to overhear the competing team talking to each other.

            I saw a device at Comdex in '96 that created a "sound bubble". Really nice sound for those under the parabolic reflector, but no sound outside the bubble. That would clean up noise pollution nicely, assuming they still exist.
        • 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.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • MY GOD NO FUCKING CUBICLE WALLS!

        Last thing you want is to make this place resemble an office. I live in the bay area, we got about 20 game houses now. The ones that look like offices don't do nearly as well as the ones that look like a dim lit nightclub.

        Try and make the place look as close to a nightclub as possible. Stay away from flouresent lighting. Use track lighting or blacklights.

        Theme the place out to look like the games you will be featuring. Counterstrike? How about some plastic replica's of m16's hanging on the camoflague painted walls. Everquest? How about a suite of armor and shields hanging from the wall.

        BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT MAKE IT LOOK LIKE AN OFFICE! Use flat tables, no partitions so everyone can see one another.

        Thank you.
  • <disclaimer type="no-flame">I'm a resident of the US. Since the poster didn't mention what country this is going to be in, I'm assuming that it'll be the US as well. Typical IANAL rules apply.</disclaimer>

    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.

  • This was tried in the local mall. I think the rent on the space is what killed them. For the most part I think teens would be your biggest customers, with limited budgets, and soon to have limited hours. Maybe you can get a couple of groups in now and again but, would it be enough to sustain the operation?
  • It folded.

    Most people who are interested already have a computer. LAN parties don't need the net, they just need a cheap hub.

    if there's not much connectivity, then they very well may not be interested in computers.

    However, I'd suggest filling computers any way you can. If you can put photoshop and illustrator on a few computers and get some decent scanners and printers, you can double as a "last-minute need-to-get-this-done" setup. Kinkos in Arizona charges 12 dollars US for this.

    Rent out rooms for training seminars. With a room with Word, Excel, and a few Adobe products, you can hire a local instructor to give classes. After instructor's fees, it may not make as much money per computer, but you'll have 8 computers filled for sure that night.
    • Set it up as an Internet cafe/LAN party/ Training area. As said above, this will help fill the chairs. Just make sure it is CLEAN before the suits come in....I don't think they like jolt-drenched chairs. Another option: set up a summer/spring-break computer camp. Call it educational, and teach some simple apps, along with Zingo-Lingo, and Math-Blaster. Let the kids on the games for a little every day too. It keeps the seats filled

  • Sell the games. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by theNote ( 319197 )
    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.
  • Be prepared to have systems die continiously.

    People will fiddle with all sorts of settings they aren't suppose to, and blow them up software wise almost daily. If you have a HD imaging tool (I like ghost) and build a proper image you can get a trashed system up and running in about 10-15 minutes.

    Hardware wise figure the usual suspects, keyboards, mice, joysticks, and any other input devices. They will get broken from abuse, but are relatively cheap these days. Also only go with optical mice, as they are going to be more durable and require no maintnance. Pick cases that you can secure pretty easily as parts will mysteriously vanish if you don't. Flimsely plastic doors and parts are sure to break and should be avoided as well.

    There are 2 thougts on securing the systems:
    Why bother, they are going to break it anyway and I can just re-ghost. or Secure the snot out of it. I'd try and shoot for somewhere in the middle, lock them out of some of the more troublesome parts but don't prevent any games from running. You can always re-ghost the machine when (not if) they break the software.

    Make sure you have LOTS of games, and that you have enough licenses for them. Piracy is bad and will get you hammered. Don't let people install their own software. Make sure they don't have any need, the latest titles, patches and mods are a must.
    • 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.
      • It doesn't work anymore. Windows 2000 and XP both have problems when you swap drives, even on the same hardware. They look at the CPU ID's and other garbage.

        In one machine, we replaced a processor that died after a week -- Windows 2000 Server wanted to be reinstalled.

        Of course, if you have two or three disks per machine, and keep each set of disks with that specific machine, then everything will work just peachy.

        • Bull. WinXP will have some issues with doing this, however, 2K will be fine. At MOST it will require a reboot after initial detection. This can be avoided easily by using identical drives. All of this assumes of course that all the machines in a given group are identical: MBs, drives, CPUs, etc. Otherwise drive imaging utilities like ghost won't be incredibly usefull as drivers will have to be uninstalled / reinstalled / etc. Plus, letting windows autodetect changes in the underlying hardware usually works, but doesn't result in a lean, clean, super fly machine. It just makes everything run kludgy and pisses of your customers.

