• Thinking of starting gaming cafe buisness
    182 replies, posted
I love my local gaming cafe, it is awesome for testing out games that you want to buy, and it only costs $5 an hour too... Also Bawls, they sell Bawls. [b]Edit:[/b] They actually sucked me in by giving me free hours for winning a tournament at a LAN party, I wound up staying for double the time I won (20 hours) I loved it because you got to hang out with friends and play games you wanted to try out.
Bawls is a MUST, and will be available right out the gate.
Birmingham's Omega Sektor was great. We only have global gaming now. :(
If I can hook the high schoolers in playing COD:WAW or what ever else is super popular at the time then I could fill the place easily. Oh god now i sound like a drug dealer.
I have one of these places by my house, oh the memories I have of there. It was the greatest thing, even though they charged $5 an hour for computers. They had a lot of business at the start, but by now they don't. Older kids used to go there, then one day we were just too old :( It makes me sad :( They had the steam client, it was pretty awesome.
If you go ahead with it, try and offer some sort of special discount if someone rents the cafe for a lan party, that way a group of say 10-15 friends might be tempted to all pitch in and rent all the pc's for the day for clan matches/raids and such.
Naturally, Discounts for reserved parties are a good idea and will do my best to include it.
We had one in my small little town.. They closed down, probably since their wasn't enough business.. Whenever I went by it, it was always fairly empty :( Sometimes I'd see up to 5 people max in there. I just don't think this is a very profitable business in America. I mean some people probably do own successful ones, but its kind of risky. If you really want to do it, I say go for it. But beware theirs a chance that you won't even be making enough to pay for rent.
Depends on how you run it. I had a local one for a long ass time that charged $5 for one hour of play, they had PCs, 360s, Wiis, PS3s, Billiards, Card games, etc. But it changed management and the price went up to $10 for an hour and at that point it wasn't worth it anymore. It was a pretty cool plac,e the guy didn't make much money but after paying off all the consoles and PCs it didn't take much to run a month.
Make sure you have a section for people who want to pub with portables.
Well it would probably go something like this- a lounge in the front area, with chairs and tables(maybe some been bag chairs and a tv with a wii), the counter would be on the left side, the pc's behind the lounge area and to the left of the counter; then towards the back have the two 360's with projectors. Then a seperate room for the table top games. It might not be the best design but I'm no interior designer.
don't charge by the hour, that sucks no matter how low the price is. charge them a daily/weekly/monthy fee.
That might be kinda hard to pull off.
About the suing thing, you can probably talk to a lawyer and get some kind of contract a parent signs so you can give an Everything account to someone below 17 with the parent's consent.
I believe you underestimate how big of jackasses a place with video games will attract. I mean, do you go to gamestop to shoot the fucking breeze? I only go to gamestop to feel my soul wilting, what with everyone involved being huge fuckfaces. They can't keep their machines in working order, and it pisses you off that some idiot is hogging the controller, and calls everyone else who wants to play "noobs." I mean, this would ideally be a place where people go to interact with one another. Such places are hard to operate, especially if you are cynical like me.
[QUOTE=Slacker101;17227022]I was thinking of starting a internet~gaming cafe in my area. There is no other ones around my area; I was thinking if I started with around 10 computers and maybe a 360 and PS3, each with there own HD projectors, then using steams cafe gaming system and down loading the clients for WoW and other popular MMO's. Then offer free WiFi to bring in customers, host local tournaments with prizes to bring in customers. I would only charge around $10 a day for the 360 and PS3, then with $5 intial and $2 an hour for a pc. I don't know if they would be hand built or bought high-end computers. So would this work, any suggestions? Also I'll take name suggesstions. I will have snacks and drinks for sale. Maybe burgers and other stuff too if I can. Will include reward point system to reward returning customers and offer advertising space for local electronic stores to help pay for monthly dues.[/QUOTE] That's a good idea, I know two guys who have a sucessful business doing that. Heh, I went into an internet cafe once and there was an oriental woman sitting in there. She said "What? Whatchu want, huh?" so I left and did not give her my patronage, since first of all I don't want to deal with a woman who can barely speak English and second, I thought she was kind of rude.
Serve coffee that costs 5 dollars, and then have little desks where people can put laptops if they have them. Oh wait....
I don't know if it's been mentioned here already but many games must have a pub type license in order for you to use them in that fashion.
[QUOTE=ManningQB18;17233642]Do it I would work for you. Maybe charge by the hour, computers would be free, just with a startup fee. Get public opinion, do a survey. Maybe coupons and such. Huge amounts of sponsers to give it a good feel to it. Don't make it look like a basement, make it something modern, not the basement gamer atmosphere. Have a registering thing so people can get discounts and such.[/QUOTE] Free computers if he wants to go out of business in the first month.
Get some seriously comfortable chairs(not crappy cheap ones) and keep the place clean.
[QUOTE=wildwill;17241317]I don't know if it's been mentioned here already but many games must have a pub type license in order for you to use them in that fashion.[/QUOTE] Steam offers this, do they not?
Open one near a school
Think through your finances. A good PC & Monitor will set you back about $700, so 10 would be around $700, So about $7500 with the consoles too. Add on to that the cost of the building, projector, tax etc, and you are looking at a LOT of costs. $2 an hour will certainly not make you that money back quickly.
The one in my area went bust because they where to cheap, you need to be $4-5 min to get going. Do lan nights at like $50 a person that sort of stuff, and likes of snacks and drinks.
I'd take serious time planning this. I have the same idea and I already have a book's worth of stuff written down to try to make it work. This ranged from simple stuff like computer configurations to store layout to food and drinks to personal management to where money is going to go the first year. To try to get stuff rolling take serious planning. Facepunc ain't exactly the place to plan a business. We can give you ideas, but if you're serious about it I would take some small business courses to really understand how running a small business works. It's what I'm doing (actually, I'm taking a full on business degree) and it's totally worth it. [editline]03:42AM[/editline] [QUOTE=Slacker101;17231638]Smoking will have to be done out back along with the pipe, and if they get caught I'm not taking the blame.[/QUOTE] See, problem is you WILL take the blame because it's on your business property and you are in control of what happens on there. Also: don'y overextend yourself. You can always expand little by little after you have your base down.
[QUOTE=Slacker101;17236600]go away and stop ruining the enthusiasm. Also im almost 18 and could totally do this. Tho I do plan on going to college first I just wanted to make sure I recorded all of this and made sure I knew what I'm going to get into. I realize it may fail but I'll still have the pride to say that I at least tried and followed my dream! -ninja'd-:ninja:[/QUOTE] "Well I'm 20 grand in debt, bank's gonna reposess my house but hey I followed my dream"
Well when you put it like that. [url]http://www.stuffaboutgames.com[/url] <- Sweet, people who help start up this kind of buisnesses.
it's going to cost a lot for 10 computers and all the games
Thats a given but I'll do my best. Hold super Bowl parties, battle of the bands where people get in groups to play rockband against each other, random tournaments, I'm hoping these will bring in repeating customers along with the points system.
You should set up a floor plan so we can see how you want it
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