Poll: The Gaming Cafe

[hydroblitz]

i think retro and multiplayer games, such as individual super mario brothers ect. stations, then full couch street fighter/guitar hero/ect. multiplayer games for a few people. also, have tournaments from time to time where you can win free gametime. finally, expand to Colorado plz?

*edit*
you could rent rooms for parties, clan meetings, ect.
and they would be decked out with 8-bit gaming decor, a large table, two TVs and couches w/ matching systems, a mini fridge and WiFi

 

[Mozared]

Sounds like a great idea! I would love a place like that near me, might give me reason to go out more.

This man summed up my opinion to the letter. Add another vote for 'Yes' =)

 

[cptjack42]

Wait, where in NJ? Cause I live there...

Sounds like it could be good, depending on the area.

 

[soren7550]

Sounds a bit like an arcade, but w/ home console games.

 

[Fruitloops89]

If it goes well send it over to Minnesota. Also good luck with the meeting.

 

[Merteg]

I actually have something like this in my town. It has an X-Box 360 and Playstation 3. They also serve coffee and other sweets.

Good idea, though I wouldn't go to something like that.

 

[tyzzni]

how would i save my game? would i save it to the hard drive?

you would either pay to save your game on our hard drive its about 5 dollars a month to keep it as long as you want and we assure it is never lost or we compensate.

You can also bring your own memory cards or hard drives and plug them in for free.

 

[Stevedave00]

I hope you like bankruptcy, As much as i like the idea and as much as I've seen the idea implemented a million ways,They never have lasted long.

 

[Gruthar]

I think it's a good idea. A friend and I thought about opening a gaming center several years ago, but we had no way of raising that much capital and just left it at that. There are one or two places in town like that, but alas they're too far for me to go there. If they were closer to campus I might have gone there from time to time. One closed, one is still around I think.

The places I have been usually have a number of options: you can pay by the hour, you can pay for a full day (like $40 IIRC), and there's annual memberships for several hundred dollars. Some of them also diversify a bit, and use some of their extra bandwidth to rent things like dedicated game servers and Ventrilo/RW/TS servers.

The hardest thing (well, aside from survival), as has been mentioned, is getting a system for regulating time on the machines, especially consoles. Since multiple people can be on a console, I think you will always need to have someone physically there to boot people out when their time is up. Easiest thing to do would be to issue a little card to people with the amount of time alotted to them on it, then have them swipe it to gain access to computers and to get their time allotment for consoles at the console admin desk.

As far as technical things are concerned, be as power efficient as you can, and make sure you've got beefy circuit breakers and air conditioning...

 

[flare09]

I don't know... You'd get the people that don't usually play games. Meaning that you wouldn't really get committed customers.

 

[Sneaky Paladin]

I don't get why people would go there instead of staying home. Unless of course you can't get online at home. Might be a good way to socialize with gamers though

 

[Aunel]

you could of course just put some consoles on a LAN, so it would be like a LAN party, with just other people joining in, if there was a cafe where you could just pay and play LAN. as you are not really paying for the consoles but for the LAN. And then you can play more team based games, because LAN is awesome

 

[jamesworkshop]

Gaming cafes work in south korea but western ones tend to fail the existance of home consoles is what killed the arcade in the first place which is the basic idea behind the gaming cafe is the business model of an arcade its just not a good idea when people can stay at home and play for as long as they want.