Wasn't The CPL going to build a gaming stadium?

Yes, Angel Munoz with sponsors. But he shut down the project due to deal with sponsors or something. If you wanna read more find last interview with CPL head at gotfrag.

Puff the magic dragon didn't come through with the funding to make that hot air into reality.

The cyberstadium was an entirely different concept.

Congratulations Sujoy and good luck.

1999:
Location: Hyatt basement
Game: Quake 3
First prize: $40k

2006:
Location: Hyatt basement
Game: Quake 3
First prize: $15k

Damn, that hot air comment I made is looking awfully silly right now. Oh well, you and HeatoN cleared a lil something something in the meantime I'm sure.

Not that i agree with it but... LOL

"Intel Conroe 6400 based systems with an XFX 7950GX2 graphics card" lose one of them my way :P

The plans look very impressive . You say you have an under 15s area but can the under 15s still go in the other areas if with their parents?

In the UK many games are given a BBFC rating. These are unfortunately film ratings and therefore a 15 BBFC rated game cannot even be viewed by someone under 15 years of age. That means if we allowed anyone under 15 to be able to see a screen where someone else is playing a 15 rated game then we will be breaking the law and liable to be closed down. So no unfortunately no under 15's will be allowed on the floor where 15 rated games are.

Don't get me started on 18 rated games! Unfortunately Activision got themselves a BBFC 18 for Quake 4 (possibly improve the marketing) which means that if you allow anyone under 18 to see Quake 4 being played then you'd be breaking the law. We're still looking at this problem - it will either mean another private room which is 18+ only or not allowing any 18 rated games in the venue.

or not allowing any 18 rated games in the venue.

If these places are going to be the hub of the UK gaming scene then i think you might be a bit screwed if you're following that logic..

Yea it's a real mess with the bbfc ratings. We're working very closely with ELSPA and we have some very good industry people on board that are going to try and fix these issues. We think BBFC ratings for the single player game should not be applied to the multiplayer version. There's also the slightly shady method of importing a foreign version of the game, which is technically BBFC unrated but we're not sure if this will be ok or not.

if the worst comes to the worst you could close a section off - for example an eswc qualifier etc.

Yea we were thinking the same thing.

But that torpedo's any kind of marketing for that event? Seems like a catch 22 indeed, also how is this going to be policed, bouncers on the stairs or something?

On certain days we might have an event day when the upper floor is 18 and over only I suppose. You put up a notice, say on a plasma over the escalator up. There will be staff upstairs anyway and they should be walking around checking everyone is ok. If they see someone in their zone who looks under 18 they will have to challenge them. I don't think it's unworkable.

In the UK many games are given a BBFC rating. These are unfortunately film ratings and therefore a 15 BBFC rated game cannot even be viewed by someone under 15 years of age. That means if we allowed anyone under 15 to be able to see a screen where someone else is playing a 15 rated game then we will be breaking the law and liable to be closed down.

This issue has interested me in the past, having pondered this question myself for a similar purpose myself.. It is quite difficult to find relevant information, but as far as I know your assertion is not stricly correct.

BBFC ratings are not legally binding for films in the in the first place, they are merely guidelines. So the problem could potentially be negated by making some friends on your local council, though admittedly this does seem somewhat unlikely.

Aside from the problem of somehow persuading your council to set a radical precent you're also stuck with the issue of whether broadcasting a computer game would be seen as a film (Licensing Act) or a video (Video Recording Act), for which the BBFC is the statutory authority for classifying & local authorities have no control over.

We think BBFC ratings for the single player game should not be applied to the multiplayer version. There's also the slightly shady method of importing a foreign version of the game, which is technically BBFC unrated but we're not sure if this will be ok or not.

I'd hazard a guess of no, as according to ELSPA:

The Video Recordings Act 1984 made computer and video games generally exempt from classification, except for a few specific clauses, and this continued when the act was up dated in 1994. Statistics to date show that 95% of all games classified are exempt from legal BBFC rating.

Non-exemptions being:

(a) human sexual activity of acts of force or restraint associated with such activity;

(b) mutilation or torture of, or other acts of gross violence towards, humans or animals;

(c) human genital organs or human urinary or excretory functions;

(d) techniques likely to be useful in the commission of offences...

IANAL but presumably foreign releases of Quake 4 & games akin to it, even though BBFC unrated, still fall under section B of this Act due to the interpretations of "Video work" and "Supply" used:

Interpretation of terms

1.--(1) The provisions of this section shall have effect for the interpretaion of terms used in this Act.

(2) "Video work" means any series of visual images (with or without sound)-

(a) produced electronically by the use of information contained on any disc or magnetic tape, and

(b) shown as a moving picture.

(3) "Video recording" means any disc or magnetic tape containing information by the use of which the whole or part of a video work may be reproduced.

(4) "Supply" means supply in any manner, whether or not for reward, and, therefore, includes supply by way of sale, letting on hire, exchange or loan; and references to a supply are to be interpreted accordingly.

The BBFC state that:

Although it is not a customs offence to import an unclassified video or DVD it must be for your personal use only and the content must not breach the prohibition on the importation of indecent and obscene material which reflects other UK law (eg Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964, Protection of Children Act 1978). You are therefore entitled to purchase unclassified videos or DVDs whilst abroad, provided they contain no illegal material and are solely for personal use."

This presumably rules that loophole out for games as well.

If you are in correspondance with ELSPA already perhaps you could ask them to lobby developers/publishers to assist your cause. By replacing the player models to, say, robots or aliens (i.e. anything that could reasonably be argued to be non-human/animal) & releasing special multiplayer, tournament-only limited editions of games like Quake 4 you may be able to get around the Video Recordings Act (if it even applies) & Obscene Publications Act (which arguably would... depends if the relevant game could be deemed to incite violence etc...). You would probably need to include other ridiculous modifications (e.g. Carmageddon-esque green blood) but, to the best of my knowledge, it would be legal & easy enough for the developer/publisher to do upon request (i.e. sufficient pressure!).

These are just my musings based upon the limited (and possibly outed) source materials available to me. Have you talked to a lawyer or member of the BBFC/Ofcom about this?

We've not been guessing our information for a two million pound project, we actually have the ex-chairman of ELSPA working for us!

I think you're confusing the requirement of obtaining a BBFC rating with the requirement of complying to the rating. Games are not required to be licensed by the BBFC, but most publishers chose to so that retailers (e.g. Woolworths) are comfortable selling them. However once a game receives a license from BBFC, that becomes a legal restriction. We've been researching and lobbying on this point for the last 4 years or so, and as far as we know and everyone we've worked with in the industry (from ELSPA to the Government DTI) agree.

I think you're confusing the requirement of obtaining a BBFC rating with the requirement of complying to the rating.

Can you elaborate? Am I wrong in thinking that you would be supplying video recordings under the Video Recordings Act & thus subject to its restrictions?

Games are not required to be licensed by the BBFC, but most publishers chose to so that retailers (e.g. Woolworths) are comfortable selling them. However once a game receives a license from BBFC, that becomes a legal restriction.

My sources may be out of date, but it is my understanding that this is wrong. Games are required to be rated by the BBFC if they are non-exempt from the VRA as outlined in my previous post. From what I have read all non-exempt recordings (inclusive of games) must, by law, be submitted for a rating if one intends to supply them:

9.--(1) A person who supplies or offers to supply a video recording containing a video work in respect of which no classification has been issued is guilty of an offence...

...10.-- (1) Where a video recording contains a video work in respect of which no classification certificate has been issued, a person who has the recording in his possession for the purpose of supplying it is guilty of an offence...

The "legal restriction" is the VRA itself, consequently this closes the loophole of using foreign editions of games like Quake 4 for your purposes, as even though the particular "recording" has not been rated you would still be "supplying" a non-exempt article & consequently would have committed a criminal offence under the Act.

Ergo my suggestion to bypass the rating process entirely - is this not feasible?

Also on specific event days we would be booking out the entire first floor normally. This would mean we can place whatever age restriction is required on the escalator and lift to stay legal. That would mean we could run Quake 4 tournaments as private events in the same way they would be run in a hall. Make no mistake the BBFC ratings to apply to all events in the UK, not just this game centre.

beaten!

The legal system sucks balls!

which means that if you allow anyone under 18 to see Quake 4 being played then you'd be breaking the law

hmm so Av3k has to close his eyes every event he participates in the uk? isnt Cypher under 18 too? lol

More like the gaming centre would be breaking the law, like selling cigarettes to someone underage. At least that's how I understand it but still investigating.

So that means neither Av3k nor Cypher cant attend uk tourneys? bummer lol

As far as I know that's true, but reading amarc's comments I'll have to investigate further to make sure.

I wonder how WSVG are going to comply or if they will just ignore the legal issues.

this issue is going to be a BIG problem, 12-15 yr olds will probably constitute a fairly large chunk of your potential customers, and if they cant play the game they wnt, they wont play...

I'll be honest with you, I've never seen anyone play Quake 4 in a gaming centre! Ok except when I held that Quake 4 tournament.

