Starting up a LAN party night at my shop - suggestions?

[tankman1989]

I have an area in the space I'm going to be renting that is 75 feet by 18 ft which I expect I can get about 50-100 people in there easily. I live in a county of 1/2 million and the surrounding area is pretty densely populated as well.

I'm new to gaming ans especially to LAN parties. I work in the IT field and run my own IT repair/support service which is opening into a shop where I could host these parties.

My question is, how do I make it worthwhile to throw these events? I am going to have to charge for admission and if people need to rent a machine to play, then that is obviously extra. I also will have vending machines for power/energy drinks and probably some other snacks and food bar going. Is it bad to say "you can't bring food or drink into the establishment" and then sell it like at the movies?

So, can anyone here give me some pointers on what to do, where to start and what not? I want people to have fun while getting people involved/aware of my business.

Is there any way that I could host more than one game in an area that size? Maybe 2/3?

Also how early/late do these run?

 

[Grimmy311]

Careful on what you charge for concessions, a lot of gamers have their own personal preferences for drinks/snacks/food. When I hosted LAN parties on the signup we would give a option to get a Pizza delivered to that person, you have a small upcharge for the Pizza and speak with your local Pizza places, they usually will cut you a sweet deal if you are ordering a large quanity... Stay away from the big chain pizza places, they usually won't work with you.

 

[Grimmy311]

I guess I should have expanded on your other questions, you can definetely host more than one game and I strongly recommend it, obviously if 100 people show up your not going to be able to have 100 people in one game at a time, setup your own servers, create bracketed tournaments WITH A TIME SCHEDULE!

Get sponsers, call gaming companies and speak with their marketing department, most companies will send you all kinds of grab bag stuff you can give away with cost of admission. People will pay if they get things for free...

All the LANs I used to host would easily run from 1:00PM (Saturday) to 2-4AM (Sunday).

The best advice I can give is keep it simple and ORGANIZED... you will come to learn gamers are impatient people and trying to get tournaments setup while everyone is there will only cause frustration.

 

[Gorilla]

Yeah, contact some tech companies and see if you can get any sponsors. Giving away prizes always goes over well with gamers.

Definitely don't ban outside food. What you can do is contact some local pizza places and see if you can get one to give discounts or to give you kickbacks from any orders they get from people at your event. Don't gouge your attendees. I was kind of pissed off that at PDX LAN (500+ people) they did a deal with little ceasers where we actually paid a 40% markup just to have them deliver pizzas a couple times per day.

Obviously make sure you have enough power to support all of those systems. It's never fun when a breaker trips.

Cover your ass. Make sure you have everyone sign a liability waiver before you let them in.

Is it going to be strictly local? Will you provide internet? Be aware that if they have internet they are going to use it. They went through over 2 TB at the last PDXLAN just from people downloading files from steam.

Are you going to run tournaments? Are you going to host game servers or rent game servers or even provide them at all? You have to realize that if you are serious about putting on one of these events you yourself will probably not have a ton of time to play unless you have other people helping out.

Security. Occurrences of theft are a sure way to make sure your event won't happen again. Same for violence.

In general look at what successful lans do. Take a look at the rules for PDXLAN or Quakecon.

Are you looking to do this as a business? Or just an occasional event because you have the space in your business location?