Author: ebashbozack

Microsoft: DRM is a GREAT THING, Stop Dancing Around and Own IT!

/ ebashbozack / 23 Comments
Get off the fence and go all out Microsoft!

Get off the fence and go all out Microsoft!

I am so UNBELIEVABLY sick of every single industry news article focusing on the new Xbox ONE and its DRM.  For those of you under a rock (and who probably won’t care because the XBox One won’t work under your rock) Microsoft announced in the past month details on its new video game/media console coming out this fall.  What has every single idiot in the media focused on in these new tidbits of information?  That gamers won’t be able to share games and buy used games like they are used to doing.  (GASP!)

Seriously, is everyone in this industry an idiot?  Does no one else see what has happened with digital media in other industries in the past 20 years to know that strict DRM is a GOOD THING???  Yeah, I said it.  DRM on consoles is a good thing.  Come to think of it, it is a GREAT thing.

Let me explain.

First of all we know that every human being in the world only cares about themselves.  Hardly any of us are Mother Teresa  types of individuals willing to put others first.   So everyone just looks at DRM on consoles like the idiots who sit on welfare here in the US and they refuse to look for a job because they think they have somehow “earned” the right to these benefits.   “I bought this game, so I should be able to do whatever I want with it.”

Why has no one dug through the archives and looked through the media hype behind the change between producing music on CDs (what are those? are they like an 8-track?) and the release of legal music for download that would be (OMG!) limited to use on just a couple devices in your household.  Remember that?  Napster?  Lawsuits?  Everyone swore they would boycott buying music through services like iTunes.  How has everyone forgotten?  Paying $1 for a song?  Outrageous remember!!!????  Of course now I have a Rhapsody account that I pay $15/month and use on 3 computers and 3 mobile devices for downloading songs and streaming on as many devices as I want.  I wonder what Spotify would have looked like in 1999 if it was side-by-side with Napster?

Games are no different than apps, music, video, etc.  Artists and programmers develop something that is delivered to consumers as bits and bytes now.  Video used to be slides, reel-to-reel, VHS and even weirder distribution like LaserDiscs.  Now ever single cable provider offers shows and movies on demand.  Services like Hulu, Netflix and now Redbox offer TV shows and movies streaming anytime you want.  Guess what?  It won’t be long before brand new movies will be released digitally to consumers instead of through movie theaters.  Old fashioned distribution channels drive up prices needlessly.

Apps have had the easiest road of all, simply because they were able to start from scratch.  Apps didn’t used to come delivered on a physical piece of media.  No one waited by the mailbox for their latest app to arrive via the postman.  No one camps outside a Best Buy waiting on the latest release of an app at midnight.  So there never has been any arguments with consumers complaining that they can’t share apps.  My wife has an iPhone 5, I have a Windows 8 Nokia Lumia 822.  We both have bought Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies and many other games separately and NEVER ONCE did I think that it seemed wrong to buy the same exact games twice.

Why is that?  A couple of reasons that all of the morons whining about Xbox One’s DRM keep failing to address.

This leads right into my points for Microsoft to follow and take control of this situation and own it.  I am sure they follow my blog of course. 🙂

1.  Distribution – Honestly, this one is super simple.  But it is also the hardest to break kind of like oil companies and electric cars.  There is so much dependence on these greedy and unnecessary retail companies to help sell their games that Microsoft is afraid to cut them off completely.  Stop being pansies and push digital downloads over physical discs.  Do the one thing that we all know is possible, make digital downloads cheaper.

Distribution methods now are archaic, expensive, not necessary and honestly not good for the environment.   I run a retail store and I know wholesale prices of our physical games are $48 each for $60 games.  Wholesale companies probably make $5-$8 per disc.  Larger companies like Target, Walmart, Best Buy and Gamestop get them direct from the manufacturers and probably pay $40/game.

Before that level there are the actual manufacturing plants that produce the games.  I interned at Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation here in Terre Haute, IN when I was in college and the last I knew all PS3 games were made right in that plant.  The cost for making a physical disc in that plant including all molding, artwork, boxing, wrapping, etc was under a buck.  The plant itself sold them out to the next level of distribution for $7 each.  Those prices might be different today, but the ratios are probably the same.

I believe that there is $25-$35 in costs associated with delivering a physical disc.  And our poor planet earth now has to deal with 750,000 copies of Madden 07 that no one wants to collect/play/sell/trade anymore along with hundreds of other titles.

2.  Sharing Digital Games – Don’t try to reinvent the wheel here Microsoft.  You can follow the lead of iTunes, Rhapsody and others by allowing content to run on “X” devices.  Or you can follow the lead of smartphones and other app stores and literally just allow them to play on the one device.  Stop making things complicated and trying to let friends share them with friends on Xbox LIVE or 10 family members share them.  All you are doing is trying to appease the media because they are calling you a big evil corporation and confusing the dickens out of the rest of us.

Once you are all digital, sharing is a non-issue.  We don’t share phone games/apps, we don’t share Steam games (but they love to sell them in bundles and you can “gift” codes to your friends, genius moves that are available once you embrace all-digital distribution) so we don’t need to share Xbox games.

3.  Lower the Price – I know I mentioned this above in the distribution example, but this could perhaps be the single most important factor in the entire debate.  If your new DRM allows you to limit the play on a digital download, then you are saving $20+ per game by not using standard retail channels for physical games.  That means you can AT LEAST price brand new titles at $40/game right out of the gate.