The top games are more like:

1. Battlefield 2
2. World of Warcraft
3. Counter-Strike / Source
4. Warcraft 3
5. Call of Duty 2

Even really old games like AvP2 get more play than Quake 4.

The issue is for tournaments, but like I say we can close off parts of the venue for events.

arent counterstrike and Battlefield and almost all other FPS's 16+ or smtg

No.

Battlefield has a PEGI 16+ rating, but we have come to an agreement with ELSPA on these ratings that if we use them maturely and with parental consent, they have no objection to people under that age playing the game. In any case PEGI ratings are not legally enforcable.

It's the same with CS and CS:S.

Oh yea I forgot to mention that CoD2 is a 15 BBFC rating which is a legal one. Therefore we are looking into making the first floor of the gaming centre 15+ anyway and have games with a BBFC15 rating not available on the ground floor.

Although having said that I just checked on Amazon and you can get CoD2 goty edition and it is not BBFC rated at all. I believe that means we can allow under 15's to play it, but I'll check with our guy from ELSPA.

ok man, i was just concerned about all the kiddies not being able to play their favourite games. i remember my school had a lan center right next to it, and you would get many 13 14 yr olds playing CS and the like, so it would really harm you if they couldnt do that at ur place.

any updates on the brum centre?
if anything needs mailed i need to forward a new address (dont know the email now tho)

Brum has gone through legal so we now have the property secure. Keys forthcoming, then 8 weeks to build.

It is the old Virgin Megastore on Corporation street (I wasn't technically allowed to say where it was before).

As soon as I finish up in Harrow I'll start the interviewing process for Birmingham.

Looks huge and ambitiouse. I will defenetly visit it, someday.

Think I have to move to London or Birmingham :P

We hope to have some plans shortly for the London Picadilly Circus centre, but as you can imagine, we are refurbishing harrow in time for the SGL tournie on the 26th, finalising plans and commencing build on Birmingham... London is a 3rd on the list.

Do you mean the Trocadero centre?

fantastic work, gents

Ive just been looking again at them two visuals at the bottom... please god, make sure we have more people in than that when we actually open!!!

mousepad space seems a little limited, too :D

Desks are 900mm wide. That leaves enough space for a full sized keyboard and a very large mousemat.

great. there's nothing worse than being crammed in like you're on an economy ryan air flight.

hehe indeed, fkn ryanair !!

We probably want some chairs too...

Will the chairs be paying the 2 pounds, though?

WOW I will go to UK next year in summer, hope everything would be still at the place ready to play. Do you still play 1on1 in Q3 with customers (every single frag is 1h for free)? That would be awesome.

Ahhah I only did that in Harrow because I knew there wouldn't be any good players showing up :). I haven't played Quake 3 for ages now so I wouldn't dare put up a Q3 challenge for free stuff anymore!

Don't lie me - you scare to being destroyed by me 8(

on-site carparking?!

It's Birmingham town centre so there's no free parking. However regular parking is reasonable afaik, will have to look into it. Also it's a very short walk from the main station in Birmingham so it's very easy to get there by train. Since you're not lugging a PC and Monitor around the train is a really convenient way to get there - I definitely prefer it to driving all the time between Brum and London.

There are plenty of NCP car parks, shopping centre car parks within 2 mins walk of the venue, also we are are next to the main bus stop and 4 mins away from Birmingham New Street Station... one of the biggest hub stations in the UK. As for London... forget it! Tube it in.

looks impressive

Just read your column and your concept looks great and I agree that you cant cut corners. I like your layouts and the range of rooms available to fit all types of moods for the consumers. Just keep us posted on your work sujoy, with all this expense etc I really want to see the outcome and hopefully it pans out how you expect.

Ow btw I know the age ratings are a problem, but your hardware is another. Hardware as you know is outdated after 1 to 2 years, how are you going to upgrade it? Whos doing it? And how much will it cost ? Whats your range for error? can it easily be calculated, to the point is it definitely feasible, what happens if its more then you predicted which probably it will be, and customer numbers are low, how will you convince the banks for more cash?

thats some good points there - unless i guess it ould be done on a clock scheme, like you take a section of the centre say every 6 months and upgrade the hardware, that way you will always have pcs with high specs without going bankrupt over it.

There's simply no need to upgrade hardware that often.

I bought my 3.4 AMD with a 6800 GT for Doom 3 in August 2004.
2 years on, it's still a good system and until the DX10 games come out, mainly crysis and UT2k7 I see no point in upgrading.

If he got something like a top of the range cpu and whatever the latest GFX card is at the time, I doubt anything in that pc would need to be replaced for a good 2 years.
800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024 are more than enough. All the new cards seem to do is all you to play at higher resolutions.
AS soon as you shift to down to 800 and 1024 the 20% in performance that seperates something like a 6800 Gt to a 7800 GT becomes almost non existent.
How many customers are gonna whine if it slows down a bit at 1600x1200? not many.

With the price of PC parts and the amount of pc's he'll have there you're talking hundreds of thousands in what is IMO wasted revenue.

ofc the other options could be to sell old parts to gamers who go there and simply put that towards upgrading, but even if you did that every 12 months would be fine.
If you're smart and pay attention to default configs you can get away without upgrading for 2 years IMO.

im well aware of the fact that it is not really a point in upgrading pc hardware every 6 months, but then - look at the price for buying new state of the art pcs/hardware for a centre with 350pcs every 2nd year (your own estimate) versus doing smaller upgrades on a clock scheme.

it doesnt have to be every 6 months, and it doesnt have to be state of the art hardware, as that is generally a big waste of money - even for gamers.

im no business expert or anything, but 350 brand new pcs with state hardware is NOT something that comes cheaply and doing that every 2nd year i imagine is not very lucrative for any kind of company.

If I was the head of something like this and my job was to make the PC upgrades and so froth, I would much rather do it all at once then having half of the computers lower spec than the other half. If there was a contest going on and the two opponents happen to be playing on to differently setup machines then how do you think that makes the competitors think about their game?

Sure you could go ahead and make sure for competition that they are all on the same system but still why not just have every system in the entire place of the same spec and of the same age

You see no point, but how is playing the latest games like Oblivion on it? There's no fun going go a place like this to play games and the latest games run at low FPS.

Whatever happens please don't skimp on comfort.

If you want people to stay there for a few hours at least you need DESK SPACE, and decent chairs which don't roll around and put strain on the base of your spine while you're playing.
Big non wheelie chairs that won't get flung around and stolen by a spec.

As a guide there should be enough room to stretch your arm out from the seating position and come fairly close to touching the monitor. If it's closer then fine, but at least make sure there's room to broaden this gap. Also you should be able to rest both arms fully on the table and have enough room for the keyboard without it overlapping another table or entering someone else's zone.

TPF was great, it really encompassed waht I thought a lan centre should be, yeh it was a lil pricey, but I only went now and again and screaming cs players and rolling chairs that moved and put strain on my back while I palyed put me off more than anything.

I also remember that was my first ever game of ztn there and I played you and you whopped me 59-0.

I'm sure you'll do the rest fine, but I had to refresh this becasue its so fundamental and often overlooked to get more pc's in.

We've always had wheelie chairs before, but you're right - they're pretty pointless for a gaming centre. The ones we've ordered for harrow are fixed chairs with chrome finished but leather-like material. They've also perforated so that you don't up sweaty from sitting on it too long. We'll see how well they go down in Harrow before making the final decision in the bigger centres.

I put down a lower limit of 900mm for the table width. Since they are also TFT screens there will be plenty of depth too. The PC's are housed in the table side, but leaving enough legroom to be comfortable. I think that's enough, but I'll measure the keyboard and mousepad again the next time I get a chance.

Cool, also think about things like flooring, tip drink, gum on them, someone drops a fag (fire) etc. Stale beer etc stinks. I'm assuming it'll be smoke free zone which IMO is a essential, though you could maybe have fag section-though risky being so close to Soho:>

Then you can attract press and rent it out to other people so long as it's easy to keep clean and keeps that new look.
900mm is fie, but it that sq2??
900mm X 450 ish would IMO be ideal. you just get a huge piece of mdf, kinda like how the reder implies and save loads.

Jam

P.S.
I just thought it would suck to have a sprinker test in such an environment so think about stuff like that too becasue you'll doubtless get skankers in there pissing around.

I think our basic size was 900wide and 600deep. That 600 is huge, and it'll include a cup holder near the back so that drinks dont get knocked over too much.

Definitely no smoking, no doubt there will be laws in place soon that make smoking illegal in a place like this anyway.

The London centre will be designed for media launches and games industry events, whereas Birmingham is obviously much bigger (for the same cost) so we can look at doing gamer-focussed stuff there and have more actual players in the building.

Hadn't really thought too much about the floor. The guys we're working with on the design mostly do exhibition stands for us and they have a lot of expertise on what will look great for a week. However this needs to stay looking great for much longer. I think we need to check into all the flooring options, maybe have stuff that can be replaced easily every 12 months.

Replacing flooring that often sounds expensive, unnecessary and time consuming IMO.
This can be tacky if it's over used or not balanced right, but something like this...http://www.grsites.com/textures/metal/metal035.jpg
easy to clean and lasts forever.
Just sand blast the top for extra grip.

