In our efforts to promote the sport of team gaming and the game center industry, Cybercade Games recently sat down with a game center owner to find out what it takes to start and run a local gaming business. While we know it requires more research and business skills than we could cover in one article, we thought we might get some “inside” tips that would help budding cyber-entrepreneurs. We also wanted to get his thoughts on the future of team gaming in game centers. Since he is very busy in his current work, we agreed to keep his name confidential. The article is broken into topics with his comments on each.
For those interested, we do provide Cybercade® Game Center Consulting Services and we would be happy to have one of our experienced game center consultants help you get your center started, or at least review your plans. Simply call us at 1-888-TEAMNET or email consulting@cybercade.com and we will be happy to help. Now on with the article...
Location: Any business expecting walk-up traffic should choose a visible location, and should be inviting. Since the demographic for a true gaming center is game players, the outside should present a modern / entertainment appearance, even if it’s just good signage.
Staffing and Attracting Novice Game Players: Players who are new to multiplayer games will not want to play if the attendant is cranky and unhelpful. Some of my best customers walked in off the street and were new to gaming.
Internet Connection: Unless a center plans on hosting servers for online players (and charging for this service), it’s not necessary to spend thousands on a T1 connection. I have played with up to 30 people over a DSL or Cable connection (where available). “Ping” time (and game lag) is sometimes the luck of the draw, or how a connection is routed over the Internet. A friend of mine hosts a game server on a T1 connection he has through his work. We had ping times of 100-200ms, but when he moved down the street the ping went down to 30-60ms over the same connection with the same server hardware. At my game center we used DSL with 768k upload and download (upgradeable to 768 up / 1mb down for a reasonable fee). This was enough bandwidth to support team gaming and more than enough for the occasional daytime Internet users.
Computer Systems: Build your own PCs! It’s easier to repair something you put together yourself. Do you really want to ship one of your game systems off for repairs once a month when you could pop in a new part in 5 minutes and have it up and running and making you money? Also, short of spending the ridiculous prices charged by the "boutique" computer companies, there really aren't any decent gaming machines available for a reasonable price. Remember, a GEForce4 MX is not even close to a GeForce 4TI, so get informed on your hardware. As far as optional hardware, consider buying just a few of the extra controllers initially to see if there is interest. You can always buy more but you will never recoup money spent on hardware you don’t use. Do you need the latest gaming hardware? By staying one step behind the technology you can save yourself lots of money and still keep your machines running at optimum levels for gaming. Every time a slightly faster component comes out, the price of the older one drops like a ton of bricks. Use this to your advantage. Remember, no matter what you pay for that video card, in six months there will be a new one out that is better and faster, etc. The software rarely keeps up with the hardware so why waste your money on features you won’t even see the effects of?
Game Software: Get a few of the popular games to start with. FPS and RTS games are by far the most popular. Just because you’re a huge fan of Deer Hunter doesn’t mean your customers will pay to play it. It’s important to remember that you want to offer what your customers want and not what you prefer. Also, games like Quake 3 and Half-Life have a huge MOD community and offer Modified versions of games that are a totally new experience for gamers, and won't cost you a dime to install. To name a few: Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Urban Terror, Desert Combat and Natural Selection. After the initial price of five solid games, you can download dozens of mods and go from a list of five games to 20. Racing games and complex simulations may not be a good idea. It’s nice to offer them but if they don't get usage they won’t make money.
Serving Food: Be aware that if you
plan on offering food (prepared on the presmises) you will
Game Centers and Parental Approval: The parents of my customers loved that I had a place for them to play together and stay out of trouble. I think policies should be posted in the center, and parental consent forms should be signed for any underage players who wish to play games later on Fridays and weekends. As for concerns about access to objectionable material online, a good game center operator keeps an eye on what his users are doing.
Team Gaming: Team gaming is still in its infancy and everyone from the Local LAN Party Host to the CPL are scrambling to be the "official" gaming organization. The interest is definitely there but as of yet I still don't see any organization that has the gamers interests and the love of gaming in mind. In my opinion this is what it will take to unify gamers and bring team gaming to the next level. Just offering big money prizes isn't going to cut it. You can’t intimidate new gamers if you want team gaming to grow. Where would professional sports be without youth sports? The other hurdle that needs to be overcome is the "gamer = computer nerd" stereotype. Granted, some of the "professional" gamers don't do much to help this (no offense), but it needs to be made clear that you don't have to be a software engineer to love computer gaming. Every PS2 and X-Box owner would drool to see the graphics on a high-end gaming PC so why not go after them as well as the serious gamers?
Future of Game Centers: Do I think game centers will compete with the latest technology and LAN parties? Game centers should represent the latest technology, and the nice part is customers don't have to drag their own PCs to a center like they do at LAN parties. Market your center as a place to practice up for the LAN events. Will game centers eventually be on every corner? Only time will tell.
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