Author: ebashbozack

Video Game LAN Centers’ Social Responsibility

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I get tons of inquiries from prospective owners and investors each week.  This week I had a great call with Terell Lipsey who is just in the beginning stages of researching and raising funds and during the conversation I was a bit convicted after our phone call.  As I stepped through the important factors to a successful game center with Terell the first thing I always talk about is the person running the show.

One of our first CS tournaments at eBash over 6 years ago.

Usually the owner, founder, investor, manager and parent of the store is the entrepreneur themselves.   I have had the experience of trying to replicate our model in 4 different locations now and the key factor to success is always the person running the show.  The biggest mistake you can make in my opinion is to run your store as the “man behind the curtain”.

The relationships you start to build with the employees, customers, parents, spouses, neighboring stores, vendors are of course immensely important to your business success.  Talking with Terell that night really made me start thinking of what my responsibility is with those relationships to make a difference in those people’s lives.

Without this being a spiritual discussion I want to just focus on the fact that I feel all of us as human beings are responsible to make the lives of those around us better.   I don’t think that anyone would dispute that when Haiti experienced the devastating earthquake last year we all felt called to try and help them somehow.  But what am I doing for those people right around me every single day?

I am going to pick on a few individuals at my store because they are on my mind recently.  Some of these folks I have been friends with for the entire 6+ years we have been open but none of them I knew before I opened the doors of the first eBash.  I want to break down one individual in particular because many of these gamers are in the exact same scenario.

 

Mark is on the far right… can you find him in the picture above?

Mark Repollet
Mark came to our store for a Halo tournament I believe in our first year at 15 years old.  He was quiet and shy but probably one of the best gamers we have seen at the store.  The players immediately embraced him because of his abilities and his kind and passive demeanor.  I don’t think Mark missed a single day we were open, and almost every night I would drive Mark and his younger brother Matt home when we closed at 11 PM along with a few other younger customers.

Mark worked for us for about a year at eBash while he was in high school.  He was late a few days and eventually our manager of the store at the time had to let him go.  Mark also attended youth group meetings with us at church while my wife Janean and I were directing the program and we also took him to church camp where we were counselors in the summer.  Mark has even house/dog sat for us when we go on vacation.  Needless to say we have grown very close to him over the years.

Mark made it through high school and got started at Ivy Tech Community College but didn’t go to class and I believe didn’t make it through one semester.  In 2008 when the flooding hit the Midwest his home was one of the many that was hit and I believe that set him back quite a bit as it did to all of us.  Last year he finally got started for awhile at a call center in town and worked for about 3 months before missing too much work had them let him go.

Now Mark seems to to be standing at a crossroad.  My personality is in-your-face with many of these guys and I constantly am yelling at him to GET A JOB.  The problem seems to be that he is just sitting in this “limbo” time in his life and waiting for something to open up to give him a sign on a direction to take.  He told me this week that he has put at least 5 job applications out there… but when I asked him where he said they were all at Best Buy. 🙂

So after my conversation with Terell I am feeling convicted about Mark and many other people around me at the store who seem to be in similar positions in their lives.  I wouldn’t feel so responsible except that there seems to be 10 people just stuck in a rut for every 1 person who has their act together.

What can I do for the other folks in similar situations?  In every case Janean and I have a great relationship with these individuals but yet I feel we are failing them by not helping to influence them to move onto bigger or better things.  Not as a parent which would (or should) be telling them forcefully to go to college or get a job, but just to help them decide on ANY type of goal and then help them make decisions that move them towards their final destination.

I want to make a difference and I am going to try to help (if they will let me) move them onward in their lives.  I feel that it is my social responsibility as a game center owner to invest my time and efforts into making these guys max out their potential.

So as a call-out to some of you other gamers out there.  Let me know what your life-plan might be and help me see if I am missing something OR how I can help you guys get to the next stages of your life.  People like:  Nate Utt, Zach Rainbolt, Kyle McCormick, Matthew Repollet, Cliff Harrold, Jesse Bridges, Logan Abbinett, Danny Elkins, Ian Bohnsack, Hobie Pyle, Skylar Long, Lloyd Vermillion and Vick Boyer.

How-to Series: Starting a Video Game LAN Center

/ ebashbozack / 21 Comments

Painting/Construction of the very first eBash location. We learned the hard way!

This is a post series that I started 2 years ago on my old blog that hasn’t made it over to this new site.  I have taken about a dozen inquiries in the last few weeks from prospective LAN Centers and it really brought me back to this series.  I will start by reposting the original few blogs and then pick-up where I left off on the series.  Hopefully I can categorize all of this into a nice little section of the blog for reference.

