New Gaming LAN center

[BrendanMcGann]

Sales and serviceses will be the bread and butter of this project LAN gaming is a fluxuating business

[temjintorres]

Yes i know of that site, that is where i read most of the articles on the fastest running CPUs and video cards.

But i'm not sure. I was talking to my brother last night with his room mate, and we discussed on how business would work out. It would cost me $81,000 start up. We then talked about what customers i would have. I am thinking i would hit the ages of 14-22. But the problem is...how many game centers are in Georgia? or even Atlanta? there is a reason why there are none...they have no market. Gamers (nerd/hardcore) don't like to leave there rooms. And if they are a top of the line gamer, then they have all the equipment and games that i would offer. Gamers like to just eat and stay in there rooms. This is what my brother and his room mates opinions were.

Then i talked about starting my own Custom Built Gaming Rigs. My brother and his room mates are engineers. They know a hell of a lot about computers. We where on tigerdirect and my brother and his room mate helped me pick out the hardware needed to build the computer. We pretended my budget to build one is $1,000.

Buying the pieces and building it my self would cost me $882.92. This is the cost to build a top of the line gaming rig with an Intel i/5 or a AMD Phenom II.

that being said...ever heard of cyberpowerpcs?

They allow you to customize your own computer...

With the pieces i bought...to make my own. I spent $882.92. Cyberpowerpc is selling the same computer i can build for about 900 dollars...for $1,600.

My question is...Is there a market for building gaming rigs? If it cost me 900 dollars to make...i would probably sell it for like $1,200-1,300 to beat the competition at cyberpowerpc.

I dont know. My brother and his room mate say that there is no demand for gaming lan centers (cost to much...no money coming in) and that there is to much compitition on building computers. If a hardcore gamer wants a gaming rig. He would make him self. He wouldnt pay twice the amount it cost to make.

So yeah...I think for now...i am back to plan A.) An idea =[

well Ncomputing is this thing that has these nodes, or workstations that link to a central server. it saves on software costs and hardwares costs, and is used all over in business and education. problem is though from what i'm reading is that they don't have much room for graphics use. i mean like sharing games could be a problem because the virtual OS it uses only allows for like an 8 meg video card. too little for any decent game. but i'm sourcing prices for market research, and i'm using retail prices at the minute, and cutting costs as i find out what the deals these suppliers could give me are. cuz the problem with using custom PCs, is that they all need they're own software etc. which is a big cost for the business! but you can find deals. but i;m with you there subzero. i'm getting nervous about the market. cuz you're right, surely someone would be doing it if there was a market. and ensuring repeat business can be tricky. but my thinking on the matter is that if you have incredibly brilliant customer service people will pay. and here in my country people don't really have the know how to make their own PC or the money to buy one and play these games. which is where i step in! but i still plan on conducting some market research in the new year before looking for funding. just gonna get all the other numbers i can crunch now, then do my market survey.

[shadownet]

Hi, I am thinking of starting a Gaming Center with Consoles. About 30 miles away there is a guy who has one of these in a mall and it seems to be doing good, but I just don't know how to ask him without making it look like I am just getting information out of him. This would be my first business and I am still doing research to see if it would even be lucrative in my area, which is in Hendersonville, NC. Anyone have any ideas how I could go about talking to the owner? Thanks

[JeffreyNYA]

I looked into this a while back as well and just did not see a reliable way to make money. The costs are so high. When I looked into it it would cost a good 100k to open the doors. Its going to take time to get people in the door so you would need a minimum of 6 months worth of expenses. Licensing costs are huge to. If you have 20 PC's, you will probably need a good 15 to 20 games each to give enough variety. so 15 games at 49 bucks is 14700. The a lot of change for games. Plus I think there may be other licensing cost over and above that do to the nature of the business.

I thinks its very correct that gamers really have no need to get out of the house to play with all there friends. With consoles being as cheap as they are and internet speeds for the most part not an issue. I don't see many reason why they would leave the house.

I think really in order to get them out of the house and have them pay you money that they don't need to spend to play you really have to do something special. What that is I am unsure of really. My idea was to go huge. I would basically build individual little rooms and about 9 feet wide by 15 feet deep. This is big enough to have a 100" HD screen with a projector. You would add in 7.1 surround system in each room as well. The seating area would be top of the line. So comfortable that they would not want to get up. Basically it would be like playing at home on steroids. But the cost is very high for this setup. So I am not sure how it would go over.

[predatorpc]

I live in atlanta, and would be very interested in helping you out. I am currently started a computer business for my self, and just sold 12 computers to a Lan cafe in Marietta.
Let me know if i can help you at all.
Thanks,
Patrick

[Southern_Lenders]

I might have said this before, but a 24/7 365 days a year business-center might fare well. You can charge per minute, and the pc's dont need to be high end, charge for printing, extra for color prints, charge for faxing, and copies. Those darn copy machines can be expensive and a bit-h to maintain, but I'm sure over few months time, it will pay for itself. But this is not a sexy, nor exciting business.

If you wanted to do the gaming thing, an idea would be to sponsor a series of gaming "teams" that like to specialize in certain games, or types of games then have them compete among each other or other local leagues for cash prizes. This form of gameplay is hard to do online because a) you dont know who your dealing with b) admins on these game servers are a bunch of dicks and like to ban players from the server for sh-ts, and giggles , and c) its hard to organize people online who live in different time zones.

This should give people a reason to come in and play if they have the incentive of knowing that they could win a good chuck of money. The way it would work, is essentially the cash prizes that you give would be a portion of advertising dollars, that you would hopefully be able to raise to sponsor the event. Say you got 10,000 from advertisers, and you gave a 3000 cash price to 1st place, well you still got 7k left as profit. How do you think shows like wheel-of-fortune and other game shows can give away new cars, and trips to Bermuda every week? Same concept.

