Video gamers welcome at ‘Get Wired’ Internet Cafe

By: Walker

7 Comments

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  shroud April 30, 2007 3:22 pm

  The Lantern wrote Agrawal said a lot of people will check out the cafe because of its location and originality.

  Agrawal said he is is skeptical of the cafe’s chances for long-term success.

  “There are a lot of people who are interested in gaming, but people are busy and lazy … and don’t like to pay money for what they can do at home for free,” he said.

  Originality? Internet Cafes have been around quite awhile now. I know of at least two others that used to exist in the campus area.

  I definitely echo the skepticism here though… as most did in the previous thread. The article mentions trying to focus on tournaments as a breadwinner, and that might help, because for regular Internet Cafe business / gaming, I’d imagine their target audience already has plenty of resources to accommodate, between campus labs and their own gaming equipment, or that of friends elsewhere in the dorm/house.
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  Anne April 30, 2007 3:26 pm

  I would think they would keep their cafe open much later than 11pm though. If it was more of a late-evening/wee hours type place, I could see it doing well. Perhaps they will for events. But if you just want to go game with friends, who wants to pack it up and be out by 11 because your food & drink options are gone?
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  vestanpance April 30, 2007 3:36 pm

  Anne wrote I would think they would keep their cafe open much later than 11pm though. If it was more of a late-evening/wee hours type place, I could see it doing well. Perhaps they will for events. But if you just want to go game with friends, who wants to pack it up and be out by 11 because your food & drink options are gone?

  +1

  oh and I was told by the gateway manager that this place was a chain and backed by a big investor. Guess he lied to me.
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  Walker April 30, 2007 3:44 pm

  Yeah, the one advantage I can see in gaming here is getting a group of friends together to do it so you can all be within trashtalking distance. A night at Gameworks can cost quite a bit of money, so I think this could be a decent alternative.

  But still, I’m skeptical as well. It’s not a matter of laziness for most gamers… it’s a matter of already having the equipment at home. :roll:

  I wisth this place the best of luck though. Perhaps they’ll find a niche.
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  Big_Ben May 1, 2007 5:03 pm

  I agree with everyone’s view that it probably won’t do that well. The only real cyber cafe’s that do well are the gaming cafes in the suburbs and the net cafes in airports and the like. I only know of one cyber cafe that was on campus (called Evo and was in the Higher Grounds spot) and there was also one in Clintonville near the Pearls of Wisdom place. Both of them went under.

  There are still several very successful cyber cafes around the country though. The thing that most owners fail to realize is that you have to offer gamers what they can’t get at home. With the availability of broadband computer gaming at a cafe doesn’t offer much to the gamer that they can’t get at home. If they are going to offer computer gaming they have to offer a lot of competitions and probably sponsor a CPL or WSVG team to draw players into the cafe to game there. Console gaming was a way for cafes to make a good amount of money by having leagues and allowing players to compete against a lot of random people and not just their friends. Now that the next gen consoles are out an all are offering a lot more options in terms of online play that is making it a lot harder to draw in those crowds as well.

  As Anne said above 11 is a bad time to close. I can call my friends up at 9-10 and ask them if they want to hang out and play video games at my place. However if I work late and get home and want to play video games at 3 in the morning I can’t call people up. That would be the most likely time for me to go in and see if anyone is in there to play with.

  I see very little this place is doing right to be a successful gaming cafe.

  Something that I have thought about looking into starting myself or would like to see started somewhere is a gaming cafe focused around Guitar Hero and DDR. Those are very social games and I think they would do well in a cafe environment (with a seperate room for the game to avoid the noise interfering with other players).
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  shroud May 1, 2007 9:51 pm

  A gaming cafe aimed strictly at DDR/Guitar Hero-type games sounds pretty interesting… but given the size of those machines, it’d be tough to find the happy medium between 2-4 small rooms with just a few machines like that, and something approaching the scale of Gameworks – which DID used to have Guitar Hero (still might?), and of course has had various DDR machines for a long time now.

  Honestly, given the preponderance of broadband, online play through the next-gen built-in online components, and the like, most of what USED to draw folks to a gaming/Internet cafe is gone, or going away. SOME kind of new business model needs to be found. Tournaments and competitions MIGHT work, but it’s going to take a pretty large & active scene to keep it going long-term.
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  Roland May 1, 2007 10:31 pm

  My computer is too old to play most of todays PC games. I wouldnt mind heading over there to play with friends for a few hours. Heck it might make a good little CU outing.

  Most likely I’ll never step foot in the place. These games seem to take so much time to play now, it’s hardly like sneaking in a game of Mortal Kombat between classes!