It won't make the place smell and it'll always look clean plus modern/industrial, which IMO fits that cyber modern type theme that seems to be going up everywhere.

900x600 sounds sweet.

With having the theme areas like gootball pitches and race tracks, it's highly likely you'll have to re-do these regularly. Computers and 'tech' very rarely changes, but to be fasionable to the average consumer who has their xbox whatever at home it needs to be 'new' and 'modern' this kind of theming can look very dated very quickly.

now you should explain to americans what is 900mm or some brains are gonna pop out

5 sqlbs/inchgallon

rofl

I would like to point out to texans it's not a gun calibre!

rofl ;-)

~36 inches

what exactly do you put in "The PC's are housed in the table side" ?
I mean, is it a convenient positioning for customer to swap mouse and keyboard without dragging everything out of its original way?

About headsets, im not sure, but maybe you should go for closed ones so the customers atleast will have some noise canceling... maybe Sennheiser or another company that atleast have replacable parts and offers warranty/service.

Or you could just pick up some cheap Koss SB-45`s, they are imo durable enough and dont cost a fortune and additionally Koss has life-time warranty on their products :)

Currently what I prefer is ensuring a really good quality TFT screen that has 4 powered USB sockets on the side. That means you can plug in USB sticks, USB floppy/DVD writer, USB mouse/kb, etc straight into the monitor when needed. We'll also need a headphone extender outside of the cable trap (which stops the centre peripherals from being nicked).

ah k, sounds good enough i suppose with usb ports in the monitor :)

I used my open Grado SR225 headphones at The Gathering this year and didn't have too much problems with noise from the others bothering me. And I doubt this place will be anywhere near as noisy as TG is :P

that i wont argue with, but noise canceling is still good :)

dunno how in the world i ever played with my old headset(s) and my _noisy_ pc before i got my HD-280`s :)

:) I play with high volume for both music and games though, when I don't I have them off, so that might be why I didn't get bothered by it =) and it's probably not so annoying when it's on all the time and you expect it to be there.

true true, even tho high volume can be a real pain in the ass if you dont have a headset that cancels some noise if you play teamgames... everyone else hear what you hear ;D

True :)

*ponders jobs*

Hehe was thinking the same thing :P

i'm gonna apply though its probably futile :)

the commute from slovakia would be a bitch in the morning

5hr flight everyday yay
obviously i'd move to live over there :)

wow. nice work so far. wish you all the best!

with the cheap flights in mind i could imagine a weekend gaming trip to london (been there plenty times so i've seen al the boring things :P )

so maybe its time to see the 2nd city aka the better city, birmingham \o/

You can get reasonably priced flights to Birmingham International as well as London. BHX is literally 7-8 minutes on the train from Birmingham news street. Bmibaby fly low cost in and out of birmingham to most major european destinations.

Should a big enough event be held there i cant see anyone having difficulties attending from around the world :)

close to numerous other airports as well..... well east mids being the only major one before breaching off to manchester etc.

But stiil, on train with no PC's that isn't far at all. :)

Eastmidlands and Coventry airports are *close* indeed. Coventry is about 10-15 by train from Birmingham but Eastmidlands is a good 45minutes-1hour away. So lots of choice for low cost travel!:p

ahh forgot about coventry

east mids aint that far actually, im in notts and it's a 45 min run to birmingham, prolly an hr by car to the city center

train tends to be less :p

So i was right when i said 45-1h :P

ahh im blind :D

Cov airport has busses that go directly to the train station.

£1.10 from the airport to station, then about £3.50 return from cov station to new street, then another £1.10 to cov airport from the station when you go back.

It's gonna be cheap and easy to get to brum for this gaming arena!

P.S. We are in dire need of a gaming centre in Coventry, how about it Sujoy!?

zomg penny how did you get out of WOW

yeah but Coventry aiport can only fly 10 people at a time its that small!

Lies!

It changed hands a few years back, it does flights to everywhere in europe.

Granted, it's like ryanair shit but its certainly more than 10! :D

yes so ive heard, theyve expanded to a capacity of 15.

might be but my "home airport" about 1hour with the car or the train only has london/stansted :(

dnb in birmingham ?

drum n bass? probably
theres some in most cities, dont listen to much tho

Two friends of mine went to london a few weeks ago. They wanted to find some 'real party' in the motherland of dnb. There was nothing to be found. Drinking beer in a stinking pub at those two nights. I laughed at them.

if u wanna come over for mainly dnb then come for global gathering 07

skibadee was there! rofl

Last year was mint, cant go this year cause i'm in Mexico :|

cant go this year coz it was a few weeks ago :>
shit event with shit music anyways

Yeah stay home listening to britney spears you goddamn sissie !

1 Debelah Morgan – Yesterday (Darkchild Remix) 21
2 Tinnie Tempah – wifey riddim 16
3 Gemma Fox – Girlfriends Story (Vocal Mix) 15

k clueless

:°o<3

if ure in tonight tune into www.freezefm.co.uk at 23:30 - 01:00CET
sickest show ever!

Friday's
10pm - 12am
Marc Anthony - UKG

For the Roman general and statesman, see Mark Antony. For the singer-songwriter see Marc Anthony. For the gay porn actor, see Mark Anthony (gay porn star). For the heterosexual porn star see Mark Anthony (porn star). For the Looney Tunes character, see Marc Antony and Pussyfoot.

none of them
its class he mixes, mc's and does shoutouts on his own ;o
i did have his myspace but cant remember it now :x

There is a very good dnb night in Birmingham at a club called "Air", not sure how often it is anymore.

You're mates should of checked before hand when some dnb nights were on in London, it's not every night/day. The clubs play mainly trance/dance or whatever but most major clubs have at least one monthly DNB night now(even Ministry of sound..)

You certinaly dont have to wait for the yearly global gathering event.

Next time keep an eye on http://breakbeat.co.uk/events/allevents.asp as it lists most major events all across the UK!

Also, i heard this year that global gatherings dnb tent was terrible from 10pm onwards, really had to lower the volume to comply with some bs council laws which had never been inforced until this year ;/

gay music

looks like a solid plan
About the headsets, I'd say it depends on whether you need voicecomms or not. I think the Outpostcenters in Belgium have a pair of HD500 or pc150 if you'd need voicecomms aswell.

The most solid headset I've tried so far has been the Plantronics .audio 90. But they do sit on your ears rather than cup around them which isn't so pleasant for a gaming centre where you share the same headphones with other people. I'll take a look at those sennheisers (I think they are).

it seemed to work out decent when I tried them, they were rather comfi(the hd500's) but they might not be the best solution if ppl would need microphones a lot I'm afraid

From personal experience Audio 90's tend to last on average 8-9 months. That includes several drops and snags. In your case this will probably be 6 months, due to the fact that people don't tend to be as careful with something that doesn't belong to them. Good choice not having wheely chairs, that avoids wires getting snagged under the wheels, people having chair races, people spinning in chairs and then throwing-up all over your nice shiney new PCs :)

I'm currently using Sennhesier PC 150s right now and they feel a lot stronger, you can feel the quality is a bit better. Then again they are more expensive.

No wheely chairs for sure.

plantronics headsets break like twigs, I thoroughly do not recommend them on a reliability standpoint, they are world renowned for this

I had at least five .90s, two had right ear piece failures, two had wire breaks, one was my fault, got caught and where the wire splits into two was pulled apart

admittedly I'm on my third or fourth pair of PC-150s at the moment, but at least the warranty is fscking amazing with sennheiser

That's weird, I've had 90's in Harrow for 2 years and every single one is still working in good shape. Ok that's in the Internet cafe section (not gaming) so they don't get so much abuse.

I have also always heard that .90 are fragile. Look into Sennheisers for reliability - but also for prestige.. you say you want the best, and in the minds of many gamers it's senns.

90's are horrid and will break so fast your head will spin.

The Audio .90 is a good headset, only my microphone broke after two years. But I doubt any headset will last two years in an gaming centre.

I work at OutPost Gamecenter Antwerp for about 2 years now and all I can say is that we've tried a lot of headsets by now.

The best headset in my opinion is (or was) definatly the Sennheiser HD400, nice around the ears to wear all day/night long and easy to repair. Problems are: no attached microphone and the inner connections to the ear-cups were easily loose so we had to repair them more then once. But we still use them as we speak. When people want to use voice com we lend them Sennheiser PC150's.

The HD500's are easily broken (litterally the ears broken off) so we stopped using those after 3 months orso.

looks really damn good, really hope this succeeds and you build a nice franchise out of it. would be good for gaming in general! :)

I forgot to mention that point. If this business does really well then we'll definitely be looking to create more game centres like this in big cities that don't have something like it already. I know a lot of people have already contacted me about needing game centres further north in the UK and I'm sure there's hundreds of cities in Europe where a really good centre could be made.