But don’t stop there, the app model I talked about before where my wife and I both have purchased the same game to play on each of our phones works because the apps are cheap.  If you truly go all out and control distribution of games physically and focus on digital distribution you should be able to sell more games that previously would not have been a sale at your level (used games now generate $0 for Microsoft and publishers).  Standard economics also tell us that if the price is lowered you will do more volume.

Valve is a great example for how games can be sold digitally at a greater volume with price discounts.  Currently console manufacturers have no way to put any of their games on sale for a weekend special.  Everything has to be done through retails stores.  It is so difficult to have buyers make instant purchases based on impulse that a weekend digital sale would produce.  Xbox should know this, they have been doing Deal of the Week specials forever on Arcade titles and older retail games that can be digitally downloaded.

So Microsoft can make more money and consumers can buy games cheaper.  Who would be mad about that?  Retailers.

4.  Call out Publishers – It is like meeting behind the school yard for a fight.  You get out there and your friends all day have told you to finally put an end to the school bully’s reign of terror.  When you get out there and face down the bully you glance over your shoulder and your friends are nowhere to be found.  Gulp.  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

The same thing has happened to Microsoft with publishers.  We all know that meetings have taken place between publishers and console manufacturers to try and figure out how to stop used game sales.  It is so much baloney when the publishers are now coming out and saying “we support used games and retail outlets”.

We all know that publishers stand to gain a sizable amount of money with DRM policies that are strict and no used game market.  They tried the online pass scenario but of course that didn’t work because consumers considered that as an “add-on” product instead of a portion of their actual game purchase.

5. Tell Big Box Retail to Take a Hike – Its time.  Don’t be scared, pulling off the band-aid will only hurt for a little bit.  By making a clean cut at the same time as everything above it will be a non-issue.  Think about this scenario:

On Release all Xbox One games are download only.  PS4 games are all disc or download.  PS4 games are $59.99 while Xbox One games are $39.99.  Game Over.  We don’t need Target, GameStop, Best Buy or any other retailer to deliver our games any more.  Put a fork in them, they are done.

The good part about all of this….

Microsoft you still have plenty of time to clear this up and do the right thing.  It might be tough for now, but it was tough for Apple when they started iTunes and it was tough for Valve when they started Steam.  Look at both of them now.

Here is another suggestion:  Stop letting the fluffy PR folks talk that are trying to “spin” this DRM stuff.  Duct Tape their mouths shut and let more of the brains behind the scenes give us their views.

Here is a non-verified leak from a Microsoft engineer that explains their point of view that is TOTALLY different than the sissy-mary junk that MS has been spewing at their press conferences so far:

http://www.neowin.net/news/anonymous-xbox-engineer-explains-drm-and-microsofts-xbox-one-intentions

Whoever that guy/gal is… put them in charge of the remainder of the PR content dealing with DRM.  I honestly believe that is a legitimate source of information because EVERYTHING they are saying makes sense for what the future is going to be like.

eBash Video Game Center’s Expansion to Indianapolis (Netheads Purchase)

/ ebashbozack / 4 Comments
I will put this store against any in the nation for best design and visual appeal, but not the typical eBash model.

I will put this store against any in the nation for best design and visual appeal, but not the typical eBash model.

In early December of last year I saw a post from Netheads that they were closing their doors after 13 years in business.  LAN centers have always come and gone all over the world, but this one hit pretty close to home for me.  I visited Netheads before we opened eBash to get an idea of how some people were running game centers and it was quite a surprise to hear they were closing.

I noticed that they were soliciting their equipment/business for sale and so I shot an email to Bill Noel the owner/founder to get more details.  We started talking on the phone and I scheduled a meeting to go view the store and see what kind of shape everything was in.  I was amazed when I arrived to find probably the nicest LAN Center that has ever been built in the highest income area in the entire state of Indiana.

So why did they decide to close?  After talking with Bill in those first few meetings it was apparent that there were quite a few factors.  Their original store was located in the biggest bar area of Indianapolis (Broad Ripple) and Bill had a restaurant make an offer he couldn’t refuse to buy the building he owned.  So he took the proceeds from the sale and moved Netheads from Broad Ripple to main street in Carmel, IN which is just north of the 465 loop around Indy.

At their first location, Netheads was frequented primarily by older gamers who wanted to grab a beer and a burger from their in-house kitchen.  They had some younger gamers playing, but the average age was easily over 21.  For the majority of its life in the first location Netheads only offered PC gaming also.

When they moved they also built a new kitchen, but that side of their business had slowly decreased from all kinds of prepared food offerings to more of a pizza oven and a pre-cooked burger warmed in a microwave.  Also in the new location they were not able to get a liquor license because there was a church in the same strip center and in Indiana you cannot obtain a permit within 100 yards of a church.

The city of Carmel has the craziest laws for signage that I have seen anywhere.  The new location did not have a sign by the road, but the landlord claimed that they had approval from the city to build a sign that would allow each tenant to put their panel out by the traffic.  That was never done in the 5 years Netheads was in the current location.  But no signage by the road was only half the problem.  The parking lot has large trees that completely cover the front of the building from the road so you cannot see the business signs on the building.

The game center portion of Nethead’s business was down 85% from its prime days in the old location.  The lease was finishing up in April of 2013 so Bill just decided to close the doors, finish the lease and liquidate the equipment.  That is when I came in and after analyzing the business I made Bill an offer to purchase the assets and assume the remainder of the lease.

At the same time I was in discussions with Eric Osar who owned Crazy Penguins Gaming in Rockford, IL.  They had announced also that the store would be closing at the end of 2012.  I made him an offer and we agreed on a price to purchase his customer list and assets.  At this point I went to 3 banks to finance the purchase of the stores.  One of the three banks was extremely interested because they had branches near all of the stores and we could also move our merchant processing (credit cards) to their bank at those locations.

