Tournament place thing. Just read it.

[Boxob.]

Idea: I want to open a video game tournament venue that focuses on having top quality everything, with frequent (multiple, every weekend) self hosted tournaments of any games with a competitive community behind it. It'd also (hopefully) be beast place to go to for casual gamers, with some sort of membership fee.

Example in question:. The venue comfortably fits 80-100 people. Air conditioning, perfect setups, leather couches/chairs. intricate but familiar atmosphere. (perhaps murals of multiple video game worlds blended throughout the walls/room), food and drinks, high end computers, hot chicks standing around and ****. In other words, the best of the best of what you could think of. This would be what every weekend would consist of. 3 to 4 different tournaments running every day of the weekend.

Would you, as a casual/competitive gamer with knowledge of a place like this existing, visit it? Give it a shot? If it held up to be everything it promised, would you pay a membership fee to make moderately frequent or even habitual visits?

What would you as a customer (non-member) expect if you had to pay 10 bucks to get in, but are permitted to play any games we have for 5 hours. (As in, other accommodations that'd keep you coming back/make a 10 dollar fee justifiable).


Because I may be in a position to one day open a place just like this. I'm still in the very early planning stages of my idea here, and I'm trying to get as much feedback the the smash community as possible because I know how experienced everyone is as tourney goers. Everyone knows what they like and what the don't like. What they'd prefer. It should be noted that as of right now, financially, I should have no problem pulling something like this off IF I have a steady enough stream of customers.

I personally would love to see a place like this near me. I know other people would too, I can't be the only one who'd pay 50 bucks a year for some kick *** place to go to whenever I want to play whatever games are out.

Give your ideas and stuff I guess. I more than anything just wanted to present the idea for some feedback or if anyone has any knowledge of similar situations that worked out/failed and stuff. Yeah.

 

[The Irish Mafia]

Sounds like Game Universe.

 

[Prawn]

The membership idea is really interesting. Like a country club for gamers. I'd pay 100-200 bucks a year if I were allowed to play whatever games whenever it was open etc etc. Especially if that included arcade cabinet games.

 

[Ryan-K]

you know i would be interested if i still live there except unlike alot of people who will be posting in here i have some context of where you live and the area. and based off your insistence that you are able to do so (which you definately do you loaded *****) i think it could suceed but i think you would have to be a little more west of where u are now...cuz ur in the boonies and altho suffolk has alot of gamers and **** there arent alot of nice places around...game table is the best oen and thats in nassau...that said since castle golf is dead u have a bigger shot at this than u think...altho location is pretty important...is there any like food places or anything like that around? i remember one of the best parts of parallax which is like 3 miles down the road from GT was that it had 711 across the street and a friendlyes next door...

 

[Boxob.]

A country club for gamers is exactly what I'm talking about. lol. I'd work to keep the stock of games up to date, especially for popular competitive games. Arcade games, I'm sure I could make it work.

Ryan: Location is indeed key. It's still up in the air if I'll be staying on LI for the rest of my life, or if I'll move somewhere. But uh, if I go anywhere, it has to be west lol. Everything's west of LI. I know what you're saying though.

 

[2001]

There's a place in Tampa called GameWorks where there's a giant arcade with indycar races, DDR tournies, 2 bars, a restaurant, and an upstairs private area that you can rent for parties, or tournament of other games.

It's awsome.

This is their floor plan if you're having trouble imagining it.
http://www.gameworks.com/templates/beez/pdfs/floorPlans/FloorPlan_TAMPA.pdf

 

[LAX_]

well the only games i like are melee and MW2.
but i guess a country club for gamers sounds pretty cool lol.

 

[altairian]

It's a good idea and is actually pretty similar to something I was thinking about a while back.

Membership fees are always a tricky subject. If you have one it has to be relatively cheap because your target audience is largely students. It's even trickier because a massive chunk of your target audience is in high school (or even younger). You'd probably have to make it so the membership fee give extra perks, like unlimited access or something, rather than a straight up "you must pay to enter". Building off of the model most LAN centers use is probably a good start.

If you can make something like that happen, I'd definitely shake your hand. It's a pretty tough business to make work in the long term, but I hope you find a way =)

 

[Melomaniacal]

Back when I was a casual gamer, I would not have joined such a thing.

But as a more hardcore, competitive gamer now, I would definitely want to be a member of such a place. Really sounds amazing, and I wish there were more places like this around.

 

[Paladin77]

great idea. I dont know how you're gonna pull it off, but go for it.
I'd recomend to have a mini anime store connected to your chill-out game place. You could make much profit from that

 

[nevershootme]

simple rules

how much are u willing to invest

where is your location of business

how are u going to upkeep to venue (electric bills, maintainence)

 

[HawaiianJigglyPuff]

If you could invest in one of those solar electric systems that'd be the way to go. You front 20,000 dollars or whatever, and then never have to pay for electricity ever again.

You would definitely need Halo, CoD, TF2, Left for Dead because a lot of people would come to play. Which means you'd need a lot of TVs (and computers? don't know how you want to run it).

You basically just need the most popular games that everyone is hooked on. But are you going to include single-player games and have one person take up an entire system and TV?

 

[Wuss]

I'm not sure that I would join a place like the one you're talking about, but I would definitely consider going every once in a while. That said, I can think of quite a few people that probably would pay a membership fee.

I've seen places like this, and they always struggle, but I wish you the best of luck if you go through with it. A country club for video games sounds like the coolest thing ever.

 

[Prawn]

Defiantly sell some stuff as well, whether it just be cool merch, games, etc etc.

 

[Boxob.]

Solar panels are cool stuff. I'd have to research it more because I'm pretty unfamiliar with it. I'm not entirely worried about electricity and general upkeeping of the store, as I've got some plans for that.

And yeah, the goal would be to have all the major games that everyone likes at one place. I'd also like to look into having the games preloaded on to the systems, so you could simply select from a variety of games and not be left stuck with whatever game is in the system. Or perhaps a disk changing system, like a cd player would. I know there's way's to do both cause I've seen it, I just don't know much about going about getting that done.

 

[messiahfreak2000]

We got something similar to this here in my town. All it is is a bunch of TVs, comfy chairs, and games (mostly 360) that you go in and pay to play per hour. As a matter of fact we got two places recently. Pretty sweet deal and if you can get a prime location like near a mall or theater, BINGO! Parents can offload their kids for a few hours and you can make cash.

If no one near by you has done, do it. Just expect imitators to rise up pretty quick.