While a lot of people have said some things that seem like good idea's here's the problem I have.
It's a niche market and you're compartmentilizing it even further. Especially the guy who suggested you have seperate rooms and areas for this, and this and this and this. You really only have so much space.
For a theme bar to be successful, you generally would want it to be in a very desirable neighbourhood (Ie: a place with other bars or a touristy kind of district), however, to secure space like that, it's expensive. By trying to cater to every kind of type of geek I think you're basically dooming yourself to failure by securing such a large retail space you can't possibily hope to fill it on weekdays your weekend profit can't keep the weekday area afloat. You'd need a small to medium sized area and would need to focus on one type of geek-dom.
Pedro, if you're looking for a place where people can hang out, read a book, chill out, then open a coffee shop or an evening cafe. Serve gourmet coffee's, have nice lounging chairs for reading. Open a coffee shop. People will come and do that. Offer free Wi-Fi with purchase of coffee and you're gold. Even still, trying to compete with big chain coffee stores is a real gamble in this economy, you'd need to offer something else. And your gamer theme just might be the thing... but I just don't see it happening.
Thought exercise: Think of a successful bar in your neighbourhood. Think about the operating costs for it's televisions for the sporting events you condemn... they have cable subscription and whatever they pay outright for TV plus minor electrical operations (and I guess pay-per-view amounts). Now imagine trying build a gaming themed bar. You're either going to need 10-20 gaming rigs, plus software, plus subscription fee (WoW, etc), ISP charges or you're going to need 10-20 extensive gaming set-ups with consoles. Including the console, the controllers, the games, ISP charges, etc. Plus you're buying new software every month... and a lot of it... So much overhead! That's not even thinking about the power consumption! It doesn't seem like much, but try running 20 TVs and consoles for 8 hours/night a week... It'll add up. That's not even including any capital you might need to do for site renovations to facilitate that amound of power flow. Think of the outlets you'd need? And the electrical panel! How many breakers would you need!
Plus, as someone pointed out, alcohol, plus expensive gaming equipment? Yikes! So then you might think... 'Okay, well I'll charge for the useage of that stuff...' That's fine, but how much... price it too much and nobody will come. Heck, I think a large portion of people wouldn't come just because they own it at home even if you charged nothing. Then you might think, 'well we wont provide those services'. But nobody is going to go to a gaming themed bar to not play games.
A bar generates it's revenue from it's alcohol beverage sales. I think a gaming related bar is a terrible idea. Even if you get all those things and you break even with your service charges for using the equipment with your intial investment, your upkeep and maintinence and software purchases, people who are playing games are not going to be inclined to purchase very many beverages in my opinion, and there goes your profit. How do you pay yourself for your time to organize all this stuff...
So yeah... that's a big no. I don't think it's a good idea.