The next 3 weeks we spent getting together all sorts of documentation and plans for the financing of these two stores.  To make a long story short, the bank led us to believe the financing was always “almost finished” and in the end someone higher up at a building in some other city finally denied the entire thing.  We were only asking to borrow 25% of the liquidation value of the equipment and could not get financing.

I was devastated.  Eric up in Rockford had kept his store running an extra month for nothing expecting me to buy the store and keep it running.   He began the closing and liquidation process a month later than he wanted.  Bill at Netheads was ready to walk away from our agreement.  At the last moment my wife and I cleaned out our savings account and I took a cashier’s check over to Indy to purchase Netheads and give the landlord a month’s deposit, another month’s rent and sign the assumption of the lease agreement.

At this point, most people thought I had gone mad, and that was probably partially true.   The lease was only good for 3 more months, but the entire time I had been discussing with the landlord the details on what I expected him to do so that we could sign a new long-term lease.  The space to the east of the Netheads location had 3000 sq feet that wasn’t rented the entire 5 years that Netheads was in that location.  We signed the purchase agreement on Thursday February 7th.

Before I explain what happened next, let me defend my insanity for a bit.  Netheads as a video game center location did not make money.  The store sales were around a measly $6k/month for regular business.  Our store model requires a minimum of $15k/month in sales.  But they had a summer camp program that was developed over 4 years and sells out every single summer (www.createandplaycamps.com).  THAT was the main reason I put everything on the line to purchase this business.   The camp teaches basic video game design to kids ages 10-14 and is an outstanding program.  The landlord knew that the summer was the bread-and-butter for this purchase.

The bomb was dropped on me 4 days later, on Monday February 11th.  I was at the new store, calling around and getting utilities transferred into our name and made a call to a sign location to contract the installation of our eBash sign on the front of the building.  They wanted me to ask the landlord who was responsible for removing the old sign and repairing the front of the building where it was mounted.  I emailed the landlord the question and about 5 minutes later the phone rang.  It was the landlord.

He suggested on the phone that I probably shouldn’t spend the money to get our sign mounted because the church next door had been given a lease option the previous Friday (the DAY after I signed the assumption of the Nethead’s lease).  The church would be taking over our location as of June 1.  I was dumbfounded.  My wife to this day has no idea what happened to me, because I am pretty intense and sometimes can be hotheaded.  Instead I just sat there and couldn’t believe was I was hearing.

So I put everything I had into buying the equipment in this store so that we could open a new eBash in Indianapolis and I was counting on the summer camp program to cash flow the purchase.  And now we had to move the entire store somewhere else in 3 months if we wanted to be able to host the camps that summer.  There were all sorts of other pressures at the same time also.  For example the main advertising for the camp program was in a mailing that had a deadline the next day for their “summer camp” issue.  They needed my commitment to run the ad, which was the primary source for filling their 171 spots the previous year of camp.

I spent 10 hours the next day sitting by the window of the front of the store hoping to catch the pastor of the church in person to ask them about their plans.  I had his cell number and left multiple messages and called the church number and left him messages at his office.  Finally around 5 PM he called me and agreed to meet me at the church at 7 PM that night with his building manager.

I explained the entire situation to him and told him how crucial the summer camp program was to my purchase of the Netheads equipment and location.  I told him the landlord gave me no indication of talking to them about taking over the space and basically begged them for the ability to sublease from them through the summer.  They were very nice and had a building meeting that coming Friday, they would meet about it and call me to let me know what they decided.

It will break my heart to see this beautiful store ripped apart if we don't end up staying here.

It will break my heart to see this beautiful store ripped apart if we don’t end up staying here.

Throughout the next two weeks we came to find out that the church’s main sanctuary was right next door to our store.  They were growing and needed to knock down the wall and make their sanctuary bigger.  However the wall between our spaces was not only a load-bearing wall but also a firewall.  Even still today there is still no word on if the project can even happen or not.

The great news is that while they have had engineering firms checking the space out they gave us permission to extend our lease through August with the landlord.  I signed the amendment to the lease about 10 days ago.   The camp program is a go for 2013 at that location and we opened up early registration for camps.  Already we have booked 23 spots.

Throughout this month we have also been opening on the weekends to regular customers and I have been extremely surprised at how many customers we are drawing with no advertising at all.  Simply through social media (www.facebook.com/ebashterrehaute and www.facebook.com/ebashindianapolis)  and our website (www.eBash.com) we have promoted these test weekends.

Because of the need to move the store I have been talking with other property owners around the area and we have some leads on locations that are even better than the current one.  I have met someone who I feel could become a HUGE asset in building out more stores over the next few years.  Now we are in discussions for not only moving the new store in Carmel but also maybe opening up a store in the Noblesville and Castleton Square Mall areas in Indy and perhaps even on the south side in Greenwood.

Some of the details of why I think the stores like Netheads (13 years) and Crazy Penguins Gaming (8 years) rode the wave of success years ago and have been slowly declining I will go into in later blogs.

Max Kaftanati you asked for the story about Netheads, so this is for you. 🙂

Why Do Video Game LAN Centers (or any small businesses) Fail?

/ ebashbozack / 11 Comments
Usually after a year or two, you will find this at your local LAN Center.

Usually after a year or two, you will find this at your local Video Game LAN Center.

This December we will celebrate our 9th year anniversary for eBash Video Game Centers.  We have had our ups-and-downs over the years.   There have been times when I wasn’t sure if we would be around and other times when I was sure we would have 100+ stores by our 10th anniversary.

