New LAN business venture

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » October 5th, 2005, 10:50

Okay, I've had a bit of a business brainwave, and I need the help of you 5punkers.

After some serious thought, I have decided to look at pricing up the costs of setting up a LAN party business in Bristol.

What I'm after is specs/hardware for machines that will run all the latest games at a realatively low cost.

I don't want to order the latest cutting edge technology, however I would like them all to run the latest games comfortably at 1280 x1024 on CRT monitors.

I've decided against using LCD's, as they are too easy to pinch, allthough they are a lot easier to transport around.

The location would initially be on a hire basis as close to the Motorway/Train Station as possible, so I will need to be able to move the kit around quite a bit.

Initially I would be looking at pricing up 10 machines in order to get an idea of cost, and then I would have a figure to work from.

How many servers do you think I would need if I were to host around 15 games on a LAN?

Would internet access be an absolute must at a LAN event?

Your suggestions/input would be appreciated, as we are all gamers, and if I have a view from all of you as to what you think is a reasonable price for attending a LAN event and hiring a machine, it would give me an idea of what income I would get from each event.

The really hard bit about it all is finding the venue, the rest is relatively simple (I may regret saying that)

Network equipment is not an issue, as I may have found some on the floor, allthough it's not gigabit kit, it's 10/100, however I think this would be more than adequate.

Ideas anyone?

Anhamgrimmar · Post by **Anhamgrimmar** » October 5th, 2005, 11:25

couldnt help you with your business plan, or stuff like that, but in the october issue of 'PC FORMAT' theres a spread on machines for sub £500 that would quite happily run those games. i belive you could scale back the spec, and maybee get a discount for bulk ordering, would knock that price down quite substantionally.

spec as follows:
AMD Athlon64 3000+ (£92.92)
Glacier tech CPU cooler (£9.11)
Radeon x800xl (£200.28)
512 MB ddr400 memory (£33.77)
Nforce 4 motherboard (£52.82)
Case/psu (£34.08)
Hitachi 80GB HDD (£41.01)
Phillips DVD drive (15.22)
MS optical mouse (£7.43)
MS multimedia keyboard (£9.99)

TOTAL: (£496.62)

not including OS, games, or a little skillz pixie

HTH

edited to add system spec

mrbobbins · Post by **mrbobbins** » October 5th, 2005, 11:40

I think that OS and games prices for all machines would add to up quite a lot, I am of course assuming you aren't going to run a legitimate business from software found in the gutter!

Post by **FatherJack** » October 5th, 2005, 11:51

Woo Elephant Yeah wrote:How many servers do you think I would need if I were to host around 15 games on a LAN?

Presumably the idea is that everyone plays the same 1 or 2 games with each other, so you'd only need to run them as required. Either one server with lots of redundancy (RAID, fans, PSUs) or one server and an identical standby.

Woo Elephant Yeah wrote:Would internet access be an absolute must at a LAN event?

You would miss it if it wasn't there - how many simple things like a driver update or a quick Google search would be made frustratingly difficult without it. That said, unless you want to play with people outside the LAN, it doesn't need to be particularly fast, and I would say firewalls, NAT and access control are a must - you don't particularly want people reading their email or surfing when they should be playing.

Woo Elephant Yeah wrote:Network equipment is not an issue, as I may have found some on the floor, allthough it's not gigabit kit, it's 10/100, however I think this would be more than adequate.

Make sure you have enough spares to cover failures. Switches always fail at the least convenient moment possible. They are switches, aren't they? Not hubs, they're crap.

Woo Elephant Yeah wrote:Ideas anyone?

I guess it's impossible to think of everything in advance: do you need toilets, a kitchen, a bedroom; what if someone breaks the rules, starts doing porn or looking at drugs? Obviously going to existing ones, plus a few games cafes and nicking their ideas is recommended.

Post by **Joose** » October 5th, 2005, 12:03

This is true. Unless you can get some kind of site license for games, for 15 games +OS you are looking at software costing almost as much as your hardware.

If you have already considered this, of course, then hurrah! A great plan!

Lee · Post by **Lee** » October 5th, 2005, 12:36

Well my local LAN isnt like a bring your own pcs thing, its their pcs only. They have a logon system on all their pcs and you can buy hours to get added to you account.
I think its something like £15 for 10 hours where you can use the pc for anything you like, games, internet, emails whatever. Although i only went with a few friends when they were having a free day so I dont know the exact prices.
Their pcs are nothing special, most of the games run at 1024x768 all on low and no-one complains. Their specs are something like:

AMD athlon 2600+
512mb ram
ATI Radeon 9600xt

I doubt a setup like that would cost too much.