5 years time you could be owning half of korea t_T :PP

maybe amsterdam :] im willing to help ;)

newcastle baby!!!

looks awesome man, you should come on msn more;p

I would but we're building full time now. We just ripped out the phone lines so there's no Internet anymore. If I get any spare time in the evenings I'm working on the new ESR features.

looks class :o
sports sector looks hot xD
u shud do like london vs birmingham matchups :D

ps: does "The staff should be there when you want them and actually able to help when you need it" mean employees need experience in computer maintenance? :x

Not maintenance, but just helping people do what they want. I'm sure there will be plenty of customers that don't know much about multiplayer gaming and are trying games out for the first time. The staff need to be on hand to show them the basics of how to play so that they enjoy the experience and want to try it again another time.

If a computer breaks down we're going to keep a stock of 5% contingency. Any problems and the PC gets immediately switched out with a perfectly working one. Then the tech team will be making rounds regularly to fix any that have had problems without a single broken machine in the actual centre.

ah cool
tbh i would be an excellent piece of publicity for ur birmingham site ;D people wud travel from all over the world (!) just to see how boring i am irl xD

hm, I was tempted to go for birmingham due to cheaper living, but if you're going to be there, london it is!

not that cheaper unless u live in somewhere like sparkbrook, couple months a go a bunch of guys from there tried to rob my fone on the bus (thats the kinda area). but the metros in birmingham so its quick, easy access from living in west brom, wednesbury etc

dunno if ill get the job tbh, from exp pov ive had a paper round then work experience for skool n college, add the fact im 17 (18+ games) and in col so my work times are random. only thing workin in my favour is qualifications & my e-name :>

come to brum! can own u on lan xD

You do realise that they were in the process of robbing you when they tried to steal your phone? Seriously please use correct English, it's not snobby to do so, but the damage caused in a social and literary sense is huge.

ok a guy came from the back of the bus and sat behind me sayin him n his m8s wud kick the shit outa me if i didnt hand it over, after like 10 mins of sayin no he went n spoke to his m8s then i went downstairs to act like i was gettin off. they follow me down n the guy sits next to me, some more shit like upstairs then they eventually got off at their stop. this was like 3pm on a packed bus which is prob why they didnt actually hit me or anythin

lovely part of birmingham
only white ppl there are travelling in to work or blonde women wit black guys

my point was they didn't try to "rob" your phone they tried to "steal" your phone and perform a robbery.

potato potarto

No not really thats due to pronunciation of the word. If they were to rob your phone they'd be taking from it? Did the phone put up a fight when they tried to steal a key?

He's actually right; he just speaks a different dialect. Standard English isn't really necessary outside of mass media and academic settings.

i quite often type how i speak and get pulled up on it (not by 215 though i might add) i find it a tad annoying, i bet they wouldnt correct my english if i was stood in front of them speaking ;)

It looks so awsome, but you must have a pretty fat funds for this, nice sponsor. But I wonder if it will be really full there, what will you have there that people can't experience at home?

The main thing is being around other people! In my next journal I'll try and tackle the topic of why people might want to come to a game centre since that's quite a serious question.

"We want to charge a basic rate of just £2 per hour with discounts for regulars."

That's a good start over every other UK LAN centre I've been to but the key problem seems to be that the standard home connection in the UK has improved exponentially in the past few years. The only obvious way to get vaguely seriously gamers into the cafe would seem to be to play on the LAN practice idea, a tdm or counter-strike team who have local people and practice with each other in person each night instead of online should see some impressive advances in their teamplay potential. All the same that sounds vaguely like the LAN centre league you were involved with a few years ago? It seems difficult to visualise joe bloggs leaving his 1mbit home ADSL/cable connection to spend £2 to play a game he could own for £30 and play any time at home. Perhaps you know something about casual gaming demographics I don't, if so feel free to share :)

It will be interesting to see your progress regardless, these problems aren't going to be solved until people tackle them outright and the efforts of many lan centres sofar have been piss poor in comparison to what you're suggesting.

A comparison we've often used is Pubs and Off-licenses (liquor stores for the Americans). Yes you can buy alcohol cheaply from the off-license and drink it at home, but people will never stop going to the pub for a drink.

Now that comparison is horribly flawed for online gaming, I know, because when you're at home you're still connected to other people via the Internet so in some ways you're not actually alone in your room. However we really believe that all people want real social interaction, even gamers that love online gaming and think they are fine playing from their bedroom. At the end of the day the human condition craves company. If the gaming centre has a good community then we're sure that people will want to come back again and again and treat it as their own club. I know I had a perfectly good Quake 3 PC at home in the TPF days but I'd still drive all the way in to hang out there anyway.

In some ways this is a big experiment, but from the work we've done with other gaming centres we're sure that it's going to work.

"However we really believe that all people want real social interaction, even gamers that love online gaming and think they are fine playing from their bedroom."

That's true, but consider this:

Most of your customers will be kids 12-17 years old, make no mistake about it. Especially for the arcade part of the venue. With a price of 2 quid/hr expect a swarm of chavs to be polluting the place 24/7, if not inside then outside taking money from younger kids, drinking and making noise. This by itself will drive most of your customers away. How do you plan to deal with it?

And another thing, how will you present your place as a serious venue for software presentations and conferences if it's full of loud kids all day long? I'm afraid sooner or later you will have to decide between to two.

It's not the first gaming centre I've opened, I know the demographics.

Presentations won't be in an environment with loud kids! Private events will be in parts of the venue closed off from regular customers.

Perhaps you could go all hip hop and have a VIP entrance so the guests don't have to mingle with the hoi polloi or something :P Malc

I guess you have security issues worked out then. I just had to mention this because it's the case with every single lan center I've been to. Perhaps with 2 mil budget you could hire some quality personnel and not just local bouncers. Anyway, good luck!

The Birmingham police are insisting on us using a professional security contracter to get security staff, at least two around at any time. It's going to cost a lot but they should be able to deal with the local annoyances. We've had a lot of meetings with the Police and council just on security because you're right, it's a big problem that might come up.

I pressed him on this the other week, i bet hes fed up of hearing about it.

As I never was to a gaming center, for the reasons you mentioned above (small, dirty, unattractive) I am wondering how things like configurations and stuff are done?

I mean obviously you won't be allowed to attache some USB stick or other external media to the PC's.
Is there going to be some kind of file store for personal data like configs, at least for regulars?

I can't imagine going to a gaming center for lets say 3h and spend 1h to create and tune a config, to finally be competitive.

Also I think that some sort of personalization for regulars would be another argument for the center. I think it would be cool, if you like have your own account with some file- and maybe web space.

I'll write a journal maybe detailing how some of this stuff works. For instance in Harrow we allow people to do anything they like on the computers such as installing their own hardware, installing any programs or drivers they want. You can literally do anything you want with the computer, uninstall games etc. We use a bit of software called Deep Freeze, which makes any changes to the computers temporary. Whenever a frozen computer is rebooted all changes made are completely gone. That means you can set up the PC perfectly and let the customers go wild doing anything they want. Then when they've finished you reboot the PC and it's in perfect condition again. I'll write more about it later, but we will be allowing things like personal hardware, personal programs, usb sticks with configs and so on.

No 5 person rooms?

cool, you reboot because of a game crash while in a match and then you have to install everything again? :)

Maybe that software could be modified so it creates the equivalent of a PC setup config so a user comes back in and he picks "Joe Smith" from the list and it loads his setup from last time.

http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=1133865

All that sort of stuff is there, I think it goes without saying he's considered that and at the very least there will be IRC/IE/and hopefully a public FTP of some kind.

Hey what's up Sujoy?

Haven't been here in a long time and I just happened to see that you posted an article. Just wanted to say what's up, and hope everything is well.

Glad to see my account is still working. ;p

some more pro gaming rants please :))

You should have come for the CPL reunion when everyone started playing Quake 4 again at the Hyatt. Just like old times. Except would Angel have let you in? :)

8 ball says "Denied!"

That's cause you're an idiot.

Angel would welcome me back with open arms because I can generate more attention than any of his new geeky ass gamers... that is for damn sure. ;p

Look forward to seeing you then. Biatch :)

From insulting to sycophantic in 2 comments, you're really on top of your game Jamerio.

That's because I was not trying to be insulting in the first place.

you are still my fav gamer ever -x-

KAZAKHSTAN !!!

yeah .. i thought those people were poor :(

oil ..

now america will invade them.. shame on you

My first thought was that this Kazakh firm could be a cocaine cartel which want to wash their dirty money. Damn stereotypes :P

it can be anything tbh :)

hehe

Borat?

wow thats a big budget.. you can actually run an african country with that sorta money for a whole year :)

though if i ever am able to come to london or birmingham.. id definitely visit sujoy's dream..

cheers m8 and good luck.. this is awsome

and when all of this gets really succesful , you can come over to Pakistan with the gaming centers.. id get the government to help out

wow, that's awesome :)

couldn't think of anyone else than you being better suited for this enterprise

You might consider adding a giant chrome ball to roll around the first floor.

logitech g1 is an awesome idea for the default mouse.. smart and not biased against left handers ;D
looks cool enough, and isnt cheap looking.

funny that thats the only thing i should pick up on :x

everything else looks smashing and im excited for you :D

It's a great idea and it has the potential to do very well. I'm surprised that this wasn't done a while back as well, but right now is probably a better time to do it. Especially since the sterotypical gamer is fading away, and its becomeing more mainstream and acceptable.

could i bring my own mouse =)))

yes

4 USB sockets on the monitor for all the stuff. We're using NEC 90GX2's.

wow that looks awesome, build one in finland too :[

this is a very cool project,
it's like a dream for me, a sort of paradise ...
If I had the chance in my youth to visit such a thing,
that would have been so cool ...
If I ever have the chance to be in London,
I'll definetely visit it ...
I wish you good luck

Lol you're like 23. Not exactly past it just yet.

