Can a Gaming Cafe be Successful? 345
droidlev asks: "For years I've been toying around with the idea of opening up a medium sized gaming cafe in the Chicago suburbs. I have already taken care of the issue on how to make money during the day, when our younger market is in school, However, the question of whether or not a place like this can be successful, still remains. I've seen plenty of undermanned and poorly planned places in the area (and on the East Coast) like this go under in six months. What is your opinion? What ideas and thoughts do you have that could help a place, like the one I'm proposing, succeed? Do you have gaming cafes in your area that are successful? What unique techniques have they implemented?"
Yes we have one. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:wwtdd (Score:2, Interesting)
If the computers could be rigged with bill accepters, it would make your job of keeping track much easier.
The pool table gives the non-gamers a place to hang too, and the gamers a place to relax between games.
Due to the target customers, it seems designed to be a disaster... kids dont make money.
This is something I've always wanted to do too, but never seemed like it had a good revenue potential...
-FBL
Cafe experiences (Score:2, Interesting)
They Can Work (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people chimed in mentioning that computers and net access are cheap. Well, that's true. I would also mention that, at a hypothetical $5.00 / hour (we're cheaper due to being in small town USA), it takes quite a while to catch up with a computer, games, maintenance, and internet access.
For people who either just browse the net or people who play games maybe five or six hours per week, it's much less trouble and cost effective to go to a place like this. I dare say that most people fall into that more casual group--especially when you consider they also divide their time with home consoles. We also have a nightly and weekly open-pass rate that keeps the place hopping when we would otherwise be slow.
There are other mitigating factors too. Maybe they don't trust their roommates. Maybe they're traveling. Maybe they really just want to avoid their parents. Maybe they skateboard in the area and just want to buy a drink someplace cool. All of these people fill in the gaps that are left by hardcore gamers just buying their own computer.
Some advice, don't go it alone. We have three people that own / work the place (only open after 5pm) and we couldn't really do it with less (and bona fide employees are expensive). Also, plan to replace your computers. If you don't you'll run out of money just when the business is taking off. Also, don't forget the three most important things to a business: location, location, and location. Finally, keep in mind that some games aren't licensed for cafe usage without special arrangements. Most notable is Valve Software (for which we have a cafe license). Also, don't pirate Windows. It's just stupid (and *will* get you shut down when the competition kindly turns you in).
Console games! (Score:2, Interesting)
Laundry (Score:5, Interesting)
You could be the exception, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
You said several of these places existed in your area, but shut down. Why didn't you go? and if they were poorly run, maybe it was because they weren't bringing in enough money to hire enough qualified help to make the business model viable.
There were a few in the Kansas City area (Score:3, Interesting)
There were also a few that failed. There were some things I noticed about what made the successfull ones successfull, and the unsuccessfull ones fail. The biggest thing was that the ones that were around for a while didn't focus just on PC games. Both of them offered (for free) space for running table top games, sold CCGs, table top books and accessories, sold PC hardware, rented time on machines to play PC games, and had a couple of TVs set up for console gaming (also for free).
They didn't focus on selling stuff as much as they focused on a place for gamers to hang out, and just happened to sell anything that one might need for gaming. Part of that was also keeping the stores fairly kid friendly. This meant keeping the older gamers from cursing loudly, as well as turning down the gore factor on games with such options. This made parents feel better about letting their kids hang out there, and the kids usually spent a good amount of money.
Maybe (Score:2, Interesting)
suggestions (Score:2, Interesting)
In 06.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the order of events as I see it.
1. Go to *every* place that has people sitting down, even for a few minutes. Coffee, bars... nightclubs.
2. Corner the head-honcho and tell her you will bring the PC's for a game night and you want a cut of the business that night. Talk to somebody that books nightclubs to figure out what the nightclub is used to paying.
3. If you get enough enthusiastic yes's then step 4.
4. Lease PC's and LCD's
5. Advertise, Advertise Advertise!
6. Run game nights.
7. Profit?
Prepay Prepay Prepay... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bargain shopping (Score:4, Interesting)
Every bar, restaurant, cinema and stadium in the world disagrees with you. People will pay for convenience.
99% of your business will depend on the price and how good the service is. A WoW addict doesn't care about trust or how much money the owner is making, they just want to play the game.
Re:depends on how you do it (Score:2, Interesting)
But there are a lot of things you could do to add compelling features that go beyond what gamers can typically provide for themselves. You just have to put yourself in the mind of a gamer.
Gamers tend to be a picky sort. Each gamer wants his/her configuration (or PC) exactly the way they like it -- having to use a public/shared machine sucks, even if it may have a bit more raw power. Gamers also tend to like "ricing up" their machines to show off to each other, since PC gaming is as much about hardware as the games. And while typically good at maintaining their own individual computers, they tend not to be the greatest at building and securing and maintaining high-performance impromptu networks. In my experience, when gamers meet up to play, there's typically hours wasted trying to get/keep a LAN running so the games can actually be played. Other concerns not typically thought through well by gamers gathering in groups include things like adequate power outlets, comfortable seating, plenty of desk space to put the PCs on, etc.