Originally written 8/27/2009

Lately I have been talking to tons people who are thinking about opening a game center as well as those who have recently opened and are still trying to find the magical solution. eBash currently has 3 centers open and we still push the limits of the industry and constantly try new ideas and concepts in the stores.   A recent conversation with David from Virtual Arena (2010 NOTE: R.I.P. Virtual Arena) made me realize that there are stages we go through in this business.

However there are some core things that have happened over the years with our growth that I have divided into “Phases” of being in business as a game center owner. I thought that I would dive into each of these phases to dig out more of the problems and solutions that seem to continually come up in discussions.

The individuals who are in this first phase, which I call “The Idea” phase, drive me crazy most of the time. I am going to try and keep as many things as vague as possible to protect the identities of the individuals. However some of the situations continue to remind me how far we have come and the milestones we have hit along the way.

Usually there is a pretty good chance that the person wanting to start a game center is a gamer. In fact I can’t recall meeting a single person who was not a gamer that wanted to start a game center unless their son/nephew/brother is a gamer. The problem with that is that from what I have seen gamers make terrible businessmen.

Gamers get it in their mind that the LOVE of video games = money. This is not true. Just because players love to play does NOT mean that they will show up at a game center to pay to play. In fact the most diehard gamers usually make for terrible customers. They are always “too good” for the systems and players at a game center. My own opinion is that the diehard gamers are socially handicapped and cannot interact with other humans very well.

So these gamers decide they want to start a game center and of course they know EXACTLY what will work to make TONS of money. Here are a few of my favorite things they come up with right out of the gate:

– Big Screens for Consoles. In fact the bigger, the better they say. I have seen centers open up with all rear-projection 50” screens or ONLY projectors with big screens on the walls.
– The diehard PC guy: We will run 16-20 computers and then maybe 1 or 2 Xbox stations. I mean seriously, just buy more computers. I love it when they then say the Xbox isn’t popular and no one ever plays it. DUH!
– I have the perfect location. This is usually followed up by the “its right across the street from a big college” or “the rent is only $300/month”.
– I only need 12 stations to make a profit. This is usually followed up by a comment about how their marketing is going to be so awesome that all 12 stations will be filled up all of the time.
– Pricing. There are way too many different pricing errors made to list just a few here, but usually the best are either: Too High (ex: $10/hour), Too Low (ex: $1/hour), Bad Products (Long Passes: Month or Year)
– “I will be able to get all of my games for free”. Somehow those who are not actually in the industry yet have this idea that all gaming centers get everything for free. They just assume that since “Game Centers are so Awesome that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will give us everything for FREE to promote themselves”.
– Do I really need a business plan?
– I am going to go to a bank and get a commercial loan.

There are plenty more examples of bad idea in the first phase of “The Idea”. However what it all boils down to is one thing I now know:

Experience > Intelligence

I don’t care how smart you are, how many people you know, how big your checkbook is or what your background has been the fact is you will probably fail in this industry if you don’t have help to get started.

Those of us that have been open for more than 5 years have only done so because they have all of those things + luck + the ability to adapt quickly on the fly.

Most of us as independent business owners are proud individuals and it is hard for us to admit when we are wrong. That is the first thing that we have to do ESPECIALLY in an industry where there are no proven models yet. Even today the top game centers have yet to establish a long term history of profitability and expansion.

None of us have all of the answers. But learn from those who have gone before to keep from making the same mistakes.

I might actually stop answering the question from people who call me about franchising: “Why would I franchise with eBash instead of doing this myself?”

End of Original Blog

Before I post the second part of this series I will spend the next few days breaking down the 8 statements above and give more information WHY those ideas just don’t work and will push new centers to failure.

Our Video Game LAN Center during Bad Weather

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Obviously from my terrible lack of posts this week things have been a bit upside down at the store.  I thought it would be applicable to do a quick post on the effects of bad weather and mainly school cancellation with the operations of a game center.  Let’s go through a day-by-day synopsis for the week (**note – customer count each day is gaming customers, not retail customers):

Our local "Super" Wal-mart's milk section during the ice storm.

Monday – 18 Customers
All day everyone is running around scared of the upcoming storm.  Our particular area is in the “Ice Zone” and we are being told there will be up to an inch of ice on everything.  All of the local grocery stores are packed and empty of nearly all bread, eggs and milk.  I included an awesome picture the Shawn took when he was at our super Wal-Mart looking for milk.

