Starting a Lan Center

im not sure if it would be feasable, but something to consider is a floor plan that puts the coffee shop at the front, and a lan center off to the back thats divided into three rooms: two with 4-8 systems for lan tourneys so teams can communicate with no eavesdropping (like someone mentioned previously) and then a much bigger room with something like 20-30 systems for pubbing and maybe some consoling. another aspect that would be cool for tourneys (assuming you have consoles) would be to have ubercheap computers hooked up to the tv for the sole purpose of spectating the tourney matches. im just snowballing here, but i think both of those things would be cool to have.
 
How hard would it be to get an alcohol permit?

If you could have a bar grille and coffee shop (for the hipsters) connected.... my god. All you need then is strippers!

But seriously. Booze = tons of money
I've done lots of fundraising and booze is the most consistent form of cash flow, by far.

but that will eliminate younger crowds... could always have two building though....
 
GORANKAR said:
4) How do I select area.?

In a large city near a university or in an area that sees a lot of student traffic..

7) any general words to the wise, situations to be wary of, or tips / tricks?

Pay lots of attention to concessions.. That will be where you actually make real money..
A coffee shop / sandwich bar sort of affair.. Make the place a wi-fi hot spot..
Hire a bouncer ;)
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this guys right, food and snacks are like huge, Id even go as far as to make a coffee shop in there, hire a high school kid to run it, get the wifi going, pride yourself on real good coffee - bring in extra revenue.

Location...I dont want to be a debbie downer, but I went to a university in a town with 2 in it. A lan center opened up, I loved it, soooo awesome to have - but the place went belly up, NOBODY went. This can be any number of reasons - poor marketing and stuff - but i felt like there wast enuff of a college following, because the last thing kids wanted was to have to spend money to play games. Most kids are too conerned with boozing and getting laid :p .

I think itd be good to get it rooted in an up and coming area, I know where I live if they had a Lan center id be all over it, and there isnt anything close.
 
that place i went to also let you bring your own booze but didnt sell it, and actually let u ice em up, it was awesome to bring a 6 pack n just play battlefield for hours.
 
aikjo2 said:
working with family friend / golfing buddy / entrepreneur who started his own business and is now worth 300 million to work out a business plan. I am sure it will be fine on that front.
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Any update or just talk?
 
If people are still interested in this topic I've started a website completely dedicated to providing information for would be Game Center Owners. I've personally had 2 successful game centers / lan centers and I would like to see more and more come into existence and I guess the only way for that to happen is to provide a place that's 1) Had the valuable informations and 2) Is free and doesn't cost $150 to setup an account and an additional $45 month.. Cough Cough Igames.

Forgot to leave the link to the site

How to start a Game Center
 
Don't know if anyone has suggested this or not yet, but you could look up some popular LAN Centers and ask to speak to the manager or owner for a few questions. They all were probably in the same place you were, some with more business backgrounds than others, and would probably lend a few pointers your way.

~ Undercover_Man

EDIT: :eek: Whow, I didn't notice this was a 3 year old thread. I wonder if the OP got his center opened.
 
well I dont Know if the OP ever figured out what to do to contact steam about games and stuff but just from previous browsing on there website the do have a program called Valve Cyber Cafe at https://cafe.steampowered.com/ if that helps any, and yes I know adding more to a resurrected thread. lol
 
Got the center opened, finished high school, sold the center, which I'm still living off of for another year of college.

After I sold it the center made it another 8 months and was destroyed by poor decision making and crap-tastic employees who grunted at customers instead of selling them hours.

I don't care because I did my job and got paid.
 
This is what I have to say, I have never been to a LAN center in the USA, I have in other countries because internet was scarce. I really see no point in these existing at all. That being said I run a business and have a LAN center near me. My guess is you will not want to make any money off of the LAN part. You will try to make all your money off of everything else. This is very popular in the USA think about almost everything you buy. They sell it at damn near cost then rape you for other items.

So one thing the LAN center near me does is repair computers. As people pop in you build clients and they know you fix stuff so you charge well for doing that. Second is food and drinks. Also sell things like gaming gear and computer parts. You need to try to offer people something worth paying for so have nearly every game ever made in your arsenal so people might consider you something more like a place to try out stuff. I would say you should have some things that most people cannot get their hands on like expensive accessories and one or 2 really nice computers I would rent at a higher price.

Finally you gotta push tournaments that is the only thing you can offer that people cannot get at home, cheat free local tournaments.

But honestly if it was me I wouldnt want to be in this business.

Oh and if you never ran a business before make sure you spend a ton of time there. You gotta makes sure no one is ripping you off or giving out free time, make sure things are running well. Make sure your employees are treating people well and pushing sales and profit. Quickest way to kill a business is to think you can just hire someone else to do everything.
 
Seems like this was the demise of 2 LAN centers in my area. Also the Washington DC area is not really a big LAN friendly area for some reason. Most of the popular LAN gaming centers closed up shop around 2003-2004.
 
With high speed internet all over the place, why even have LAN centers? internet is cheap and you don't have to go anywhere.
 
pissboy said:
Tournaments for cash.
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That would probably be the biggest appeal of LAN Centers. If they really capitalized on Local Tournaments with Cash prizes etc, maybe even estabilished local league play it would be totally legit. I have a crazy expensive computer and I'd probably go to a LAN center for that kind of stuff. There is a real disconnect in a lot of online play where you don't actually know the people you are playing against.
 
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