Your General Thoughts on Lan Gaming Cafe/Shop - Page 2

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!

Desmo · 15-09-2007, 11:15

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

After_8 · 15-09-2007, 16:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wellington

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by After_8

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.....

After_8 · 15-09-2007, 16:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wellington

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.

15-09-2007, 00:52	#11
Wellington Long Island Iced Tea Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Cranham, Upminster, Essex Posts: 293	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 __________________

15-09-2007, 01:15	#12
LeperousDust Bananaman Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Liverpool/Edinburgh Posts: 4,817	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! __________________

15-09-2007, 11:15	#13
Desmo The Last Airbender Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Pigmopad Posts: 11,915	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. __________________

15-09-2007, 13:07	#14
Wellington Long Island Iced Tea Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Cranham, Upminster, Essex Posts: 293	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. __________________

15-09-2007, 16:06	#17
Matblack Baby Bore Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Svalbard Posts: 9,770	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 __________________ "we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two"

15-09-2007, 13:57	#15
goldilocks Abandoned Ship Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 335	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