View Full Version : Your General Thoughts on Lan Gaming Cafe/Shop
Wellington
14-09-2007, 21:43
First off, I know I'm new to the forums so I'd just like to say I didn't join up to advertise this, it just happens that Dymetrie decided to get me to sign up the other day and so here I am.
Secondly I know many of you are into gaming and social events so in many ways this makes you my target audiance...
So down to business then.. I am currently looking at purchasing a small Internet Cafe / Lan Gaming centre / DVD Rental store, at current the business is just about ticking over/ breaking even so I am looking to improve the business by changeing the layout of the store, increase the cafe area and get new gaming PCs, general redecoration etc etc.
The current customer base is made of young kids aged between 12 and 16 playing games and some adults. Occasionaly a couple of people buy drinks.... DVD rentals is another thing I'll cover later maybe.
What I would like to know is what would it take to get you interested enougth to come in a spend a little cash playing games or surfing the internet....
all your thoughts are welcome....
Personally, it would need to offer a better PC than my own one, a better connection and a huge choice of games.
All of which are thoroughly un-conducive to you turning profit :p
Wellington
14-09-2007, 21:50
Well we would be providing Steam, at current the connection is 2mbs this I may consider upgrading if there is high latency on servers.... As for the Machines, well the ten new gaming machines will have 8800GTX's and Core2 Q6600's with 4gig of RAM and vista.... sound high spec enougth? The intention is to pump enougth of the profit back into the machines to ensure they remain high spec....
Oh just thought I shall say thank you to you all for reading and responding in advance. Thank you!
Surfing the internet is generally about 50p an hour. Maybe offer burning capbailities as well. Laser printer at 5p a page? When I went lan gaming it was when all my mates were nearby. Go for midrange hardware but you will have to come up with some kind of interface to prevent kids coming in and screwing it up for you.
Thats something, have each machine ghosted so incase the buggers do change something, its ghosted back to a working machine. I would say to think strongly before committing to this as with the advent of MMO there is less desire for the lan cafes.
Wellington
14-09-2007, 21:59
I've got software which protects the machine, basically every time it reboots it's as if it's a fresh install with all the latest patches and games installed.
Also have software for controlling which PC's people can be looged into and what they can use.
Probably should mention the Shop is in London heading out to Essex.... quite close to where Dym lives actually......
Hmmm... they sound overspecced to be honest.
8800GTX, C2D of some kind, 2GB RAM should be fine really.
I'd guess the connection would need to be a lot quicker. I get massively annoyed with 1Mb. I can imagine 2Mb shared with everyone else in a cafe being annoying :p
2Mbit internet connection between 10 machines? I guess we're talking 2Mbit ADSL here? If so you won't have enough upstream bandwidth to let 10 clients game.
Wellington
14-09-2007, 22:26
Ah yes, should have mentioned it's not a standard connection, it's one designed for internet Cafe's has higher upstream bandwidth. I'm not too worried about the connection as a gamer myself I know how inportant it is to have decent latency. It's definatly on my list of things to look at upgradeing anyway.
Chuckles
14-09-2007, 23:38
Not much of a PC gamer these days, but I'm not sure people would go individually to somewhere like that to play online when they could do it at home for free. Perhaps gearing it towards LAN gaming for group bookings may help. I think those PC's look overspecced as well.
LeperousDust
15-09-2007, 00:32
Don't want to sound negaitve, but i can't see that being a big money earner, main gaming sessions are done in the comfort of home.
Internet Cafes work because becuase can happy just browse free wifi or use computers while relacing with a coffee but they can stop/start whenever they need. Games aren't as on/off as that type of situation.
You;d need a hardcore fan base i would suspect to keep you afloat. How about buying a server and hosting a LAN party every other week, people bring their own PC's (or rent one off you, you could have a few ready), that would be cool if advertised and setup well...
Wellington
15-09-2007, 00:52
The intention is to host regualr events and competions. At current the gaming side of things appears to used mainly by school kids playing Counterstrike and Warcraft 3...
More tommorow, too tired for the moment
LeperousDust
15-09-2007, 01:15
Well i think rather than dive into it have people bring their own rigs, they'd probably rather do that, but for people who can't afford uber rigs rent yours. Charge a small admin fee too, give prizes out too best gamer/biggest bling etc... That could work pretty well, but for now i'd invest in a decent server and LAN maybe 2-3 rentable monsters (what you speced above would do) and then invest in advertising monthly/bi-weekly on friday nights or something for the 16 year olds who can't go out and get wasted in clubs? I could actually see that working quite well!
Get a license and sell beer. Turn it into a social event where groups of lads can nip in, play a few games and have a few drinks.
Wellington
15-09-2007, 13:07
Definatly looking into getting a licence as I think we could sell loads of drink at LAN events, hopefully during the week too if we get a larger adult customer base.
goldilocks
15-09-2007, 13:57
wifi - our 'local' internet cafe didn't even know if they had wifi capabilities
the guy on the desk told me i'd just need to try it and see!!
it turns out they did, and it was £2 for 20mins, compared to 50p for 20mins using one of their machines!
a few of my friends hold lan meets, you could think about offering out your premises on a whole renal basis - for clan meets and such, as people have suggested
they always have a lot of trouble finding places for all of them to meet up, and then there's the problem of taking your own kit
if you could rent out the whole place for 24hrs, or over a weekend, i'm sure that would be popular - and people would travel to use your services
As for the Machines, well the ten new gaming machines will have 8800GTX's and Core2 Q6600's with 4gig of RAM and vista.... sound high spec enougth?
I wouldn't bother with 4G at the moment. A 32-bit operating system can only see a total of 4G of RAM including the graphics card RAM, which means it's only going to be able to use about 3G of your system RAM - stick to 2G system RAM for now. And although you could use 64-bit Vista, that's just asking for trouble :)
I live in Newcastle, so it'd take a lot of effort to get me to go to your LAN café, but in theory the problem is that it's cheaper for me to play games at home, even though the social aspect is nice. Admittedly, your target audience probably can't afford PCs as good as most people on here can, so that may work in your favour. I'd say that it's basically gonna be your pricing that'll make or break you.
Matblack
15-09-2007, 16:06
I like the idea of a drinks license that might attract me.
What would make me wary is that I have recently seen one of these fail in my home town which was a real shame :(
MB
Wellington
15-09-2007, 16:39
I wouldn't bother with 4G at the moment. A 32-bit operating system can only see a total of 4G of RAM including the graphics card RAM, which means it's only going to be able to use about 3G of your system RAM - stick to 2G system RAM for now. And although you could use 64-bit Vista, that's just asking for trouble :)
So don't use windows vista 64 then? Got to admit I'm not too upto speed with Vista at the moment. Maybe I'll stick with 2g and XP for awhile and have some Vista discs sitting by for when it's up and running good.....
So don't use windows vista 64 then? Got to admit I'm not too upto speed with Vista at the moment. Maybe I'll stick with 2g and XP for awhile and have some Vista discs sitting by for when it's up and running good.....
Main problems with Vista 64 are that:
a) A lot of hardware manufacturers are beinv lazy with getting 64-bit drivers out for it, forcing you to use 32-bit drivers.
b) There're very few games that natively support 64-bit mode, forcing 'em to run in 32-bit emulation mode.
Both of these added together basically result in lower performance than just using 32-bit Vista.
These issues will sort themselves out in time, but I think we've got quite a wait on our hands.
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