Edit: oh yeah, and they dont have any of their own servers, people host listen servers on the pc they're playing on and again, no one complains.

Post by **FatherJack** » October 5th, 2005, 12:44

Buy ZX Spectrums, etc off ebay for a tenner each, and run a "Retro Gaming" area.

Anhamgrimmar · Post by **Anhamgrimmar** » October 5th, 2005, 12:47

FatherJack wrote:Buy ZX Spectrums, etc off ebay for a tenner each, and run a "Retro Gaming" area.

THIS

Post by **Joose** » October 5th, 2005, 13:43

yes, this

Post by **TezzRexx** » October 5th, 2005, 14:06

mrbobbins wrote:I think that OS and games prices for all machines would add to up quite a lot, I am of course assuming you aren't going to run a legitimate business from software found in the gutter!

Use Linux if you can. And I mean IF you can.

and I believe you'd probably need two servers at the most. Could be wrong on this one, but thats what i've picked up.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 5th, 2005, 14:31

server wise, it all depends on what you're doing.

on LANs, there's a lot more data flying about, and servers will be full. (on interwebservers, you can safely assume no more than half of the servers are ever gonna be full at one time)

talk to me on xfire and i'll explain more.

Post by **Joose** » October 5th, 2005, 15:30

TezzRexx wrote: Use Linux if you can. And I mean IF you can.

And if you dont mind seriously restricting the games people will be playing on them.

Nickface · Post by **Nickface** » October 5th, 2005, 15:45

I can't speak for your area, but in my part of the world (Semi-Rural US), I've seen several attempts at LAN Party Businesses, and they've all folded within a few months.

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » October 5th, 2005, 15:52

theres a lan gaming cafe thing near where i live, i can ask them for a bit of info about what its cost them, they have it so they can run all games on high settings though, but ill ask bout how much it cost them to set up etc, so u have a rough idea

Post by **deject** » October 5th, 2005, 16:10

Nickface wrote:I can't speak for your area, but in my part of the world (Semi-Rural US), I've seen several attempts at LAN Party Businesses, and they've all folded within a few months.

I think that's more of a USA happenstance. I'm pretty sure LAN Cafés are much more popular in europe. now if WEY was in say, S. Korea, he'd be making gold with just a bunch of copies of Starcraft...

Post by **TezzRexx** » October 5th, 2005, 16:17

deject wrote:
Nickface wrote:I can't speak for your area, but in my part of the world (Semi-Rural US), I've seen several attempts at LAN Party Businesses, and they've all folded within a few months.
I think that's more of a USA happenstance. I'm pretty sure LAN Cafés are much more popular in europe. now if WEY was in say, S. Korea, he'd be making gold with just a bunch of copies of Starcraft...

This. and if he was open 24 hours...

BOOM!!!

Profit.

Just make sure no one dies... again.

cashy · Post by **cashy** » October 5th, 2005, 16:57

well a few ideas spring to mind.
= transporting: a well set out tranny van should do it, there are hundreds of banged up ex building trade ones about for a steal i should think. add alloys and mp3 player as standard
=also you would probably need a shop front. i mean chances are unless you get a giant billboard in the sky for a year, people wont know you exist and there will be 10 or so pc's in a van outside your house for a while. so an internet cafe/gaming hole would be an excellent choice for somewhere safe to keep the pcs, somewhere to promote the business (*walks past shop front, see's people pwning, see's 'bookable to any location', de-profits myself*) and not to mention a way of earning a few coin between bookings if it goes to plan. a single floor square building would be ideal for this, maybe a back area for repairing/ parts storage/ office for paperworks+phone. oh and a pisser. just this idea has probably quadroupled the cost you wanted(depending on location of course), but in my personal opinion its a must. maybe

Post by **FatherJack** » October 5th, 2005, 17:22

You could save a bit by just having men's bogs

cashy · Post by **cashy** » October 5th, 2005, 17:24

FatherJack wrote:You could save a bit by just having men's bogs

berk might complain

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 5th, 2005, 18:12

cashy wrote:
FatherJack wrote:You could save a bit by just having men's bogs
berk might complain

uh? what?

New LAN business venture

New LAN business venture

Re: New LAN business venture