I have started almost 10 different companies since I graduated college in 1998 and I can say with confidence that I have plenty of real world experience owning and operating a small business. I get frustrated with our industry time-and-time again because I see so many owners following the same path of destruction.

Back in my software days I would also see other small businesses struggling with the same problems.  Would you like to know what I believe most small businesses fail?

You cannot be one of the biggest consumers of your own product.

What do I mean by that statement?  Look at it from this perspective:  Could an alcoholic be a successful bar owner?

I have been very, very close to many game center owners over the years and it seems that most people get into this business because they love to play video games.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that you have to be passionate about what you do for a living to have a satisfying career, even if you are not the business owner and just an employee.

But I think as the owner/manager you have to be able to recognize the priority of being the engine driving the train instead of one of the box cars just getting pulled along for the ride.

Is there ever a voice in the back of your head telling you there is something else you should be doing?

Is there ever a voice in the back of your head telling you there is something else you should be doing?

Many of you that know me, know that I have a great love of achievements on the Xbox 360.  Over the years I have played in many competitions for Gamerscore that tempts my competitive spirit and makes me push way beyond the normal realms of competitive gaming.  Currently I am still the #2 player in the world on Kinect and I haven’t touched a game in almost 4 months.

But that has caused me problems in the past when I would just perform the bare minimum tasks for the business so that I could concentrate on my gaming.  Instead of putting 50-60 hours per week into growing the business, pushing events, working for partnerships and staying up with technology I would find myself gaming for 6-8 hours each day. Luckily for me, eBash was established enough during these lapses in judgment that the company didn’t die.  I also am surrounded by a great set of employees that could help pick up the slack in the areas that I was neglecting.

That was not the case in the past for our first and only official franchise store. The owner of that store became consumed with a certain game.  If you ever wanted to find him, he was probably at the store sitting at a computer playing.  His attitude followed his success in the game.  He actually threw customers out of his store for playing poorly on his team, threatened to fire employees who refused to play with him and the business itself quickly went from an upward trend to a quick descent into disaster.

In the end he had his back against the wall with creditors and vendors and had to sell the assets of the store to pay a debt with the IRS so that he wouldn’t go to jail. Currently I am considering buying back that location at the corporate level from the current owner just so that we don’t see another store in our industry close down for good.  It will stretch me to my limits, but if we are successful I have potential investors ready to help us build more stores over the next 5 years.

At the same time I am worried about our newest partner store as well.  So much so that I am considering removing the partner program completely and only focusing on building out our own stores.  We are already seeing them choose not to participate with us in events that are going on at all of the other eBash stores and I am hearing reports that they have a gaming machine at the front counter so that they can play while they are “working”.

If you are a video game LAN center owner and you are reading this I would challenge you to answer these questions for yourself truthfully:

1.  Do you game more than 10 hours per week?
2.  Are you struggling to grow your business?
3.  Do you feel you are doing everything you can for your business to succeed?
4.  If you have employees, I challenge you to ask them if they think there is more you can be doing for the business.

I would love to hear from some of you other owners (of any small business) in the comments below if you have similar observations or even opposing ones.

I never try to be the person who only complains or points out things that are wrong, so I am using this subject to start a new series to share some of the things we do for eBash to grow and promote the business that cost little to nothing but require a good work ethic and consistent follow-through.  Subscribe to my blog on the right of the page to receive an email each time I add a new blog.

2013: The Year of eBash!

/ ebashbozack / 1 Comment

It had been 4 years since we opened our Evansville location as a franchise store when we finally opened another locations in Charleston, IL in November of last year.  This was something new we are trying, with two great guys from the Charleston area who own the store completely and just pay us a monthly fee to use the eBash name and piggyback on all of our events and marketing programs.  They are doing really good, December ramped up very nicely for them and the future is looking bright.  We are in talks with 3 other prospective owners around this US to start new stores with this same program in 2013.

Toward the end of last year I found out that my long-time friend in the industry, Eric Osar, was shutting down his game center (Crazy Penguins Gaming) at the end of the year.  Within that same week I also saw a post that a gaming center I had visited before I started eBash over in Indianapolis had closed down and the owner, Bill Noel, was looking to sell the store and equipment.

The timing was not by chance for these events.  I had finished meeting with my accountant a week before and he and I agreed that either I had to start expanding eBash again or I needed to go out and get another job completely.  It wasn’t fair to my family for me to live on the salary of a single store manager especially with our third child on the way in April.  It is hard to watch my fellow Rose-Hulman graduates work their way into 6 figure salaries, but I doubt any of them love their jobs as much as I do.

So I called Eric and asked what he thought about having me take over their store, basically buying him out.  We have been working on the details for the past 3 weeks and are very close to finalizing the deal.  I have at the same time been talking with Bill about doing the same thing with his center, (Netheads), over in Carmel, IN.  Again, a few details remain but we are also close to finalizing the deal.

If/When all of this happens, it appears that by the end of this month we will own 3 stores again and the Charleston, IL store will give us 4 total under the eBash banner.  The Evansville store struggled a few years ago and the previous owner had to quickly sell the assets to get out of financial obligations.  The new owners admittedly do not know anything about running a game center, they just had kids who loved going to the store.  I have thought about offering to take back over the operation of that store also and bail them out of a bad situation, which would give us 5 stores total.