          • I'm not disagreeing with disk imaging utilities. I have used them many times in my career. I agree and know from experiecne that windows records all its changes, and each change can potentially degrade performance. While working at a University I had the joy of working with Ghost on several labs with a combined total of probably 300 computers. When we built the disk images, we tried several things, and found that it worked best when each image was specific to each hardware configuration for Win98. I haven't used them on any of the Windows 2000 versions. I would imagine that W2K Professional would handle it fairly easily, while based on what I've seen, W2K Server has more hardware ties. I would assume Advanced Server and Datacenter Server have substantially more hardware ties.

            Regardless...

            Bull. WinXP will have some issues with doing this, however, 2K will be fine. At MOST it will require a reboot after initial detection.

            Yes, it did reboot after initial detection. After reboot it then detected the 'new' processor again, and needed to reboot. Then it detected the hardware again, and needed to reboot. Then it detected the hardware again, and again, and again, and again... until we re-installed.

            You may not believe me, but that is your option. We had (at that time) cluster of 24 computers for parallel processing. After the cluster had been up for just a few weeks, one of the CPU's in one of the nodes failed. BIOS showed the bad CPU, and we replaced it. Each of the machines was dual boot GNU/Linux and Windows 2000 Server. The GNU/Linux boot worked just fine, not even a note in the logs that the hardware was different.

            • Sorry, I should have been more articulate. I was referring to a hard disk change requiring at most one reboot. More changes could render the system unusable as you state.
            • Win2K Server and Professional are indeed slightly different animals. A single image of Pro can be replicated out to multiple machines, and once the computer name and IP are changed they will behave nicely together on a LAN. Server won't. Several companies (Powerquest [powerquest.com] and Altiris [altiris.com]) have solutions for this problem.

              As far as why you had problems with just replacing a CPU? Who knows? I've worked in a lab with +1500 machines which were constantly reimaged with 95, 98, 2K, Netware and Linux without a hitch. The secret was identical hardware. Hardware (NICs, VidCards, drives, etc) would go bad and we would try to replace them with the same component. This was not always possible, for whatever reason. In my experience, most of those OSes could easily deal with anything except a MB change. VidCard changes were not good either, but as long as the OS included support for the new card, it usually worked out without problem.

              Obviously, your mileage has varied.
        • If I'm reading you right, that's the most moronic fucking thing Microsoft has ever done. Period.

  • Security (Score:2, Insightful)

    by l1ghtfoot ( 473165 )
    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?
    • Amen

      Some friends and I have a hobby: we look at the security of buildings. a couple of specifics:
      1-hinges on the INSIDE
      2-windows need to be barred, or otherwise made difficult to acess.
      3-LIGHT the exterior well.
      4-consider a security system, and make sure the service is reliable, test it monthly, or someone will for you
      5- go ahead and walk on your roof, the vents make for some nice access points.
      just consider those, and you will be fine.
      (our hobby is just a hobby-no more)
  • 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.
  • Where do you have a base of 300-400K customers, but no high speed internet access? If 50% of the people in the area come to your place to game, that means that the city you're putting this in is pretty damn big!

    I can't believe that there would be no DSL or Cable nearby.
  • Don't know how a financially viable a place catered to geeks will be. Here are few other services you can offer:

    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!

  • Sounds hinky (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gmhowell ( 26755 ) <gmhowell@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @10:36PM (#4109159) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Re:Sounds hinky (Score:2, Insightful)

      by fean ( 212516 )
      quoth the poster:

      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.


      actually, you're right and wrong at the same time... the deal is that you can make a higher profit margin on pop than you can on games...

      pop itself is usually about $0.005 / oz... that means if you give away free pop, and the average person drinks an amazing amount of 64 oz per visit, you're only spending $0.32 on the customer... on the other hand, if you charge a buck or two less on the games, but charge $1 for 20oz of pop, you're making back the money, and all of the money they spend on food is above and beyond...

      now which way is really more profitable depends on how you market things... if you give away fountain pop to people who have a membership (i.e. give mugs away w/ membership), but sell special things like bawls/red bull w/ a markup, it would be the best of both worlds

      and about the video games... as long as they own a copy of the games that are installed on their computers, everything is fine... almost all liscenses are on a per-computer basis, not per-individual-user basis... and if they BYOC, they gotta sign a waiver that says they're responsible for everything they do

      it's often easy to add on a cyber-cafe in a year or two when you upgrade the machines... you have all of the machines there, just make sure you have a room that's isolated from the noise of the LAN room, buy a laser printer, and you've instantly doubled the potential client base
      • Why is everyone assuming that people would be bringing their own machines/games?


