I've had it in my mind for a while about setting up a LAN gaming venue as a business.

Essentially a couple of rooms packed full of 10 ish screen xboxes, seat, speakers, headsets etc all linked by LAN so group of mates/school kids can all come in and play each other on COD/Forza/anything else while all in the same room.

I know you play against each other via the world of online gaming now but I remember the days of all being huddled around a TV playing 4 player split screen GoldenEye on the N64; and more recently dragging my console, my TV, my racing chair steering wheel & pedals to a mates house (with 3 others) all play Forza in his front room and drink some beers.

I'm thinking a monthly membership fee, or payment by the hour to play any game, plus sales of games, accesories, refreshments etc.

Maybe adult only evenings where the older generation can come in and play without getting pwn'd by kids.

Potentially with a bring along your own beer option.

Possible working business model or pie in the sky?

Only experience I had with these type of places is the one in the local town. Went out of business quite quickly.

I am an avid gamer but I would never bother going anywhere like that. Most gamers already have their own setup, plus with headsets/in game comms as good as they are these days......

Setup cost would be especially large I would think too, all the hardware required.

As chronicbint said, we also had one near me a few years ago. The guy spend £1000's on 8 top spec gaming rigs, did all the local advertising, got in vending machines etc and all that happened was that the adults stayed away and the place was inundated by kids who'd loiter from opening to closing time. Sounds like a good idea in principal - but in reality is completely different.

Sounds familar to an internet cafe that I used to frequent with some mates when I was in high school - loads of pc's on a LAN playing counter strike etc...

In theory its a great idea, but I cant see it working as a business, with so many kids having xbox's and Live in their bedrooms why would they pay to use someone elses?

The adult thing sounds like it could be viable, but would you get enough customers in to make it work?

Edited 2 July, 201214 yr by Brocko

In my mind its essentrially the anti-gym

Works in exactly the same way you pay a monthly fee to come and use the facilities but you sit on your arse lpaying games rather than working out.

As said though the most difficult biit will be convincing kids/people that coming to the place and paying to do exactly wath yuo could do at home is a good idea....

maybe some saturday outside a Game store market research is required

I was heavily involved in one of these years ago, knew the guy running the business, and played competitively for them.

Massive expense to start up...

I've been saying that this is what GAME should be doing, rather than just being a shop.

If you're thinking of doing it with PCs, it won't work, anyone who takes gaming even semi-seriously will hate using a computer that's not theirs. I'm not a pro-gamer, but have been very into it as a hobby, including fairly regular LAN party attendance in the past, and I simply cannot sit down at someone elses setup and play successfully or enjoyably, there's always something about it that frustrates me. I'll also admit to being a nerd and having a touch of OCD about my computer setups, mind, but I don't think I'm unusual in that in these circles.

If you're thinking of doing it with consoles, it won't work, anyone who's into gaming will have their own setup at home anyway, and can already play on the Internet with a few beers in the comfort of their living room without having to make their way home afterwards. Plus there's the issue of Internet connectivity, I'm pretty sure it's almost impossible to run 2 Xbox 360 consoles behind a NAT connection, for example. So although your bandwidth may be fine, you'd have to be looking into a business-class ISP so that all your Xboxes have their own Internet-facing IP address, as there's no concept of LAN play, each one will have to be able to contact Xbox Live. I assume the PS3 setup is the same in operation.

Plus, what would you do about Live memberships? Just let people sign in on the consoles with their own account? So they have to pay for the experience twice; once for their own Xbox Live membership and then your fee? All comes back to the argument that if you have to pay anyway then why not just do it at home, at least for me. Or maybe you'd have a set of shop accounts, all topped up with Xbox Live so that casual players can just drop in? But then what happens when people want to use their own stuff, or what happens if two total novices come in for their first game of Forza, one of them gets an account with no Forza data, one gets an account with all the cars unlocked and a perfect setup that someone's put in for each car? There's no way of resetting the accounts to default, that I know of, so it's hard to make it a level playing field which would remove the fun for casual gamers.