In gamingstandards, I'm a almost senior I think ...
I'm not anymore as excited on computergames as I was with 14/15 ... but of course I still enjoy gaming (just have a lack of motivation atm) ... I also think I would enjoy going to such a center right now ...
but I'm living in a small city and something like this will never happen here ... but it would be so cool to meet real people on a regular basis in gaming ... in tournaments etc., just imagine a weekly quake 1on1 tournament or every 2 weeks ...

Yea, just like going to the football or snooker club for practice. :)

ty. Now I am feeling really, really old...

looks great, gl

If I had such a centre in my city I would definately visit it quite often. GL Sujoy.

Don't suppose anything will be done by September? I will be in both london and birmingham over that month... dammit, always miss the good stuff.

Hmph.

Upset I didn't notify you? You never call! Besides I was going to try to stay as far from MK as possible.

I meant that i was clearly the good stuff. MEN! Hmph.

wheres the poker-room? :)

also called "the managers office" ;)

An ESR invite tournament as opening event would be lovely :)

Sounds amazing. :)

I remember TPF with fond memories, I met some good people at it, and I enjoyed playing in it (mostly in events like the CPL Qualifiers and the BW European Championships - The event where Russia really put itself on the map as a Q3 playing nation).

However, the failure with it was always the price, but with the costs of venues and staff in London, I can see why the prices were the way they were. This price failure was why I never really came except to these major events.

Some may also remember the days (well, mostly nights) spent in New Oxford Street (and the slightly dodgy pub across the road from it), with QW nights at SnS, and will also remember similar reasons for the demise of SnS.

While working for an ISP, I was also involved with a gaming cafe, which was marketed by .com morons without even the slightest clue.

Sujoy, I wish you the very best of luck with this venture, and I'll be sure to stop by when it gets up and running, and I'm sure you have an eye on the failures of the past, and I wish you the best of luck in negotiating them.

dave! we can go take a look together :D P.S gonna be in london soon maybe something should be done

dave! we can go take a look together

1. you shouldn't be in london!!!
2. you just can't resist can you!

:D

im goin london for une lan! so there !

k u win :(

Let's try taht again....


Hi Dave, yeah, they really were the days....


Malc

I have to disagree that TPF's problem came from the price.

Despite being £6 an hour, filling seats wasn't that much of a problem, in-fact the high price paid off. The level of game play at TPF was always high after all only the serious would pay that sort of money. London if full of over paid people wanting to do something fun.

TPF's biggest problem was getting caught up with with dot.com bubble. Lots of companies where throwing lots of money around, and having played catch for a while, charles and edward started to throw it around as well. Sometimes that paid off, sometimes it didn't. When the bubble burst, the company was simply over stretched.

MrLink - csports.net project manager at TPF, and (now ex-)husband of the office manager.

It looks like the kind of place in which I'd spend several hours a day. I only hope that my cousins from across the channel feel similarly.

Good luck. I have every available appendage crossed for you.

It would be my second home if I would live in UK :D Awesome job Sujoy, keep us informing!

just to let u know if there is a tournament going on should have some stuff to block from screen watching or something banners something that'll fit around everywhere incase u haven't thought of it already :)

Looks fantastic :) I'd actually consider going to a place like that to play =)

This definitely looks like the billiard room next to my school when I was 15, only bigger.
People wouldn't only come for the 8 billiards tables, practising, etc, but also to have a drink and spend some time together etc, cause the ambiance was good. Or to avoid annoying courses, in my case, especially around june. :P

It looks ambitious too, and I can only hope it'll work out. Gaming centers are needed if competitive gaming is to prosper. Good luck Sujoy !

I don't like those leather chairs in first floor reception very much, they look like they could give you some ugly back pain if you sit in them for a while.
Your customers are people who spend alot of time sitting down and as such you should keep ergonomics in mind.

Looks very promosing!

Just a note: Is it possible to bring your own keyboard / mouse? ( edit ) "Also we'd make sure people can plug in their own keyboards and mice and install drivers."

Also a spectator 'arena' is needed for events. Maybe a corner with some sort of platform for spectators? And in front of that a thingie that comes down from the ceiling for beamer to show the matches ( or other stuff related? )

check "first floor isometric" picture on the upper right .. vip room :>

your right damn!

Its early ;)

dont get your keys stolen! ( from the games ) Happens too easy here in my country :s

Not to mention RockXP - Windows licenses are the last thing you want to lose. Hacks like this made us decide between the system we're using now (which blocks and automatically shuts down active windows/applications that have certain words in the title, such as porn-related items or stuff like .exe and .reg), and Deep Freeze.

In the end, the system won out over Deep Freeze. But DF is certainly still the way to go if you're going to allow full playground-style personal peripherals, configs, and whatnot.

As far as I understood, you plan on running only G1 mice in the lan center. I would recommend having an alternate mouse like MX518 or similar so people can choose. Also having a quality cloth pad and a quality rough plastic pad to choose from would be nice. One thing that keeps me from going to lan centers is that I often end up with mice and pads that I'm not comfortable with. It would IMO be terrible to have monster gaming rigs and save money on the input devices (which is what people will notice as long as framerates stay good).

The plans look really nice. Finaly a lancentre that doesn't look like a computer lab at a university. Best of luck to you.

I'm not entirely sure how we can keep the more expensive mousepads safe. It might be a case of hiring them from the counter and paying a small deposit, I'm not sure. Good idea though.

Drilling a hole into a hard pad or installing a metal rivet on cloth ones and attaching a chain to them perhaps?

EDIT: Or here's another idea we've kinda implemented ourselves: Have a stock mouse surface for all the computers. Something above-average and easy enough to replace, like a cloth pad. Then based on your idea of renting out other surfaces, why not have a kind of in-house counter to sell them, with the option of testing them out first (like an auto showroom)? That way you have something newbies can feel and be comfortable on, then narrow down their preferences over to time to something else which they can purchase right then and there. Also opens up options for sponsorship from padmakers! :)

get normal cloth mousepads.. if someone has special needs for the mouse pad.. they can borrow one from the counter.. put one of those shopping mall tags on em somewhere.. so if they try to steal an alarm goes off..

Is it really worth getting mousepads? Perhaps a decent table top surface would be better in the long run. From a business point of view it wouldn't really make much sense, especially trying to cater for many different tastes. If people want to use a specifc pad they should just bring there own. If they forget they can buy one from you :)

The hire out stuff is a really nice idea ala pool, so if peeps are in London for the day and don't intend on playing then later decide to they can and know it'll be like home.

Ok tha's a little quaker/obsessed with mouse keyboard thing but FPS will prolly be your bread and butter games.
Wow etc can use anything.

Oh and the golden Rule which I'm sure you're aware of.
You should have a strict no staff play game policy.
Otherwise you know what happens. Staff end up playing games when they should be working or helping others out with stuff.

The last thing a customer wants to do is disturb a member of staff while he's in the middle of a game. it's happened to me at places before and it's frustrating from a customer POV.
Customers should not feel uneasy about asking for help.

Oh yeh and some special internal IRC room so you can message staff for help without havin to get up and go search.
Fixed id's so you can locate pc easy.

i started working in a gaming centre in brighton recently, which is nice. It's main problem is it's location, which is 'just' out the way round the corner off a main road, and this is hurting it's client base. Most people don't know it's there. You won't have this problem though sujoy, as you are going for main cities which probably have far more esr users there to create an initial client base before you even reap the benefits of whatever advertising you do in the cities.

Just to clarify, are you building a new massive one in london too, or just expanding on the existing one? I have plans of moving to london, and would happily work at it, would be excellent. You should have security on the doors, as you will get a lot more pikeys then you bargained for wanting to come into game centres who barely know anything about gaming, but just see the concept of loitering where there are computer games. they cause a lot of noise, swear a lot, and make the rest of the people there feel uncomfortable, even pushing the yuonger kids around. it's best not to let them in in the first place if they look like that sort.

hire me and give me a wondeful salary! (not as security, i'd get raped)

the London site is a new one

The other London centre you might have heard of is in Harrow so it's way out of central London. We're looking to get something right in the middle of Picadilly Circus or Leicester Square at the moment, that's the dream. It's very hard to get property in London nailed down though so that might take a bit longer. Birmingham is pushing ahead much more quickly.

i went to university in birmingham, which i finished a year ago. While i was there, i discovered there is an existing fighting games scene (it's not massive.) You can definitely cash in on this. Usually there are tekken 5 tournaments held weekly at this bowling/cinema complex which is a bit of a trek from the city centre. It's moderately organised, and they have little buy in cash tournaments, so the buy ins become the cash prize. They get a pretty decent turn out each time i think of about 20 to 30 guys, so that's a little chunk of regular business you could easily steal, as you are DEAD central on Newstreet St. Most of the guys who go to the tekken competitions seem to have local jobs situated round there too, so it'd be perfect for them. All you need is about two coin-op machines, and i can pass a message on to a friend there who can tell the organiser to switch to your venue when the time comes.

