Building a Gaming Center.

[Ulfwald]

ttt

 

[yata]

Physical setting
Maybe you can have one area for hardcore gaming, and another for first-timers and newbies. Hardcore ones should be in cubicles, and the other one open. Charge more for the cubicle stations? More privacy and no one poking their heads in.

It's like the arcade places, some people would rather watch. Some would have a handful of coins to play as long as he can.

Food and drinks should be restricted to the food court or lounge only, I suggest.

Are you going to make the place dark, like the arcades, or simply office lights. I think office lights will do. Everyone can see all the player's expressions and all.

Gaming experience
Are you going to have one kind of game going on at once? It'll be much cooler instead of different ones scattered. Maybe put the most popular games on during prime time: afternoon and nights on the weekends.

I think stats are boring. You know what you can do also, get DualHead G400's or GeForce with TV/out on the comps. Connect all the video output to where you are and have TV to show the what's going on in the game. Wait, maybe not on all the comps, maybe on a couple of them. That'll get the visitors in your gaming center attention.

To keep the people from coming, you can foster a community. Make teams, and in them, ranks. Base on skill level of the players, even them to teams. They can recruit, and so on.

Just some of the things that would keep people coming back.

Seems like you've got the financial thing planned out. Have fun man!

 

[Untamo]

Good stuff keep it coming!

 

[ViRGE]

1. "Theme" nights- Play certain games certain nights, so that the Quakers can come Monday knowing other Quakers will be there, Tuesdays for Tribes, ect. The "theme" referees would also go well.
1a. Don't set a permanent game for Friday night, all of saturday, or daylight sunday. Those are "free" times for many people, and having a rotating game list(quake sat, Diablo sun, tribes next sat, ect) can help.
2. Some sort of voice communication system(for team games such as tribes) BYOM(bring your own mic) would be a good idea for this.
3. Food- Make sure you have lots of soda(especially Dr. Pepper), chips, ect. Junk food and games are synominous in my head.
4. Location- While not much can be done about this, try to be near neighborhoods. Younger gamers(aka those of us without cars) can't easily make it if it's downtown(though it might not be as much of a problem in portland, since TriMet runs til midnight, or so I belive).
5. Make sure you have a good mouse, most people won't settle for anything less than an Intelimouse(the ability to bring a mouse would be nice too, but probably not feesable).
6. Make eyeScreem(or other brand of steroscopic glasses) availible for renting. Since people will only be playing for an hour or 2, they probably won't get any headaches, and will be glad to use them.
7. Make the lobby fun. Keep some pinball and older video games in there(for the change in pace). Also, have some good techno music going, so that people not playing can still have some fun.
8. Make the seats large and comfortable. Not all of us geeks are small, so make sure you don't plan on seating a "small" guy.
9. Keep strict rules about how people act. If you have problems with people getting out of hand, it'll destroy the gaming environment, and drive away customers.
10. Partitions are a good idea, but not nesscary unless it's a RTS game, or something of the sort(where stealth and/or secrative planning matter).
11. Make a good website. Like NexGen, if you have a setup with a webcam, and a list of who's currently playing, you may be able to get people to come on down if they see that their frind is playing.
12. Mods- Make sure you have a good selction of mods availible for games. Nothing like a good round of Jailbreak will get people going.
13. Keep the building cool. Many people will have a hard time gaming if they're too warm.
14. Go for good machines, but not the best. A GF1/Athlon 700 is a perfectly good gaming machine in my book, and the savings can be passed on to the consumer.
15. Prices- Offer varible prices depending on the game. Some game types take longer to get a good game out of, and a lower price will help attact the players of those games. On the flip side, most people are content with an hour or so of Quake, so charge them a bit more. Also, offer "specials" on brand new games. If people don't have the game yet, they're prone to stay and play for a long time.
16. Nerf anyone?

 

[denali]

I don't play computer games but I like to play poker. One thing that card rooms will do is have shill or house players for those times when no game would be possible otherwise. You might consider something like this for slow times.

 

[Adul]

I dont think dual heads would work, but maybe those boxes that share a video signal amoung multiple monitors would be a better way to go about it. You can just change who playing while other watch on a main screen or a bank of monitors.

Virge has lots of good suggestions has well. Some variety is always good to keep people interested. Good food and drinks helps has well. M

Try throwing in some novelty items like tip proof insulated mugs or something of that nature. Caps and t-shirts might be something else you wanna have has well.

 

[Untamo]

From the depths.! Anyone car to offer anymore input? I would love to hear more good stuff, any idea's, good or bad!

 

[zedos]

Just out of curiosity, how will you prevent people from breaking stuff like mouse, keyboards, and other stuff(example:banging,broken cords,etc)? Will you have extra equipment?

 

[Mday]

i don't play games much, but i suppose being able to try new games would be a plus. being able to try not-yet-released games is a plus too. of course you have to talk to developers first.

if you want to get some extra cash going, you could always use the place to teach laymen computer stuff.

 

[thedarkwolf]

I don't know if this is feasable. It might have even been mentioned already but Ill throw it out there anyway. I work in a computer lab and we use debit card like things for printing. We have a machine up on the wall where you can buy the card and put money on it then when you want to print all you have to do is swipe it through these special keyboard at the print sever and it comes up so you can select your name, print it, and it deducts the money from your card( I assume all the money info is stored on a sever somewher). Maybe you could set something up like that except have the special keyboard on every computer and have the server keep track of there time/money left. That might be annoying though if your right in the middle of a game and A box pops up saying "your out of money" and logs you off. Maybe you could reverse it. They buy a card and in order to use the machine they have to swipe it. The sever then keeps track of how long they have been on. When they are done they log out and go up to the desk where you again swipe their card and it comes up and shows how much they owe. That might have some security problems though .


I would say put small clocks on the computers so people can keep easy track of time but you probably wouldn't want people doing that .

thought of an another one. Get small padlocks and somehow lock the keyboard, mouse, and headphone wires to the case somehow. If you don't you can beat some jerk off will run off with all your mice, unless the back of the computer will be completly blocked off somehow. The Dells here have a loop on the back that allows you to look the side of the case on(we have had people still memory and cpus before) we just use those.

 

[b0red]

1. price, location
2. any p3/athlon would be enough
3. pods for some games (racing, mech, simulators)
4. movies, music, laser tag? heh
5. every referee dressed up as lara croft?
6. anything
7. night time, weekends

sigh...when you gonna make on in LA?!?!?

 

[bigjon]

Handi-wipes or something at each rig in case the last customer was eating pizza and mousing with the same hand