Starting a LAN Gaming Centre? 82
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..."
Hi Slashdot: (Score:1, Funny)
Help me do my job please!
I have seen 'VR Arcades' recently (Score:3, Informative)
Where... (Score:1)
Try running it like a paintball shop (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Try running it like a paintball shop (Score:2)
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...
Re:Try running it like a paintball shop (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Try running it like a paintball shop (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:Cube walls and Sound (Score:2)
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.
Re:Cube walls and Sound (Score:1)
Offices and sound... (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Try running it like a paintball shop (Score:2)
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.
Possible Legal Issues? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Possible Legal Issues? (Score:2)
Re:Possible Legal Issues? (Score:2)
Re:Possible Legal Issues? (Score:1)
Re:Possible Legal Issues? (Score:2)
Holy shit. You didn't even have to click a link and read an article to get that.
-Peter
Good Luck (Score:1)
We had one in Tucson (Score:1)
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.
Re:We had one in Tucson (Score:1)
Re:We had one in Tucson (Score:1)
Sell the games. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Biggest gotcha: System mortality rate (Score:1)
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.
Re:Biggest gotcha: System mortality rate (Score:2)
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.
Re:Biggest gotcha: System mortality rate (Score:1)
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.
Re:Biggest gotcha: System mortality rate (Score:1)
Re:Biggest gotcha: System mortality rate (Score:1)
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...
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.
Re:Biggest gotcha: System mortality rate (Score:1)
Re:Biggest gotcha: System mortality rate (Score:1)
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.
Re:Biggest gotcha: System mortality rate (Score:1)
Security (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Security (Score:1)
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)
Location, location, location (Score:2)
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.
Re:Location, location, location (Score:2)
Comments on expenses, etc, still hold.
Where? (Score:1)
I can't believe that there would be no DSL or Cable nearby.
Diversify (Score:2)
regular arcade machines
dance, dance revolution for the "chicks"
internet cafe type of access
bagels and mochas for the foo-foo poo-poo types
Idea destined to fail (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds hinky (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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
Re:Sounds hinky (Score:2)
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
Support it with some extrta income... (Score:1)
Other things to include (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:There are some of these in the US (Score:2)
--Mike
LAN Parties (Score:1)
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.
Re:LAN Parties (Score:1)
Igames.org (Score:1)
Yeah I did this for awhile. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Yeah I did this for awhile. (Score:1)
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?
Re:Yeah I did this for awhile. (Score:1)
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
Re:Yeah I did this for awhile. (Score:1)
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.
Niche in the market place. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Some points and a Summary (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Don't forget to study... (Score:1)
Keeper of the Retail Faith!
Re:Don't forget to study... (Score:1)
I'm reposting it as a link since I totally agree with you (I was going to post it if no one else did).
Gord rules! (and keeps me from getting into retail)
I just wish it was being updated...
What are you going to offer? (Score:1)
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.
*sniff sniff* (Score:1)
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)
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.
Whole Journal Entry on this.... Way to make itwork (Score:2)
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.
there is one in Madison Wi (Score:2, Interesting)
Use Servers Alive (Score:2)
Sodas (Score:2)
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.
Starting a LAN Gaming Centre? (Score:1)
Re:Starting a LAN Gaming Centre? (Score:1)
Get a bean counter (Score:2)
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.