[predatorpc]

Not to be rude, but that is not how lan cafes work or why they are there. There are two places around Atlanta, US gaming Arena and Battle and Brew, and neither of them work that way. The point of a gaming center is to offer a place for people to play anything they want without having to fork over the big bucks to play (I.E. gaming computer, monitor, games...) and offer an environment that is fun and attractive to players. Holding tournaments and lock in are all good ideas, but thats to bring in customers. People go into a lan cafe with a friend or two, or more and all join the same game online and compete against other people. most games coming out now are popular enough and played enough that you dont need to organize an opposing team. So basically when you walk into a lan cafe, you sit down and you have 5000 worth of hardware and software in front of you at your disposal, and you only pay a small fee for hourly usage. Battle and brew has 30+ games on their pc's so users can swap back and forth between different games without paying extra where as if you were at home, you would need to buy each game. It would be risky, but has great potential. The way to make money off of a place like that though is to sell as much as you can outside of gaming, like food, computers, repairs. Hold specials every night to attract people in. And make yourself unique.

[Southern_Lenders]

Heres the thing though. It may be different where you live, but I dont think any of the kids around here would want to buy a used computer...its almost taboo. 2nd unless you're cooking the food yourself, your profit margins arnt going to be great enough to reply on food sales as a main driving force for revenue imo, and what would you be selling pizza, and candy bars mostly? It certainly wont be fine Italian cuisine. Repairs are probably your best bet, but then you have to hire someone that is highly trained, and certified, otherwize people will just call their local repair shop or geek squad. There is a Gaming lan 5 miles from me called Vulcan Gamebox Vulcan GameBox - Birmingham's Ultimate Spot for PC, XBox-360 and Wii Gaming! Birthdays, Private Events and Walk-Ins Welcome! they have a special where on friday, you pay 20.00 and play all night from 11pm to 6am.

[predatorpc]

You dont need to sell used computers. You can build and sell new ones. As far as food goes, no it wouldnt be Italian cuisine, but decent food like hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, fries, anything like that. The way to make money off of the food is to hold special events the bring people into your store for more reasons than to sit in front of a screen. Special deals are always a good idea.

[mckin]

a lot of bigger gaming companies such as Valve, offer LAN versions of steam, where you pay a monthly fee to get access to their entire library of games on all your machines, or it can be done even wise, like if you dont own a game, you can pay $xx for 20pcs to use it for a week, instead of $50 per PC. another idea is to get a few high end freeware games installed on all PCs or games like WoW that dont require you to pay to have, just the user for the accounts, and you can sell time cards for the games.

also in my LAN i play on 20-30 PCs, as well as 4-5 tvs with consoles. 32" LCD tvs arnt expensive, and consoles are pretty cheap aswell compared to the cost of a PC u can get 4 people on a console vs 1 on a pc so its definitely worth it to have a few

a LAN center is an idea ive been working on, and just looking for funding, have years of experience building PCs and have done some contract jobs for companies upgrading them, aswell as working for a local school districts tech department. and hopefully will have all my funding done by the end of the year.

[amanul1]

Hey I have been doing research on this for the last year and have come up with a pretty good business plan. I am looking to join ventures and open up at least two centers. I have all the resources except the funding, I need credit. So if your credit is good, we can talk. Its going to take about 60k to get one of these puppies up and running for the first three months. Reply back asap.

[dfveteran]

Well here is the thing. There is a lan gaming center in my town. It's totally awesome and fully funded by the government. And best of all it's free to go there and play. It's a nonprofit business, the owners applied for a government grant and got it.

This is basically a youth grant. It is there to help youth get off the streets. Just because it's nonprofit doesnt mean you dont get paid. It just means you dont make anything off people that go there.

When you apply for the grant, you write in how much you and/or your partners want to get paid for the year. The yearly salary wages get put in to the figure when you apply for the grant. The guy that owns the gaming center near my house pays himself 100k a year and his 2 partners get the same.

The trick is, to find a good grant writer with experience and you should get it.

Good luck!!!!

[dfveteran]

P.S. grants are usually only approved if the idea is good enough and the business is nonprofit that gives back to the community.

Don't believe the hype that you can get a government grant for anything.

[Momsbasement]

i too want to start a gaming center also. thing is im not sure if i need to go to college or try in highschool for this (im 15). and it seems like starting one up costs a lot. im planning on learning how to make my own computers, so that should cut some of the costs down. did you guys get a bank loan or something? would learning a coding language(c++, etc) help in anyway?

oh and also, do you have to buy a seperate copy of a game for each PC?

i know it seems like i dont really know anything, but im really having a hard time with my education right now, i feel as if there's no point to it. opeing a lan center is the only thing i want to do now, i want to know if i should be doing anything at my age to get ready for it.

thanks

[Chaseb731]

i too want to start a gaming center also. thing is im not sure if i need to go to college or try in highschool for this (im 15). and it seems like starting one up costs a lot. im planning on learning how to make my own computers, so that should cut some of the costs down. did you guys get a bank loan or something? would learning a coding language(c++, etc) help in anyway?

oh and also, do you have to buy a seperate copy of a game for each PC?

i know it seems like i dont really know anything, but im really having a hard time with my education right now, i feel as if there's no point to it. opeing a lan center is the only thing i want to do now, i want to know if i should be doing anything at my age to get ready for it.

thanks

I think you should worry less about specific ideas, and focus more on the general mechanics of business (Like building a scalable business instead of a one size that can't really grow). I'm glad to see you're motivated but it's good not to rush into anything too quickly.