I will reiterate, that especially because it is right by Newstreet, a beefy security guard on the door becomes almost imperative, as train stations breed scum. Believe me, i've seen them.

We had some Tekken tournaments in Harrow (on ps2) and the turnouts were massive. There's a small area for arcades, ddr and stuff like that so I'll look into getting one of those machines. No idea how much they cost but I'm pretty sure we can't use coinop since you need a hefty license for them.

yes that's true. With tekken 6 on the horizon which is supposed to co-incide with the ps3's launch, that will be the kind of thing that reuintes that facet of the gaming community, much the way we always hope the next quake will for us. So that's definitely going to yield some nice revenue simply at the price of a couple of consoles. All those guys love soul calibur 2 as well. They all buy in with £10 usually, so that's pretty decent.

In terms of actually hooking an fps community to a centre, putting aside the spectator side of things for actual professional competitions, and pushing the clients past the point of just coming in for a gaming session whenever they feel like it... regular mini competitions should be held on the same day each week, or even daily if it picks up that quickly, at a certain time in the evening. An idea would be to do it in a way so as to encourage clans to form locally, so you could have people forming q4ctf teams while they are at the centre or something, and if you have say 4 teams worth of people willing to play, ask them to buy into a tournament, charge whatever you think is alright like £5 each, then offer up £50 of that as prize money to the winning team, and you make £50.

definately get ddr.
a euromix 2, or a really up to date one, nothing in between :x

Really excited about this :D I know it's been mentioned earlier, but when do we find out where to send CVs!? :)

look on this thred there is an email address in there (somewhere amid the 300+ replies)

Thanks =]

looks amazin.
good plans, i hope the reality will be the same or even better.

maybe i come on vacation to the uk ;) .

Any idea when as to an approximate date for when the london centre would open its doors to the public?

We're hoping to open Birmingham in October and London before Christmas, but these arent for sure just yet.

Let me guess, the name of your investor is Borat.
gl with your venture.

I wouldn't be surprised. Didn't Sujoy and Borats close friend Mr Baron Cohen both go to Cambridge University? And they're about the same age?!

i couldnt take the time to read it all coz im at work

are you doing one in london? :D

perferably near where i live :)

investors from kazakhstan almost certainly =russian mafia though so you may find that a failure to make money fast enough brings some pretty swift and devastating consequences.

just my normal wednesday doom and gloom.

never bite the hand that feeds you , unless you have sharp teeth !

and sujoy.. just an idea.. when you do launch the centers.. sometimes get the biggest names in gaming to come and train and meet people.. have teams come around etc. they talk about strategies experiences and stuff like that..

a big screen outside the center displaying games inside.. or promos or interviews.. some ambient advertising around the place.. small screens around the market area (whereever the center is) with maybe games running or something.. so that people get intrigued by the whole idea..

and a big freaking sculpture of Doom(blue) [the q3 model] on the top of the building..

well i guess it's not that easy, but it would be an awesome thing for this to get the known names there from time to time.

first, it would attract even more people.
second, it is kinda motivating to play when they're around.

Would be nice to run an ESReality invitational there every single month if we can afford it.

Sujoy, did you check the french Ultimagate project in Paris? It looked *A LOT* like what you're showing here.

I just hope you'll have more luck/honesty than they did :)

I had heard about it but it disappeared off the radar. Do you know what happened with it?

really looks awesome.

"We want to charge a basic rate of just £2 per hour with discounts for regulars."

this is very good idea. at least 30 regulars is a must have for a place like this.

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/12/0056211

good comments in this /. article.
i especially liked the one about hiring flirty high school girls. cheap tactic, but i'm sure it works!

Loads of info in that link, awesome. I'll have to read through it all when I have time.

Thanks for sharing, Sujoy. Seems like a very ambitious project. Looking foward to follow the developments :)

sujoy u shud try get sponsored by maybe steelpad , razer and sennheiser

sennheiser pc160's r great ! cost around £70 now i think , ye its alot so should keep them away and let ppl rent them out.

razer diamondback is a nice mouse , i no cus i use 1. but they have copperhead now but i dont no if thats gd but should be .

although alot of ppl use 3.0 and others.

steelpad QcK+ is a large mousepad which i like to use and ppl like the S&S aswel. though these will add up in price.


Icemat Siberia Headset seems to be nice aswel , there around £45 i think

u prob no about all these but some ideas for the behind to till stuff which ppl can rent out


love all the ideas , hopefully will be some cs tournys , u cud sponsor a clan or make 1 out of the best ppl who go :)

shame about the quake4 age thing, great game. should be different for multiplayer tho :(

but o well lol

Me and Dom have about 15 years of experience in the gaming industry. We did actually think of getting sponsorship! Standard things like this we have covered.

Still looking at all the different mousepads and headsets. It comes down to which will last longest as well as which will perform the best. I think some kind of hiring system is probably best and we'll keep them at a rental counter as you say.

I'm sure we'll work out something for Quake 4 when we put our minds to it. We have some very senior people in the industry backing us and who have the clout to make things happen. In the worst case there could be a separate 18+ area of the centre.

also if companies did sponsor you, its just gonna make the people who don't know alot about gaming think that the mousepads, headphones , mices etc are great and will head straight to your store and buy them. this way it is better to buy aswel as you don't need to wait ages for it to come in post , it will b cheaper then most of the companies who sell it on inet and you won't need to pay for P&P.

On the software used to create the account for the user wanting to play games, there are different profiles which can be edited in a second, ranging from guest user, to basic, to 15+, to 18+. Just means you need to verify their age on the way in.

in germany u re not even allowed to showcase the 18+ games to kids like some kid could walk behind that guy being allowed playing quake and the kid seeing it would result in big problems with officials

It is exactly the same in the UK.

Actually that's wrong. A BBFC rating doesn't just stop you playing a game. If someone under the age of 18 can see a screen running an 18 rated game then that is also illegal. Your place in Brighton can be shut down by a call to trading standards.

That won't happen though, I doubt trading standards are bothered. However with a big project like this one in Birmingham we have to cover all our bases or we would be negligent.

i checked it out actually, you are right. There is a specific area where the 18+ profiles go in the one i work at. Sectioned off in the corner, so i guess maybe this is what has to be done.

best gaming center in da world?!.

Since posting this thread I've been in contact with a lot more people for gaming centres I hadn't heard of. There are some really good centres out there, just not in the UK. We want to be the biggest and best in the world but I think it will be a close run with some of the existing centres.

yep i see, your plans are really big, but the main question, if this club will be profitable? hmm because now, at least in my country (Lithuania), hard times came to PC clubs.

Yup its really great idea, and i support you, but think if you anticipated all things :) gl with this project!

Looking very sexy sofar guys.

Just out of curiosity, what are you going to be showing on the plasmas when a tournament is not running? Or are they just going to be turned off?

I would suppose information about the centre. High score table-like info. Maybe stream some movies. We want to do a weekly podcast-like show from the centre for our website so we can put that on rotation.

erm and adverts suj, remember the adverts.

Its fantastic suj, BUT - if you wanna host events you need a spectator area whilst a day to day netcafe wont need, events WILL.
You could double it sportsbar or something to make money, but what is an event without spectators?
A venue of this beauty could host any gaming event that comes to the UK, but why go there if there is no where to watch the games? For example, how would you get me from the outskirts of london to the center of london for the WSVG UK event (for example) if theres nothing for me to do but watch other ppl play?

We're thinking of making out chill-our room double up as the spectator area. It's a big-old room in birmingham and we've been in discussion with people for making it a really high tech cinema (streaming movies that are currently in the cinema! more on that later) as well as a pool room, etc. Then when we have events that becomes the spectator area. It'll be tough but hopefully it can be managed.

Because not everyone is a gamer, in terms of keeping business nice and regular, it's best to offer a service which is solely for internet / msn messenger etc. Again, this is done by a basic profile thing to limit the privelages. Drop the hourly rate by a third to a half, and that ensures a lot more customers on a daily basis. When i finished being a student in birmingham just over a year ago, i don't recall many internet cafes in and around newstreet st. So it's a good way to cash in on the everyday guy.

There's a part not on the plans where we have a standard internet cafe and business suite (printing/faxing/etc). I guess that should cover the basic need not including gaming.

So if The Playing Fields closed down, why would I want to follow in their footsteps? I believe there were a lot of things that could have been done better. The price was way too high for a start.

It's a fair argument to say that The Playing Fields effectively priced themselves out of 'the market' - I can remember thinking the same visiting there a number of times. I can also remember popping in and it being completely dead most of the time, and wondering how it could survive. The Playing Fields had the same 'underground' feel which no doubt the venue had had in its previous music-venue life. Certainly it was overcrowded for CPL events, and more space would have been great.