        We have written up the proposals and plans including the standard things (PCs, networking equipment, servers, furniture, fixtures, techs, games, etc.)


        I wish the guy who submitted this would come back and clarify.
        Mike

  • I would consider using it as a training facility in your off-peak time (like daytime during schooldays). Especially if you're not in a real metropolis. Around here, only the community college has decent facilities for that, and they could be undercut easily.

  • Other things to include (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @11:56PM (#4109429) Homepage
    ...including the standard things (PCs, networking equipment, servers, furniture, fixtures, techs, games, etc)...

    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.

  • There are some of these in the US (Score:3, Informative)

    by un4given ( 114183 ) <bvoltz@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @11:58PM (#4109437)
    The Stomping Grounds [stomped.com] is one. Perhaps they can offer some advice, if you aren't directly competing with them.
    • $20 for a non-member to play games all day? That's a pretty good deal. The place in the Liberty Tree in Danvers, MA (I don't know if it is still there) was charging $30/day and their hours weren't as long.

      --Mike
  • Somewhat to my surprise, nobody has mentioned this yet. But there may be a decent market in LAN parties and competitions. The only problem here is that it's pretty sporadic, so I'd echo the suggestion to rent out your space to classes and such most of the time. But say, every month have a party/competition that you advertise in local arcades and such. Charge a nominal fee. Set up schedules, ladders, make everyone feel like it's really professional; arrange for people to watch matches when they aren't in them, all sorts of things like that. Let people bring their own computers if they want (maybe you could charge a little less in that case). Sell drinks and food for a reasonable price. At the end of the day, give out $500 or so in prizes. Or maybe you can get local businesses to donate computer equipment in return for putting their posters on the wall or using their logos as background images.

    I know of places that do things like this, and people show up more for the experience than the money. (OK, they show up for the money at first, but after that it's just an excuse to hang out with fellow nerds.) All those people who are saying LAN parties are basically like Internet games have no clue: being at a LAN party is TOTALLY different. Even games you normally hate become fun when you're in a room full of guys shouting and laughing and generally having a great time.

    The catch is, as I already said, you won't be able to fill your place all the time. But on the plus side, if you have the floor space, you can recycle your "obsolete" computers into the classroom if you can't resell them. And if people watch matches using e.g. HLTV, you can let the spectators use those crummy old computers and stuff the keyboards in a drawer.
    • If you have a tourney with viewers, I suggest a projector so the viewers can follow the ingame action, or they will get bored quite quickly. Almost every large LAN party I have been to, has had crappy equipment, having a place with a full 100BaseT switched network would really be a step up from most geek organized LAN parties.
  • A friend of mine approached me about doing this same thing just 2 weeks ago. We did some research after hearing about the 'baangs' in South Korea. From what I could see, igames.org was a good sponsor. You pay $50 to become an 'honorary' member, and get access to their forum, which will tell you the sort of things you'd like to know (other than it won't work, save your money, etc..) We went up to Broad Ripple (THE cool suburb) in Indianapolis, and checked out netheads. (www.netheads.com) They have a really nice place set up, 28 computers on 2 stories, bar grub, nice imported beer, free wireless lan (donated even) tons of sponsors, a nice atmosphere, comfy furniture, geeks playing D&D, and kick ass machines on 21" monitors. Each computer had about 60 games on it as well.

  • Yeah I did this for awhile. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Honig the Apothecary ( 515163 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @01:34AM (#4109673)
    Back in the day, (1997, such a heady time) I setup and ran a small cyber-cafe and game room. My observations and suggestions:
    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. :-) 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.
    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.
    • I was thinking that he should try to get some new games on the machines so that people could sample them, and eventually buy them. If focuses on the tournaments [as you suggested] and allowing people to sample games, do you feel that he could have a real stable business?