I'm a member on an online gaming forum, and I know one guy on there who's wanted to do this for at least 7 years. He just can't for the life of him work out how he can make it work and be profitable, so he's currently waiting for his big lottery win so that he can open it and not care whether it makes anything.

Lots of good thoughts here.

I too am struggling to get my head around how the hell you make it a viable buiness rather than the plaything of a lottery winning gamer!

In my mind its switched to become an extended demo location.

how many games have you not bought because there was no demo on LIVE or in the magazines and non of your mates have it?

Imagine a place you could go, pay a fiver, then sit and play any game you want for an hour.

If you like it, buy it or pay for more time to continue playing

If you don't like it you've spent a fiver rather than £40

I'm also thinking a large space and projector onto a big wall for life size Kinect-ing - and potentially an area for gutiar hero/rockband althoug hthat is one that people probably do any home anyway cos you only need one console one copy of the game and all the instrument.

Gamertag can now be put on a USB stick and you can sign in on any machine - i guess you'd need to plan ahead and put your save game files on as well if you were coming in for a Forza/COD tournament so trhat you ahve weapon/car set up files.

If you're a proper gamer who wants to play to that level you take the proper measures

I like the rockband/guitar hero idea.

I once ended up in a karioki bar that had a room with a wii rockband setup, it seemed to attract quite a few people - although I'm not sure these would quite be the usual clientele for a solely gaming venue.

If you were going to do it, I'd imagine now would be a fairly good time, what with town centres having lots of empty units on the high street, rent could be quite cheap as landlords would just want someone in the building!

Gamertag can now be put on a USB stick and you can sign in on any machine - i guess you'd need to plan ahead and put your save game files on as well if you were coming in for a Forza/COD tournament so trhat you ahve weapon/car set up files.

If you're a proper gamer who wants to play to that level you take the proper measures

Ahh, I see, I will admit I haven't had an Xbox in several years, this never used to be possible. You could sign in on another machine and get your achievements/gamerscore, but saved games (and I assume unlocks/DLC) were always local to your console.

I've thought about this kind of thing over the years, but I've never thought the expense of it would be viable. I think you'd need to set it up with a professional image to set it above nerd/arcade status. Sort of like a good go-kart track markets itself. No only to passing trade/kids who can drop in for a session, but encourage group bookings for work party days out or stag do's.

High spec PC's, each with 3 monitors, housed in ****pits with wheels and pedals. A good racing game like Live for speed (or whatever is current and realistic!). A pre race brief, and control by an admin to issue flags for bad driving.

That's pretty much the only way I can think of getting it going. Like a go karting venture but with the promise to drive exotic high speed cars in a hyper real environment. It would have to be on cutting edge PC's to set the graphical quality above what a casual gamer gets out of a console at home, but you're always going to be paying out to keep the edge. You'd need ATI or Nvidia to sponsor you!

All said and done you're fighting the exact same pressures that put arcades out of business. The arcade used to be the place to hang out, but then home consoles caught up with the power of arcade machines. They then went off on a tangent to keep people in the arcade of creating wildly custom machines with guns, ****pits, jetski's etc which cost the arcade owner a fortune to buy, and pushed the price per game up. In the end, we all went home and played better games, cheaper.

I miss the arcades (showing my age!), and I'd pay a visit to a place like yours to set it up, but it would be out of nostalgia, I don't really see it having a great future. But I'd love for you to prove me wrong.

I'm off to play some Robotron2084.

It'd be console based rather than pc based as that gets extrememly messy.

I've beenfiring out emails left right and centre to suppliers of kit (head sets, racing set ups, etc) to see if there is some kind of sponsorship scheme they'll supply but who knows.

It's all fed from a personal thing really. I think with the right set up it'd work...maybe...ish

Saw something on the way home just now to throw into this mix:

http://www.mobile-techzone.co.uk/TechZoneTruck/home.html

.....portability! Looked like a motor home as it went past.

Saw something on the way home just now to throw into this mix:

http://www.mobile-te...Truck/home.html

.....portability! Looked like a motor home as it went past.

They've had that at the Rodmersham fair for the last three years, only place I've seen it and never more than a couple of pairs of trainers outside it.