My concern is that gamers don't lend themselves to this. Whilst most gamers will think it is a good idea to visit with friends, I really wonder if this will happen enough day after day, especially on an individual basis where home pcs and internet are much more standard now (than the days of The Playing Fields), and where the console market has a substantial impact on PC gaming.

However what I see could be the real benefit are the auxiliary roles of the centre, assuming the roles of an internet cafe, bar (+Starbucks*?), or exhibition centre, or cinema. In fact, the gaming probably needs almost to take a secondary role to these sources of revenue. The very central London location hinted in the comments here is sensible, if you take a look at the internet cafe (I think it is in Burger King underneath the 'lights' of Piccadilly) you will mostly find it heaving**.

*Although Starbucks tends to favour being located in book shops, that *kind* of thing would be great. For that reason anyway I would suggest a few more Starbuck-style sofa's and seating areas. If you look at how packed the Starbucks are at the base of Trocadero and Leiceister Square (where people want a sit down and drink) there's obviously a large secondary market here.

**Mostly because tourists wish to check email etc. away from home.

I think this is perhaps where The Playing Fields lost out - that they didn't see themselves as an internet cafe, which is understandably a much bigger market, and of course for this market they out-priced themselves. It was a shame to see them go, but perhaps the lesson there is simply to hedge your bets in the 'gaming meets reality' vision.

Looks great congrats & good luck with it! Stick to your main idea though it'll be good for daytime business to offer a business suite kinda thing but then again you don't want it to look like an over blown internet cafe if you know what I mean? What about offering spaces as a business conference center instead, (it'd work like that in its current format I think) I can see multimedia type businesses wanting to use it for something like that? Plus they'd be recreational facilities for them afterwards!

you should get aload of laptops for the chillout area, so ppl can chill at the same time. will there be wireless internet? could let people bring there own laptop. but you could stick a password on the internet so people can't spend hours on there .


i have also told about my m8s about this and if it all goes to plan and happens then we will all be joining. we live in walsall and lichfield which is 1 train away so we will be there alot. there is around 10 of us who will be going.

depends on pricing tho tbh. if there is a membership thing and we go alot its gonna cost alot hehe. if its £2 a hour we will be there like maybe 10 hours on a saturday n maybe 4 hours a day on a weekday

that will cost like maybe around £50 a week + food n we r all 15 so :x

have you got any prices yet sujoy? hopefully its cheap for ppl who go alot , or you could do a price thing like, when u get over a 150 hours there the price drops 50 p an hour or something n then again at 400 then 1000. it will then end up like 80p an hour which is better then around £2 but still could be alot. or something like that if you get me

Unbelievable.
Awesome.

Im not too far, Ireland, few h, in im there, huh, nice :>

The global games market is said to be worth around $28bn (£14.5bn).
Indepth market research shows that the online gaming industry will continue to grow rapidly, doubling over the next 4 years. The majority of the growth is foreseen within the western and european countries since they hold the majority of the global market share, thus why the majority of large esports gaming events are held within western and european countries. The UK industry needs government funding and more resources for us to be part of this global gaming revolution. There are over 26.5 million gamers in the UK with a steady growing upraise.

We gaming enthusiasts and strong believers in the future gaming generation revolution need to see some forms of support from government agencies, large corporate venture capitalist businesses to invest into the potential of UK gaming and the eSports industry. Gaming is a valuable contributor to a countries economy, I have spent many years of my life within the eSports community, where I have seen the gaming industry go from strength to strength. The possibilities and horizons within eSports are endless but it only requires large organisations to start building upon the current gaming trend.

The proposed and planned gaming centres is a break through which could be revolutionary to the UK gaming industry, this would be a central hub and meeting point for as many as 26.5 million gamers, finally someone has seen the potentials of what can be achieved and it is also about time we put the UK back on the global map as a very large eSports gaming entity. My heart fills with joy seeing such major developments and ideas being put into action. Time for us gamers to break out from our bed rooms, living rooms and poor quality LAN centres and to get involved with new gaming era, its time we see a high quality public social organised gaming events and centres which will not only boost our economy but to shape the future of the UK gaming industry.

Are you including console gamers in these figures?

According to the BBC Games research released last year there were 2.12m multiplayer games in the UK.

I read this post on Gaming Cafe's in the US not too long ago, it may be of some interest to you: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/12/0056211

I did not read the actual linked article, but I read a good amount of the comments on the slashdot news post, I thought it was pretty insightsful.

Get rid of those raindbow shape seat placings seen in last image. The curve is too extreme. I personally hate playing without flat straight edge. Would'nt want to adapt to desk shape everytime.

logitech g1's rock :)

should also have some vip rooms

like this pic

http://www.gamersparadise.se/images/gallery/t_sthlm_07.jpg

Make sure "CLAN AREAS" , where there will be regular 5 v 5's are FAR away, maybe at seperate corners of the centre.

We've become far too accustomed to throwing FLASHES and looking across behind your monitor to see the opponents faces and know where they are in the map. :D

Just a suggestion.
Its a brilliant idea Sujoy. Maybe sometime down the line when you've made enough out of this center you can open one up in the heart of Bombay City . hehe

Hi Sujoy,
Great to see the Birmingham Centre coming along nicely, looks set to be revolution in internet cafes and gaming in the UK, and even the world. This is something more for the hardcore gamers, as you know people are always critical about their mouse software, when you install different drivers the sensitivity does change and each software have their own acceleration speeds etc. All these drivers require a reboot in order to work in Windows, so it may be worth having a setting in deep freeze to retain the settings after 1 reboot (this is a feature we found in Swindon's icafe Wired-Inn whilst doing IG3). That way the mouse drivers load and if required the mouse fix can also be installed(which also requires a reboot), so they can both be installed at once and both be working after 1 reboot. On the 2nd reboot the system would revert back to its original state (with default drivers / no mouse fix).

As for headphones SteelSeries are just about to release their 2nd version of the SteelSound 5H. The problem with the old ones were a very short lifespan, but it looks as though they have resolved this issue with adjustments to their new design. The sound and microphone on the headset is perfect for all games.

Cool I'll get in touch with Steelpad to see what we can do. I have one of their originals (thanks to 4K) and it seems very nicely built + doesnt press on your ears too much. My only concern is the kids ripping off the microphones by playing with them too much. Could always have them for hire and they lose a deposit if the mic doesn't come back :).

Looks fantastic lads. Congratulations and good luck :)

I'll be nipping down the M4 to have a quick gander for sure

I hope you can pull this off sir. BTW make sure you hire the right people to staff the place, I've seen a few lesser centres that had such lazy people that barely did anything. But I'm sure you will find the right people for the job. :D

Tell him.
Sujoy, don't hire any gamers !

Excellent work, Sujoy. If this really takes off you may well become part of the new years honours list. Sir.Joy anyone? :D

Dunno if it's been mentioned, but for gamers, particularly for pro gamers when you're hosting big events who only feel happy or lucky on their own personal laptops or desktops, will there facility for them to bring them along, plug n play? Also, marketing. I've no doubt gaming magazine adverts are already accounted for in your budget. Will there be money in the £1million kitty for any TV or radio advertising? Either terrestial or perhaps satellite stations. Not sure what videogame shows are still on ITV or channel 4 or if there are any popular ones that people with Sky watch, but advertising in commerical breaks between shows like that would surely bring in a lot of business. Just my 2 quid. Good luck with it all, I really hope it takes off. Oh and when do you foresee the birmingham centre being opened?

Oh look, I found a working link to an old BBC video of Sujoy being interviewed. Pretty cool. Quite easy to see the motivation behind the entrepreneurial dreams. :)

http://www.bbcworld.com/content/clickonline/a..._cable.htm

http://www.sujoy.com/about.php

Fucking wow? Im coming to London fo sho!

I work in the LAN center business in Greece for the last 5 years. Having been somehow in Sujoy's shoes trying to fit a big event (such as CPL/ESWC qualifiers) in a LAN Center i know its a tough thing to do, both this and maintain the internet cafe's normal operation before and after it. Anyway plans look awesome, Sujoy if u have anything u might need a second opinion about it, feel free to pm me :)

just a small idea from my side:

if you are looking for sponsors and events to do, you should have a look at the music-tv-stations like MTV, and then have a look at the sports-games which are actually the most popular in europe as far as i know.....they prolly will attractive more people to tournaments than Quake, or UT or even CS will do, because in games like NFSU or FIFA even noobs compete, even if they have no chance, just because of the fact they dont know they actually are noobs in comparison to players that play 4-6 hours a day on the internet.........just have some small sports-tourneys every week and i am sure you will have a lot of extra-customers

That's really NICE. GJ Sujoy hope it works out great !

great idea, can't wait to see it completed.

A very big project, looks great and I hope it works out for you.

A couple of good points on the article which obviously you may have trouble with.

The first being the 18+ limit on Quake 4. I’m not sure if your be able to get around this one, I think your agree the best way for the time being will be to seal off one section of the location. A quick solution would be either some sort of moveable barriers? or some sort of curtains....both cheap and easy to remove.