The reason that this prospect is so exciting is that FINALLY we will be able to do so many things that we have wanted over the years but just did not have enough locations.  My list of things we will be pursuing in 2013:

  • Summer Camp Programs – Netheads has started a summer program for players to learn basic video game design.  They have a solid curriculum that teaches design on a computer that gives them the ability to create their own game during the week and compile and play test it using Xbox controllers plugged into the USB ports of the computer.  We want to expand this into after-school programs and extend the offerings to adults with classes in Photoshop, Word Press Design and even some corporate training.
  • High School Gaming Events – With 5 stores in those locations we will reach about 50 area high schools.  I want those schools to put together teams to represent their schools in different games and we will host leagues and tournaments for those players.  These kind of events creates extremely level playing fields between teams because of the geographic restrictions of playing with teammates all from the same high school.
  • Sponsorship deals and promotions – These 5 stores in the past have served over 100,000 gamers in their locations.   The store locations themselves can reach a potential 4,000,000 people with almost half a million of them being our demographic of ages 13-24 and who love gaming and technology.
  • Bigger tournaments and leagues – With 5 stores, we can offer a $1000 payout or higher tournament almost every weekend for different games.  Not only can we offer larger payouts, but we can attract 5 times as many teams because gamers won’t have to travel.  Each store can attract 8 teams of 4 or 5 players, bringing up to 200 gamers together for a tournament that takes place at their local game center.
  • Weekly lock-ins with events – We run lock-ins every single Friday and Saturday at our Terre Haute and Charleston stores now.  However by adding 2 or 3 more locations doing the same thing will give us the ability to run Black Ops  2 or Halo 4 FFA events during the night on Friday nights, or maybe Madden 13 or League of Legends events on Saturday night for the 16+ crowd.  How about a Minecraft contest that runs for 10 hours during one of the lock-ins on our private servers?  With an average of 50 players per lock-in, that gives us over 250 players each lock-in to split up and run events.  Which store is best overall?  Which gamer is best overall?  Video Game Olympics?

There are still plenty of “t”s to cross and “i”s to dot before it is all final, but we are getting close enough that I felt like sharing a little bit of what is going on right now so that everyone else can start getting as excited as I am for “2013: The Year of eBash! 🙂

ggCircuit 2013 Pre-season $1,750 League of Legends Tournament Wrap-Up

/ ebashbozack / 3 Comments
2012-12-09 lol_website_featured

Zen Method from Gamerz Funk in Taylorsville, UT took home $500 for second place this past weekend in the ggCircuit $1,750 League of Legends tourney.

Last weekend was a big deal for me.  I am starting my 9th year in the video game (LAN) center industry.  It was December 10th, 2004 when I opened the original eBash location with 18 Xbox stations (the originals, not the 360) and 14 computers.  We have come a LONG way since then as a company and my perspective of the industry has changed quite a bit as well.

The other big milestone last weekend was the return of ggCircuit to the tournament scene.  ggCircuit was started back in December of 2008 by my buddy Jason McIntosh and myself to try and organize LAN centers throughout North America for hosting tournaments, leagues and other events.  We ran 33 events over the next 16 months paying out over $21,000 in cash prizes!  Here is a list of what we ran over those months:

1/3/2009 – Halo 2v2 – $750
1/18/2009 – Madden – $350
1/24/2009 – Gears 2 – $1,500
2/14/2009 – Halo 4v4 – $1,000
2/21/2009 – CoD 4 – $1,000
2/22/2009 – Madden – $250
2/28/2009 – Gears 2 – $1,000
3/13/2009 – Halo FFA – $750
3/14/2009 – Street Fighter 4 – $300
3/21/2009 – Halo Wars – $300
3/28/2009 – Gears 2 – $2,000
4/11/2009 – Street Fighter 4 – $300
4/18/2009 – Halo 3 4v4 – $2,000
4/26/2009 – Gears 2 – $500.00
6/27/2009 – Halo 3 2v2 – $1,000
7/25/2009 – CoD4 – $1,000
8/8/2009 – Gears 2 – $1,300
8/15/2009 – Halo 3 4v4 – $1,340
12/5/2009 – MW2 – $1,000
1/2010 – Xbox Gamerscore – $800
1/2010 – MW2 FFA – $250
Q1 2010 – MW2 League/Tourney – $2,500

As you can tell, the events became less dense towards the end of the first life cycle of ggCircuit.  It was a TON of work for Jason and I settling in each weekend to be online and admin matches across sometimes as many as 15 different game centers.  Over those 16 months some centers who were great supporters went out of business (which is common in this industry) and others just stopped running events with us because of the amount of work it requires.

About 2 months ago we hosted a League of Legends tournament at our main store and I was encouraged that maybe, just maybe, the industry might be ready for ggCircuit to start.  I put some feelers out with the LAN center groups I am a part of on facebook and inside the iGames forums.  Sure enough, people were interested.

So this past weekend we re-launched ggCircuit with a $1,750 payout tournament for League of Legends.  On Saturday, 38 teams played at 10 different LAN centers from Canada to Hawaii at their local game centers to crown the top 2 teams from each store.  Then on Sunday those 20 teams entered the championship brackets online to crown the top 3 teams.  You can check out the entire championship brackets here:

http://ggcircuit.com/Brackets/LoL-12-8-12/championship-brackets.aspx

Congratulations to Yolo Kimchi Squad from Eudemonia for taking home $1,000 for first place after fighting back through the loser’s bracket and beating Zen Method from Gamerz Funk twice in the finals match.  Sesame Street All Stars from PC Gamerz in Hawaii took home 3rd place and $250.