You don't want to be in the business of maintaining all your own hardware and keeping it all up-to-date. That gets expensive quick, especially with all the technically-skilled hired help you'd need to pay to keep things running.
Given all these factors, I think the best thing you could do would be to provide a space, decked out with plenty of proper furniture, plenty of power strips, super-fast secured reliable network with Internet access, places for spectators to sit and observe comfortably, and some awesome fast-response LCD DVI monitors. But make the entire affair BYOC (bring your own computer). Let the gamers pay for and maintain and bring along their own PCs. Let the "small penis == huge neon glowing overclocked PC" culture work for you rather than against you. Make your spot the place for hot-shot gamers to show off their machines. Offer a cash prize each night to the craziest case mod, etc.
Don't make the place a "you can walk up at random and play" kind of thing. Make it exclusive. Book the place out to groups. Make spectators who randomly drop by feel left out, so next time they'll book the place out with their friends. People typically don't want to just play against strangers randomly -- that wouldn't be much different than playing some random player over the Internet. Instead, focus your efforts on getting groups to rent the whole place out at once. Encourage groups to create team names, and keep a stats system with the team names, etc. Take advantage of the social and competitive aspects of gaming.
Finally, you can take a lesson from movie theaters and actually make most of your money off concessions. When gamers are in the middle of a long gaming session, but get hungry or thirsty, they don't want to have to leave the game entirely to go hunt for food. How great would it be if someone went around to each station offering them snacks and drinks? How much better would it be if those "someones" were attractive Hooters=style waitresses?
I've given you all the ideas you need... good luck.
Re:I ran one (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes we have one. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes we have one. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What kind of games? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to lose money, make a common area for all gamers in one place. Let's face it. Gamers occupy serveral differnt rungs on the food chain. Putting sports gamers and Magic gamers in the same place is like putting Preying Mantises and Spiders in a jar to see who will win. Entertaining, but utterly valueless.
The trick is to understand what you're doing. Are you trying to turn a profit? Or are you trying to do what you love? Doing what you love and turning a profit are almost always mutually exclusive. If you want to turn a profit, that's easy. Lots of marketing (in the thousands--tens of thousands if you have it); Let EVERYONE know. Parents. Grandparents. Kids who can't push buttons yet. EVERYONE. A quality location and good atmosphere (which includes design, food and service). Analyze it before you get into it with different price scenarios for profit (gas prices, electricity prices, what is your salary--do servers work off of tips plus a small wage, management is trustworthy). Plan to sell in a few years. Give away prizes. Have tournaments.
If you're doing it because you love it, why do you care if you turn a profit? Do just a little bit of leg work and you might get lucky. What you're really opening is a restaurant that happens to cater to a gaming clientelle. Give it a shot.
Re:Uh, no, they generally can't. (license mgmt) (Score:2, Interesting)
The best license management system out there, bar none, is Valve's "Steam" (http://steampowered.com/ [steampowered.com]) system. Most people are familiar with this is the basis for their internet-based software distribution model, but there is actually a special version of Steam that is available for use ("required" actually, if you're licensed) by game centers. This "cafe" version of Steam solves three problems:
(1) it does license management: you pay Valve for a certain maximum number of concurrent licenses, regardless of how many actual PCs you have, and Steam manages the licenses for you.
(2) Normal game software updates can kill your internet connection's bandwidth--World of Warcraft is the worst (but others are almost as bad): it runs a custom BitTorrent client with no bandwidth limits on every machine running the game; every time people started playing WoW in my 27-PC cafe after an update had been released, no one else in the cafe could do anything on the internet, including simple web surfing. The cafe version of Steam uses a local Steam server (which you have to provide) to fetch updates once, then disburses them to local PCs over your LAN, as needed.
(3) The cafe version of Steam lets customers save their games, automatically copying the relevent game state files onto your local Steam server. If you don't have something like this, no one can really play single-player games, since they have to start from the beginning every time they come in.
And no, Steam isn't just for games from Valve--there are lots of other publishers that are using Steam now. . . but if the game publisher doesn't have a distribution deal with Valve, Steam won't help you.
There are several other companies that are trying to do their own version of Steam specifically for game centers, but, as is often the case, these problems are actually a lot harder to solve reliably and consistently than they appear at first sight, and Valve has at least, from what I can see, a 2-year head start on everyone else trying to do this.
Could you do it yourself? A friend and I wrote all the software (http://fun-o-matic.org/ [fun-o-matic.org]) we used my game center, and we tried to tackle license management, too, but never got beyond the early development stage with that particular module--I'm convinced there is no technical reason why it can't be done. However, as a previous poster pointed out, just because YOU think you're being fair and legal doesn't mean the game publishers will see it that way, so unless you have a special licensing agreement with every publisher, you'd be running some legal risk, anyway.
Re:Yes we have one. (Score:2, Interesting)