The second point that got my attention was actually some overhead costs. Is there no way you can train / employee staff that understand the finer points on PC Maintenance? A good example is University Students, I can't speak for the majority but personally I would be able to fix the majority of computer faults. Maybe this would save a slight cost of recruiting specialist technical staff. Obviously this doesn’t matter if you already employee them in London.

I like the idea of a Pro-Shop and a Online retailer offering free delivery to customers, if this could be arranged hopefully you could make some slight money off this.

Another point as you said is durability of headphones. I agree those Steelsound headphones are nice (I own the original pair, also got from the same people), personally I’ve never had problems with them but that whole point of kids pulling on that microphone cord doesn’t sound promising.

Income from sponsors would a good source of income in Birmingham, for example maybe advertising subway around the corner? Pretty sure you’ve considered something like this.

As for staff wise, I’m pretty sure a lot of people would be applying for positions. Are you going to advertise locally or on this site? Gaming interest isn’t all that your after as I’m sure your well aware.

Good luck.

Wasnt at all telling you what to do there.

I also liked the idea of hiring out the headphones forgot to add that :)

looks and sounds good :D cant wait to see it finshed

Where can i get more info about your lan centres, i live in london and ive never been to one?
email me at digitalmastahAThotmail.com pls sujoy

I'll post all the information I can right here and in my journal.

Hey Sujoy just stumbled on this site... I have to say i wish you the best of luck in your venture. I used to work in a cybercafe myself for three years from 13-16yrs old, which has since shut down, pretty much for the exact reasons you state in your blog.

I myself am thinking of setting up my own, in my area.. as at the moment, since the one I used to work at shut 3 years ago, there hasn't really been a good one and this area has no lan centre worthy anymore. But again, as you state quite accurately in your blog, to setup such a shop you need money, even cutting a few corners, I was looking at, at least £20,000 startup costs possibly upto £30,000.

'I also liked the idea of hiring out the headphones forgot to add that :)'

Great idea tbh, with speakers - way too noisy - at least, if you hire out the speakers, you get some money back on them as, from experience and as you probably very well know, they do damn break easily.

'We've become far too accustomed to throwing FLASHES and looking across behind your monitor to see the opponents faces and know where they are in the map. :D'

Classic, screenwatching ( or ghosting as its now known I believe ); The most obvious way to do this in an organised event would probably to screen off the competitors, however for friendly's within the same centre, then you would probably have to organise it between yourselves to not be in the same area/room or just to trust each other ( heh, yeah ;) ) although, im not sure on the exact scale of this place, but an extra room or even 'cubicles' of 5computers could work or something along those lines?

We set up our Maidenhead store using a lot of equipment that was already available, and doing a huge amount of the labour ourselves. That one is 36 PCs but cost just over 60k to build and probably needed another 5k to jump the initial sales curve. We did, however, include a print/design franchise within there that probably cost another 20k on top of the normal costs, but you should check your budgets very carefully before starting your own place. IGUK can help with business plans and forecasting if you join them.

The ghosting thing isn't a big deal for everyday play, but in tournaments you do need to make sure it doesn't happen too much. I hadn't thought about it too much, but we would need ways of cutting that down. It's tough with all our curvy tables, we might have to make a simpler layout of the desks to help a bit.

this project looks very promising and solid, good luck with the "construction" and for all that's next :)

just out of curiosity, what is the name of the software used to produce thoses plans/showcases? (If you actually used a software, I googled Fury and Omega without any result..)

I love looking at this post, these centres are going to be really cool.

Wow, that sounds really great, I hope your project will succeed. Maybe we will have something similar here in Germany then.

Can you tell us the exact location of the gaming centre yet?, I know pretty much all around New Street Station having worked near there for 8 or so years. I think you will do well, but advertising is key to a business like this, and the more special events you hold to win prizes can only attract new gamers and old gamers alike, pretty much a win win situation.

Do you have a list of games that will be available to play?, sorry if I missed it!, but if you're looking for a fun driving game then checkout http://www.liveforspeed.net has really nice networking code and fun gameplay. Looking forward to seeing some Quake 4 action there too!

I'm looking over the floor plans and I can't find the Street Fighter 2 turbo arcade machine....? wtf?

Ground floor behind the escalator! Next to DDR and Tekken machines.

Can I have a job there? Only 1hr on the train!

Hi Sujoy,

Long time no see.

This all sounds very exciting and interesting, and I wish you every success with it.

Malc

There'll be one in London when we find the right property too! I'll try and get all the guys back in.

A small update, this week we have confirmed the lease for Birmingham and come monday we are in full swing on setting that up. Harrow has been closed for 3 weeks, and this is now completed and reopens on Saturday. This is now the first "Omega Sector" centre and it looks the business, with 70 Core 2 Duo, 7950GX2 PCs and the latest games.

Plans are for the next 3 weeks are to complete our designs and project plan for Birmingham, with another 2 months of build and shop fitting.

Over the next 2 weeks we will also be working out job roles and positions for Birmingham and then we will start contacting those that have contacted us with CVs. I expect to have most interviews and decisions completed by the end of September.

So opening is still planned for late November.

Oh, the location. Its 90-98 Corporation Street, Birmingham. The old Virgin Megastore. Size, 26,000 sq ft. Basically, you come out of New Street Station and walk straight up Corporation Street, its about 4-5 mins on your right hand side. Next to Computer Exchange for those that know the area.

One position we are really needing to fill is someone with the skills and experience to create movies. One of our plans is to create a weekly 30 minute podcast with features and coverage of the week in the centre. We already have 5-6 large tournament events booked with us over the first 2 months and we want to ensure these are covered too, so both real world coverage and of course kill vid's and plays of the week from in game coverage.

Every event we host will have extensive live video, interviews and in game coverage downloadable online.

Please let me know of anyone either in the UK or willing to move to the UK who can fulfill this role, or if its you please mail me with your details (dominic@esreality.com) and ensure you add "caster" in the subject!

omg amazing dom, looking forward to it

sujoy / dom

have u got any more news or anything u can tell us about whats going on?

and have u got any photos of the new look of the Harrow centre

Finalising design plans and building / fitout schedule over next 3 weeks in preperation for build commencing end of September.

Also meeting with various companies finalising branding and sponsorship of the various "sectors". For example, THQ are sponsoring the "war sector" to promote their upcoming RTS game Company of Heroes. We are also running a european tournament for them on the game in the new year. So we have to get that look for them just right. Also Intel are getting heavily involved with the branding to promote their core 2 duo processor (standard processor across whole network!) and VIIV.

Ive got 2-3 employment positions for Birmingham finalised now, mainly the senior mgt jobs, they will be helping us with the filtering and interviewing of the 500+ applicants we've got so far who want to work there! Cant believe how many CVs we got. Ive told them that they are NOT allowed to go through and throw away all those that arent 1) female and 2) blonde. :)

Im going down to Harrow later this week and I will get some photos done of the refitted out place then. I went last weekend but forgot camera and it does look the dogs!

make sure my sis gets the job, she NEEDS 1 lol

her cv is somewhere in there n she is in brum alot and NEEDS a job as she is always spending my mothers money lol which means i dont get as much :(

Omega Sektor Harrow is now up and running. We have refurbished our old Harrow Arena centre that was showing its age after 5 years. For pics, visit http://gaming.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6681

interesting read :]

i'd move to the UK to work there :[

hooray for gaming! \o/

looking very forward to this

When is the Birmingham centre scheduled to be completed?

I'm from Birmingham and I've only just heard about this. This is very exciting indeed.

|1.FJR| Chris

Summer '07. Would love to be more specific but there's always unforseen hold-ups. Hoping to get a 100% opening date and then I can give out more information on what the place will be like.

hopefully we can get some more news in the next few days? :)

have the jobs been given out yet as im 16 in july and i will be looking for a job, where do i go to try get one? iv been in the gaming scene for around 5 years now so i know stuff about most games and have played alot of games which you will prob have at the centre so will be able to help people n that

When there's news I'll be posting it. If there's no news in the next few days I won't be posting any news!

okay best be some news then as it sounds like if theres no news in next few days then the project if off?

correct me if im wrong please

I don't understand your logic at all. If there's no news in the next few days the project is off?

i read it in the wrong way, i thought when u said if there is no news in the next few days then u wont be posting any news! that there wont b able news again.

how come its taking along time to do it all? as i went past virgin megastore not long ago and there was still no building work.

2 me its like there has been no news for the public since this thread was created in august, when it should have all been built 4-5 months ago? well that was when your first said, i no things do change but whats changed for it still not to have been finalised? if you can tell us

sorry if this sounds rude but im not trying to be.

Stuff takes time. There's no point posting anything new until something happens, otherwise people will get excited about it at the wrong time. Once I've got a set opening date (to the nearest month) then I can actually give out details. Things change too quickly, I probably shouldn't have posted this first column either.

As someone who has opened a site from scratch I can say that some times things do not go to plan due to circumstances that cannot be broadcast openly. Sh*t happens, so gamers here should be patient with Sujoy ......after all, its his time and money at the end of the day.

Rly nice stuff :>

desk space. just looking at images :D