The fun thing now is that after a weekend of gaming I can release the pre-season game center rankings which is my super secret formula based on how well teams perform and how many teams each center attracts for ggCircuit events.  Ladies and gentlemen here are your pre-season center rankings:

#1 – Gamerz Funk – Taylorsville, UT (380)
#2 – PC Gamerz – Aiea, HI (350)
#3 – Midgard – Mount Pearl, Canada (260)
#4 – Eudemonia – Berkeley, CA (250)
#5 – eBash – Terre Haute, IN (160)
– Save Point – Morgantown, WV (160)
#7 – eBash – Charleston, IL (140)
– Galaxy Gaming – Sioux Falls, SD (140)
#9 – DIZeLAN – Azusa, CA (130)
#10 – Gaming Utopia – New Albany, IN (70)

Seven Xbox 360 Kinect Playing Tips and Tricks from the Number One #1 Kinect Player in the World

/ ebashbozack / 3 Comments

I love the Kinect and have been playing it non-stop for years now.  I don’t have any plans of stopping and I get very frustrated when I hear that people “hate” games on the Kinect.  Unless you are just extremely lazy there is no reason to not give the Kinect a chance.  I don’t want a bad experience to turn you off from a great option for gamers getting off their behinds and being active.  As the #1 Kinect player in the world and also playing in multiple environments I thought it might be helpful to create a list with things that have made my Kinect experience so successful.

  • First of all, it is worth spending some time moving some furniture around for your Kinect session(s). At my house and at the store I have the sensor on top of 52″ televisions (size of the TV doesn’t matter) and directly at my eyesight level (on top of the TV).  I have played with the sensors below the TV and it SUCKS TERRIBLE.  If you are ever playing with a sensor below the TV you will NOT have as good of a time.
  • Secondly make sure you are about 8-10 feet away from the screen. This might seem like a chore in smaller spaces, but the trick is that you can put your TV in the corner of the room facing out diagonally. I did that in our house and it made a huge difference. The farther from the TV the better, but honestly at the store when you get past 10 feet away the sensor also gets mad, so the perfect range seems to be between 8 and 10 feet.
  • Lighting is the third VERY important set-up. I have actually messed with this A TON at work, moving the florescent lights around the room and found that the light sources need to be above and in front of you. At home I have can lights in the ceiling in the corner of the room above the TV and that will be the only lights I have on in the room when I want the perfect experience. If you have to, move a desk lamp up on a desk or something and point it at you like a spot light, or two desk lamps. Having lights off behind you seems to also help a ton.
  • I almost always reset the tracking on the sensor when I start a game. For some reason many times the sensor either A) Decides to cut off right above my head and arm motions above me are not seen or B) It cuts off my feet at the knee and it can’t see my feet movement correctly. When you start go to the Kinect guide, let it “adjust tracking” on its own (which never seems to work), then choose to adjust tracking manually. Move the sensor up/down until you can see at least 1 foot above your head and a bit below your feet. When the sensor is at eye level it will seem like it is pointing down more than it should, but you can watch your image as you adjust it and it will be obvious when you get it positioned correctly.
  • Dress for success. Believe it or not it matters quite a bit getting the sensor to see all of your body correctly. The biggest thing I have found is to wear white socks, no socks or white shoes. When I wear black shoes or black socks the sensor seems to loose track of my feet quite a bit. Now it could just be that I have darker floors so in the rare case that you have white floors, I would assume that darker shoes would be better. Also the same goes for the rest of your clothing. If you are in front of a dark couch, wear lighter clothes. If you are in front of a light colored wall wear darker clothing.
  • Stand on a blanket.  This isn’t necessary if you have a solid color floor, but at home I have a patterned rug in our living room where the Kinect is played and on some occasions I find the sensor won’t read my feet correctly.  I put a solid colored blanket down and all is better again.  It also is nice when you are playing at night to dampen the sound of you jumping around the house when the kids are asleep. 🙂
  • The final tip is more of an observation of sorts. After all of the Kinect I have played, the trick is not necessarily figuring out what to do by following instructions in the game. The trick is figuring out what you can do with your body to get the Kinect to see what it wants to see.  Sometimes figuring out how to get a motion of your body to register correctly on the screen is the game, not the game itself.  I have done bizarre stuff facing an opposite direction, taking my shirt off, tucking in my shirt, pulled my shorts up to my chest, standing on a chair, etc.

Some of these might seem irrelevant, but I can assure you that each item above needs to be addressed if you want to play Kinect games and have fun.  Sure, not every game works perfectly and you might run into some that are just bad games.  Don’t blame the Kinect itself and don’t group all Kinect games together if you have one or two bad gaming sessions.  The Kinect is awesome and I am standing by it to the end! 🙂

New eBash Video Game Center Opening This Fall

/ ebashbozack / 12 Comments

It has been 4 years since our last store opened in Evansville, Indiana as a franchise.  At the time we had two company owned stores in Terre Haute and Bloomington here in Indiana as well.  We had just finished filing all of our franchise documentation with the state of Indiana and at that time franchising seemed to be the best way for us to continue to expand.

Since that time a lot has happened.  Obviously the biggest change was that the recession came to the Midwest in full force.  Everyone lost so much of their net worth as stocks plummeted and 401k retirement savings shrank.  It just seemed everyone went into hibernation to wait and see how and if the economy would recover.

The biggest changes since that time has been in the ownership of eBash at the corporate level.  In 2006, myself and my partner Shawn Wells were approached by an investment group that we allowed to buy a majority of the company to help us with expansion plans.  Over the next 4 years that group invested over $1 million, many times at their own discretion.  Many different things were tried including a different store design in our Bloomington location and of course franchising.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but circumstances and the recession forced the investment group’s partners to move out of the area and in 2010 Shawn and I bought back the Terre Haute location.  We continued to negotiate the rights to the overall eBash name and all assets company wide and a few months ago we became the sole owners again of the name eBash and all associated goodwill.