      I keep reading about people wanting to demo games before deciding to keep them. Do you think that this might be a nice business opportunity?
      • Yes he can have a stable business if you focus on tournaments. The tournaments allow people to play the games in an environment that makes you want to play better to beat one of the other guys, as such you might want to buy the game to play and get better at it. I would have loved to have the sheer variety of games and mods that are out there now back when I was running the cafe. Day of Defeat night, CS night, Quake night, Unreal Tournament night, Starcraft night, Diablo night....ect ect ect. The possiblities are endless.
        As far a demoing software, yes the game room/cafe is a wonderful place to test out new software, even as a marketing point. "Come to the and try out Photoshop 7.0 before plunking down $600 for the new version." or "Don't want to spend 50 bucks for that copy of Extreme Mouse Trap 3D IV? Come buy the and give it a shot on one of our gamming computers for the low low rate of 2 bucks an hour."

        Good points :-)
        Honig
        • [snip: tournament explanation/comment]As far a demoing software, yes the game room/cafe is a wonderful place to test out new software, even as a marketing point.[snip]Good points.
          Well, you're the one who brought up the tournament idea, and yes, *you* have a good point. :^) If I were to rephrase, "You have have a great idea about tournaments. I was wondering, if sampling software would be something that could be added to that, or is it a totally different niche that should be tackled seperately?". And you answered my question perfectly. I point this out, because I don't want to take credit where it isn't due.

          Too bad, that I don't have the time, energy and money to venture forth in this way. I've always wanted to open an arcade, and apparently, what you decscribe seems to be the arcade of the future.

          Thank you for your time. I appreciate you sharing your experiences and insights with all of us.
  • There still is market for this provided you do it right. Just like their are still small specialist movie houses despite massive movie plexes and DVD/VHS. Just like their are still small specialist bookshops despite massive volume super bookstores.

    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.

  • 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
  • www.actsofgord.com

    Keeper of the Retail Faith!

  • The biggest question you should try to answer for your investors is why people will patronize your business instead of rolling their own LAN. Just by looking at Best Buy's web site -- where your target demographic might look -- it's possible to get an 8-port switch for $70 USD. PCI network cards and Cat5 cables will cost each user $10-$35, depending on sales and rebates. Total price is $150-250 (BTW, a 16-port switch will double the costs). How much will you be charging for gaming time?

    In terms of things you can do to make money:
    * Sell ethernet cards (PCI, PCMCIA, and USB) for a decent markup. If someone needs a card they're less likele to waste game time by going elsewhere. Also, 10/100 wired ethernet cards are pretty stable technologically; you don't have to worry about them being seriously obsolete for *shrug* 5 years.
    * Roll your own Cat5 cable and sell it. Reasons listed above.
    * Sell sodas (and bottled water) for a reasonable price. If you can get them wholesale, sell them for less than most stores. If you gouge, people will just bring their own.
    * Were you thinking about including a dedicated server? They don't need as much horsepower as the clients, so older PCs would work decently. Pick up a few discount (or used) PCs and rent them for an extra few dollars.

    Also, read up on the FAQs about setting up LAN parties. A lot of the same ideas will be applicable. Off the top of my head:
    * Everyone is responsible for their own computer -- both the hardware, and the contents.
    * No one gets in without paying. Parents may pay a reduced "chaperone" fee, but you don't want the gaming area to be freely accessible to anyone.
  • Something not yet mentioned... watch the smell. Seriously.

    Anyone in the Seattle area ever go down to the (now-defunct) Wizards of the Coast game center in the U District? Remember the smell? There were about 30 computers (pumping out a fair bit of heat), and a number of unwashed geeks either on the computers or playing MtG. It got ugly.

  • MAKE IT AFFORDABLE (Score:2, Insightful)

    by corrosiv ( 116029 )

    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 just wrote a whole journal entry on this. My idea is a little bit $$$, but it's good.
    http://slashdot.org/~TibbonZero/journal/11517 [slashdot.org]
    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.
  • Ping Time [ping-time.com] 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.
  • Hmm...the key to this question is that the person posting it spells center....centre. Most probably it's in Jolly old England where broadband is probably as scarce as healthy food.
  • 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.

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