Lan Business

[Kearnsy]

Me and some of my good friends have had an idea to start a LAN games business in the next comming years.
I'm going to do a combined business degree at Uni and 2 of my friends are doing IT. There are 2 others who are interested (and willing to provide capital) and we are just starting to get some ideas together.
Its looking really good, from the calculations Ive done so far, and it could seriously work and work well ($$$$$$$)!!!

So anyway: Im sure that there are some LAN games fans around here, so if you've got some ideas or favourate things about LAN games places, please let me know.
Thanks

[PrejudiceSucks]

Operation Flashpoint is great on a network, try that.

Stuff such as Unreal Tournament (especially 2003 and 2004, although the original is still great) and its mods are also very popular (especially Red Orchesta and Defence Alliance 2 probably will be when that comes out too).

Try getting Soldat and see how that goes down too.

As far as strategy games are concerned try C&C Generals : Zero Hour and Dawn of War.

Neverwinter Nights has a lot of fans with people who are into RPGs.




As far as other stuff goes, I'd try and have a good atmosphere with some quiet chillout music etc. and try and make some money by selling drinks + snacks too.

[Havell]

There was one of these in the centre of my city. They charged ?3 to join and then ?3 an hour. When you joined you got an account on their system and when you boguht time on the computers it stored up (so you could buy and hour and then play half and hour on one day and the other half hour the next). There was a warning when you only had 5 minutes left. All the servers were hosted on a big server behind the counter, if you wanted a server for a game set up you went and asked the owner. They served some food (mostly cans of drink, chocolate bars and sandwichs, but if you asked them they would order a pizza or chinese for you). They had about 20 PCs, at weekends they were always packed, 20*?3=60 an hour, so they must have made quite a bit of money (especially with food sales since most of the staff they had were paid in gaming hours as well as cash :D). They also sent a monthly e-mail to all their members with detail about news and events (like when they were holding an all-nighter). Oh, and there were deals you could get, like you could pay ?10 and play for the whole morning (4-5 hours). It was great, a few of my friends and I even had our birthday parties there (they did special deals for them too).
A couple of years ago it mysteriously shut down, I'm not sure what happened to it, but I don't think it went bankrupt (then again, the loan repayments must have been pretty steep after buying 20 PCs). A fancy wine bar now occupies its space.

Anyway, I hope that I get too rambling in that first paragraph, they were just all of the things that made it great, and I hope that last bit didn't dishearten you as it's a great idea and I hope you succeed and prosper :ok:

[PrejudiceSucks]

Ah... that happened in York too. Was it a café called the Internet Exchange (or something like that)?

Might well have been the same company, it was ace.

[Havell]

Originally posted by PrejudiceSucks@Nov 12 2005, 08:40 PM
Ah... that happened in York too. Was it a café called the Internet Exchange (or something like that)?

Might well have been the same company, it was ace.
Nope, this was independent, run by a guy called James. It was called Beyond Gaming. Another thing I forgot to mention, cover the walls posters, or even better, game memorabilia/promotionary stuff ,Beyond Gaming had a life sized model of a WarCraft 3 orc (it was about 8-9ft tall!).

[Kearnsy]

Good ideas!
Im sure we will sell food and drinks as well.

Enter the market with penetration pricing and keep the prices just under the competitions at all times.
We would probibly have a ranking system for members (with rewards)

Discounts for friends of members (entice new customers + encourage repeat sales.)
High score tables, with pictures and names of the winner, [member or guest] (or even an avatar or character picture if they want.)
VIP rooms for small groups.
Probably an Xbox or something like that (free of course).

Keep it comming its really helpful. :ok:

[moogle]

Like they said, Unreal Tournament is good, ummm...
Star Wars Battlefront 2
Battlefield2 (a must)
Maybe PC Halo? (I dunno the Xbox version is popular...)

I wouldn't suggest stuff like strategy games or Rpgs or FPs' like Counterstrike, basically stick to stuff thats more fast paced or else people might get bored, maybe for like the slower stuff they would need to get an organized group or something...I dunno.

[Tulac]

You should also use games like America's Army and Wolfenstein Enemy teirtorry since they're free...

Also you should have Call of Duty or 2 since it's one of the most popular multiplayer games...

My father had such a business 10 years ago, it went diwn under two years later, he just didn't have enough money to upgrade PCs and interest was lost since people slowly got their own PCs...

[Danny252]

Also let your customers know that you're happy to get new games if they would like them.
Now, if onl i lived in Australia.. :'(

[BeefontheBone]

How is counterstrike not fast-paced?? I guess if you get shot straight away and have to sit around for the rest of the round...

[Havell]

Counter-Strike was basically all anyone player at Beyond Gaming, that and a bit of Battlefield 1942. They did have high scores tables, and you could access them onlnie. The main ones (that people cared about) was the CS one, it kept records of games played, games won, kills, and deaths; that kind of thing.

[PrejudiceSucks]

Eurgh America's Army. I don't think that people would like blatant propaganda every time they went to this LAN café.

[Tulac]

Well it's pretty popular here, and hell that game is even popular in Serbia which was bombarded by NATO a few years ago...
So to come to the conclusion if you won't play this game because of propaganda it's your loss, but I think it's pretty underestimated, it's actually pretty high quality, and it's FREE...

[moogle]

Originally posted by BeefontheBone@Nov 13 2005, 11:49 AM
How is counterstrike not fast-paced?? I guess if you get shot straight away and have to sit around for the rest of the round...
Compared to other games like Halo or BF2, Counter-strike is extremely slow paced, I mean, in a game where when you die, and theres about 40 people per match, and you have to sit and watch until every single player dies, your more likely to camp, I mean, we all know thats how you play CS, thats the main objective for one of the teams on any map really, for bomb maps CTs defend, for hostage maps Ts defend. Also, with games like CS where you can't respawn right away and lots of people play it, you could get one REALLY good player who goes around killing everybody, and everbody else has to sit and wait until he wins, would kinda spoil the fun wouldn't it? ;)

[PrejudiceSucks]

40 people? Urmm more like 18 tops.

And people try to make killing good enemies a goal. I'm a bit rubbishat it, but I quite enjoy myself when, for example, I kill the best player with a knife. That's always a laugh.

BF2's quite fast paced, but it's a bit overrated + you need an absolutely über PC to play it on. If they're starting a LAN business, I'd just get average PCs rather than excellent ones, and play CS, Soldat, that kind of thing. If business starts going well, and your customers would like it, then I'd try and get a few PCs for the high-end games.

Ooh! I know what!

Ricochet! That's an excellent (and underrated) mod for Half-Life. You could have that too, on the rc_arena_tourney map.

[Playbahnosh]

We had a place like this too, called Netgate. People could buy internet or gaming time and enjoy it. Thre was a restaurant just next door, so if you were hungry you could order a pizza or whatever. We used to play CS all along. It was the all time favorite there. We gathered 7-8 people and played on lan. If there were no enough players, we joined an online game.

MY suggestions:

Counter Strike (all time FPS favorite)
UT2004 (wanna Fast PAce? here you go!)
StarCraft (all timer RTS!)

And the games others suggested. But I think this Internet-café thing is going outta style. I mean more and more people have internet connection at home, and does not willing to pay redicoulos prices to play games. But this is just my opinion. If you can manage to get this business up and running, I'd be the first to join ;)

[moogle]

40 people? Urmm more like 18 tops. No......internet servers can hold up to 40, I play at a couple that do, dunno about LAN though.