During this time I have always received 5-10 inquiries per month from potential new game center owners asking for advice, consulting and start-up assistance.  I try to help as much as I can in an honest, no-nonsense way that hopefully paints a realistic picture of our industry and business strategies.  Until we controlled the rights to the eBash name I could not really offer anything other than ideas and suggestions.  However when I met Derek Rankin and Harry Kim from Charleston, Illinois the time was almost perfect to start our new program in conjunction with their plans to open a new video game center.

The great news now is that we are launching a new plan to allow centers to operate under the eBash “umbrella”.  In talks over the years with publishers, developers and manufacturers we know that until we have around 10 stores operating as eBash in a diverse geographic area we won’t be able to get any kind of benefits upstream in the video game industry.  This new partnership agreement gives us the ability to help new and existing centers grow their business AND allows those stores to operate under the name eBash.

As we move forward in Charleston I plan on sharing our progress here on my blog that will continue to help many prospective and existing game centers with their own planning and expansions.  I also plan on releasing the details on how centers can purchase access to all of our planning and financial data as well as become partners under the eBash name.  If you would like more information just comment here on my blog or contact me : http://terrehaute.ebash.com/index.php/info/contact-info-store-hours/

Starting a Video Game LAN Center: How Many Stations?

/ ebashbozack / 9 Comments

Recently a thread in the private section of the lancenters.com forums prompted me to respond with the post I will share below.  In the past few weeks I have had quite a few potential new owners contact me for advice and consulting.  As we are in our 8th year of business obviously we have done something right.

The initial post was a new start-up asking if 4 PC stations were a good number to start with for their primarily console oriented center.  After many centers responded with “No way!  Don’t do that few”, “At least 10 or don’t add PCs”, etc. the poster just blew off the advice and said they wanted to start with 4 and “If they paid for themselves they would add more later”.  Ugh… no wonder our industry continues to see so much turnover.

Here was my response:

Seriously, why do so many start-ups come to the forums, ask for advice, and then still just do whatever they want.

Someone should go back and take all of those posts over the past 10 years and list our advice, then the number of months before the centers close.

Think about this scenario… 4 awesome PCs, sitting there on Friday morning… ready for 4 awesome customers to show up and play on them. Doors open, first guy in the door is a 38 year old bearded Magic the Gathering player who talks ALL OF THE TIME. He tells you all about his 4 different computers that are better than yours, talks about winning the national Pokemon tournament back in the day, then sits down at the 2nd computer in your row of 4 for the night. Booyah! One seat sold, only 3 to go.

Next walks in 3 guys who play League of Legends and are curious if you plan on holding any tournaments? They give you their ELO rankings and then sit down to play a game on the other 3 computers. They try to talk to each other around the Bearded Pokemon Master who is sitting in the middle, but then he starts talking to them about Pokemon. They roll their eyes at each other, but this dude won’t stop talking.

Next, in walks a dad with his son. He plays WoW and his son loves Minecraft. While they are waiting for a PC to open up you are stalling them trying to get them to play Xbox. The 3 LoL players are getting worked up and drop 3-4 explicit words and the dad’s eyebrows raise a bit. After playing free on the Xbox for a bit because you don’t have PC seats for them they take off and tell you they will come back another time.

Guess what? I hope you love the Bearded Pokemon Master because that is the only person you are going to see again. Word will get out about how small you are and groups of friends will never show up again.

Rule #1 – Don’t open a store with less than 40 stations. If you can’t fill 40 stations with players you shouldn’t be in this business anyway. We had a store with 36 stations in a city of 4000 population, entire county population of 10,000 and it was full every weekend.

Rule #2 – Don’t put less than 10, I wouldn’t do less than 20 of any particular system. Our main store has 54 Xbox, 34 PC and just 3 PS3 and 2 Wii for the parties and fan boys.

Rule #3 (more general rule for everything about starting a game center) – Don’t get caught up in your desire to open a game center if you can’t afford it. If you cut corners because your budget is too small then that should be a HUGE sign that something is wrong.

My Xbox 360 Achievement Obsession

/ ebashbozack / 6 Comments

Most of you who know me very well recognize that I sort of enjoy unlocking Xbox 360 achievements.  Alright, fine, I admit it.  I REALLY like unlocking Xbox 360 Achievements.  I am an active member of a great site at http://www.360voice.com where I am almost always playing in 3-4 different achievement based competitions.  Here are a few of the challenges I am playing in over at 360v:

Skyline
Mini-site:  http://terrehaute.ebash.com/skyline/2012
Forums:  http://360voice.gamerdna.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=25353
Description:  Randomly formed teams try to build the biggest “skyline” throughout this 3-4 month long competition.  One player from each team daily must build at least 1 level higher than his current tower by unlocking that number of achievements.  We started out with 14 teams and there are now only 9 remaining.  My team is the “Fantastic Four” and I have met 3 great new players that will remain on my friends list forever.
Current Standing:  Top 9

Buffet
Challenge Page: http://360voice.gamerdna.com/ccs/2012Buffet
Forum: http://360voice.gamerdna.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=25597
Description:  I never have much of a chance on this one because I just really don’t enjoy certain genres of games.  However I usually can maintain a respectable top 20 and usually push into the top 10 by the end of the competition.
Current Standing: 20th

Windows 7 Phone Challenge
Challenge Page: http://360voice.gamerdna.com/ccs/WP2012
Description:  This one is a new challenge for 2012 for only achievements unlocked on our Windows 7 phones.  The rule is that games only count if they are released in 2012.  I am holding my own on this one in the top 3.  I could push a bit harder, but I try to wait until the newer games go on sale before I purchase them.  Unless of course I can use the achievements on the same day I have a Skyline build and get twice the benefit.
Current Standing: 3rd

Another site I enjoy is trueachievements.com which doesn’t really have challenges on the site itself, but others created challenges based on games “True Achievement” scores.  The TA score is based on how many gamers have actually unlocked that particular achievement.  This is a WAY better indication of value because of the weighted nature of the points.  Everyone can unlock easy achievements so they should not be worth as much as the more difficult unlocks.

