Hey guys, I live in Boston and my boss is thinking about getting into the networked gaming industry thanks to some convincing from yours truly.

What I need, primarily, is experienced help.

Secondarily, I need feedback from my vgc brethren into what kind of payment system we should have and how much could we charge.

For some background information, we are in the Boston area, and there is nothing like this within 20 miles. As far as our costs, we figured about 3000$ per month for rent, payroll (two biggest costs), a T1 line, and electricity. Also, we decided that the best time for running the business are from 7pm to 2am and possibly going on until even later, like 6am or so.

Help me with this problem so that I can make this thing a reality.

http://www.egamebreak.com/

 they have a location in my town and seem to stay busy. I actually havenot been there but a few coworkers of mine go there and they like the priceing and how it is set up. I have no experience in this, but for my pizza job the owner and I always try to check out other popular pizza places to see what they do that people like and to see if it is worth having at our resturaunt

that first link seems broken, here is their facebook page.

http://www.myspace.com/521355059

there's somethign wrong with the site, it won't load.. ill try ie8

Edit: ah ok it started working.

yea, the pictures seem broken. I put their myspace link up there now

How many pcs do they have there and how big is it?

For us, we are really thinking like, max, 18 people at any one time, or so.

We really wonder how many consoles we would need. RIght now, it's just 2 of each of this gen consoles and 6 PCs.

As far as pricing, we were thinking something like:

8$=1hr
20=3
45=10
100=35

but are considering membership systems similar to what I saw on that site.

It was itneresting to see that they carry a huge variety of older consoles and rent games too. We were wondering how lucrative those things could be.

Yea, they also sell games too i think, and they have some snack food. One good thing they do is stay open late, maybe even 24 hours.  There are a few bars around here that have older systems for people to play. Usually they have ps2's or xboxs. Your pricing seems reasonable. I believe they do by the hour, or membership. They also run specials were if you bring a friend for the first time you get a free hour. They happen to be within 2 blocks of the local highschool which might help. I am sure younger gmaers have tranportaion problems. Its in southern california too, just cause I know the east cost could be very different. We aren't a big town either, 50k population

i last response before I have to go out:

Yeah, we have like 3 schools and 2 high schools within a mile of us. The bring a friend thing also sounds really good too. We have a lot of kids in the area, and for us, if transportation became a problem, we could probably organize a livery for pickups and dropoffs. We would have snacks and caffeine too.

Thanks for your input m8!

Another possible idea is to hold tournaments about once a week on the most popular games currently out...charge a fee to enter (between $5-10) And the winner gets a free game or free time to play at your gaming store.  And you could occasionally have free tournaments (which would give a great image to your store)  

Also for a place like this advertising is a must.  One of the best (and cheapest) ways to do this is to make flyers and put them in mail boxes in the surrounding areas.  And a good thing to put on a flyer like that would first time customers will get a free hour of gaming if they sign up to your emailing list...doing something like this would bring in lots of potential customers and if they like what they see they would probably come back for more and tell all their friends about it.

You could also put advertisement on your car (or your boss's or one of the other employees car)  A basic website would also be helpful.

And have polls (once your store is up and running) about what your userbase likes for consoles and games, this way you could gage which games and consoles you should get more of.

These are just some of the off the top ideas I have....if I think of anymore i'll post em'

Oh and as for hours I would recommend winter (School) hours to be Monday-Thursday 2PM-1AM, Friday and Saturday 11AM-3AM, and Sunday 11AM-1AM

Summer hours Sunday-Thursday 11AM-3AM, Friday and Saturday open 24 hours

Did you factor in your startup costs?  even 18 PC's to run most of the games these days will set you back a bit.

As well, have you looked into what licensing games to play at an internet cafe will cost?  I have no idea what it costs for that, but I can imagine it's not that cheap