A couple challenges based on TA score that I am playing in currently:

Great True Achievement Score Challenge
Website: http://www.gtasc.net/
Description:  This might be my favorite.  A year long competition in which the bottom 2 teams are eliminated each week.  I put together a team of all Indiana-based players, so naturally we are the Hoosiers.  Kyle is a long time eBash customer, employee and close friend, JB330 was randomly put on my team last year in the Skyline and we have become good friends and the other two I didn’t know at all, just picked them from the Indiana leaderboards over at xboxamerica.com and sent them a message.  They are both great and our team is doing extremely well so far.
Current Standing: 70 teams remaining

Gamerscore Super Pwnaggeddon Marathon
Website: http://www.gspmarathon.net/
Description:  This is a 3 player competition and I have teamed up with 2 players that I have played with in the past but never have teamed up with them before:  Roku750 and MarvzMitts.  Our team is Boku Mittz and we just need to maintain above 75th place before September and then push through the end of the year.
Current Standings:  54th

Honestly I am not sure I would be into the achievements that much without these challenges and competitions.  I am a competitive guy and love plowing through Xbox games earning points to take out another individual or team.  Just like at the old arcades in the malls of america, it isn’t that cool to be good at Pacman unless there is a high-score leaderboard to show your initials on top of the rest.

Dealing with Maintenance and Broken Equipment in a LAN Center

/ ebashbozack / 10 Comments

Gaming peripherals are a big headache when running a game center.

You would think that after all of this time operating eBash we would have everything figured out right?  Wrong.  There are still some things that continue to rear their ugly head and this week I am really struggling with one of them.

We have always fought a battle trying to maintain our gaming peripherals.  A peripheral is a device that plugs into our computers and consoles such as headsets, keyboards, mice, controllers, etc.  Some of these items we really nailed down after years of trial-and-error.  Things like our Saitek Eclipse keyboards and our Logitech MX-518 mice.  Those things are rock solid and we RARELY have to replace or repair them.

While winning a battle on one front, we are totally losing the war on many others.  PC headsets have always been a problem.  We have tried many different avenues.  We partnered with Turtle Beach at one point and put $150 headsets in every seat that they sold to us at $50 each for us to be exclusive with their company.  It didn’t take long before they started showing up broken and we had to send batches of them back for repair/replacement.

We tried the $2 cheap-o headsets (which is what we currently use).  There is no warranty and honestly it almost isn’t worth trying to ship and maintain equipment through warranties anyway.  If we can get 3 months from a $6 headset then we feel we are coming out “ahead”…hehehe.

For the Xbox stations we don’t even provide Xbox LIVE headsets anymore.  We tried renting them out for $1 or $2 and they still just showed up broken or walked out the door.  I actually found a source from Hong Kong to buy them for $3.10 each including shipping which is a great deal.  We buy them and then sell them for $5 each which has seemed to work the best.  We make a little on the headset and the players are responsible for not losing or breaking them.  As a matter-of-fact… I need to order more now so off to eBay I go…. $3.10 Xbox LIVE Headsets.

One of our employees actually caught a kid eating the stick at one point like a person nervously chewing their fingernails. Yuck.

Which brings us to my biggest headache right now.  Xbox 360 controllers.  While the PC headsets and Xbox LIVE headsets can be somewhat of a luxury, the controller is necessary to be able to play the games so we almost have to include them without an extra charge.  As you can see from the picture on the left these suckers take all kinds of INTENTIONAL abuse.

About 4 months ago we started working with John over at 360tuneup.com to repair our controllers.  He is able to replace broken RB and LB buttons, solder on new stick sensors, put on new joysticks, repair shorted wires and just about anything.  We have I believe 12 of them in the store he has repaired.  One of them is the picture on the left that didn’t even make it 3 months before being eaten.

I want to figure out how to charge for peripherals just like the bowling alley charges for shoe rental or the skating rink charges for skate rental.  If you are a pro bowler or skater you bring your own equipment.  Those of us who are not pro are just as happy to use the rental equipment, but we pay a SEPARATE price for those items which is different from the facility rental.

Why can’t we figure out a way to do this more effectively?  The problem for us is that on a busy Friday and Saturday we will see over 200 players in-and-out of the store.  Many times we have 80+ players in the store at one time.  It just isn’t easy to keep track of handing out all of these items.

I am leaning towards putting super generic equipment on every station.  Just like rental skates at the skating rink they won’t be top-0f-the-line.  You aren’t probably going to win your bowling league or dominate the shoot-the-duck competition while skating with rental equipment.   If you are a picky player and you think the joystick is making you lean to the left or is always pushing up, then you can rent a high-end controller OR better yet bring your own from home.

The same with PC headsets I think maybe?  We can keep putting the $2 units out there, but also have a nicer option available to rent for $5.   We will have to put some extensions for the sound and USB ports from the PC cases down to the tabletop so that players are not always pulling and pushing on the actual computer and pulling them off the wall.

I am always up for suggestions, so if any of you readers out there have some ideas I would love to hear them!