School finished as usual this day but all teachers were instructed to go home no later than 4 PM and all evening activities for almost every single business and organization was cancelled.  I opened that day and Tucker was closing and we saw VERY few people all day.  In fact that night, for the first time that I can remember, we shut down early and Tucker went home around 10 PM.  The freezing rain started about 6 PM

Tuesday – 19 Customers
School was cancelled for everyone including Indiana State University and the other local colleges.   About 10,000 homes in our county were without power from the previous night’s “first wave” of the storm.  Nothing really happened with the weather during the day this day.  I loaded up the family, picked up Didier who needed a ride to the store, and we headed in to help Dustin get opened at our normal time at 2 PM.  Nearly every business in the community was closed and many were without power.

The center had power and today was the release of the First Strike map pack for Xbox 360.  We had around a dozen people show up right away, some to play Black Ops, but others just to get online or maybe just get warm and charge their cell phones.  The weather started getting bad later in the afternoon and Ashley and I decided earlier in the day to close at 10 PM.  Sales were low on game time but we did about 300% better on weekday retail sales.

Wednesday – 32 Customers
Once again everything was closed in the city.  State of Emergency called for only emergency travel.  I saw as high as 20,000 homes without power during this time on the Duke Energy website.  I opened the store at 2 PM that day.  I wasn’t sure if we would see many customers, but I also thought we might see more than usual as some people had been out of power for 2 days.  There were still around 12,000 homes without power all day.  I thought we might jump out this day because everyone would have a couple of days of cabin fever, but honestly I was disappointed.

One thing to note also on this day as well as yesterday EVERYTHING was closed.  The mall, city offices, movie theater and pretty much everything but gas stations and hotels.  I thought that maybe as the only place in town with the lights on we would just get people stopping because nothing else was open! 🙂

Thursday – 93 Customers as of 9 PM
Well today (as of 9 PM when I am writing this) the store was a complete madhouse.  A few things are back open today, but school is still out today and again tomorrow for the grade schools.  The universities went back today and finally most of the businesses in the area are back open.  We did our Facebook day today instead of our normal day of the week which is Tuesdays.

I really am baffled by the changes from day-to-day during this time.  I wish we would have ran our Facebook special all week long so that I could have compared the day’s traffic with the same special offer.  Would I have been able to bring out the bigger numbers on the previous days with a “deal” or special offer?

The worst part about the week is that everything seems upside-down.  It seems that everyday could not be planned out because of the uncertainty with the weather.   I feel at the end of the week that nothing much was accomplished at all when it comes to the store.  We were able to get a jump on some outside consulting projects but gaming wise we took a few steps backwards.

Black Ops First Strike Map Pack = Best Buy $17.99 1600 Point Cards

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Best Buy 1600 Point Cards on sale this week for $17.99

For all of the deal shoppers like myself don’t miss the chance to stop by Best Buy tomorrow or anytime this week to get a 1600 Point card for only $17.99.  This comes in real handy for all of the Call of Duty Black Ops Map Pack purchases tomorrow.  The map packs are 1200 points and should be ready to download around 4 or 5 AM EST.  Here is the link to their online deal if you don’t have a Best Buy near you:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Microsoft+-+Xbox+Live+1,600+Points+Card/1272605.p?id=1218245811394&skuId=1272605

Video Game ( LAN ) Center Leaderboard

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My good friend and partner Shawn (nite423) loves to dabble with new toys.  I guess all of us in this industry are the same way but he seems to really get the “itch” sometimes to go after new things.  A few months ago he bought a new printer on eBay that is able to make poster and banner sized prints.  Actually I think it might be called a plotter, specifically it is an Epson Stylus PRO 7600.  That is about the extent of my knowledge and that just comes from looking at the label on the front of the machine. 🙂

 

One of Shawn's masterpieces laying on a 6 foot table. My phone camera doesn't do this glossy beauty justice.

After it blew up in shipping to us, fighting with the seller to get a refund, taking it to a local repair store to get it fixed and tons of tweaking on his part the bad boy was up-and-running a few weeks ago.  He immediately started printing all sorts of awesome graphics to hang in the store and even is making some special request pieces for customers.  The thing is amazing and easily is worth the money 10 times over.  I would recommend every game center and even other business owners look into getting one.  Don’t go after a new one unless you just want a nice tax write-off.  Check eBay and other sites and there are other newer models and different manufacturers also that make these printers.

So what does it have to do with a Video Game Center Leaderboard?  Bear with me a bit longer.  A few months ago at our employee meeting Tucker (ee Loque) suggested that we have a leaderboard in the lobby of the store to show which customers have the high score in certain games.  Personally I think this idea is outstanding because the entire concept of the arcade business back in the 80s was feeding off the competitive nature of humans trying to get their name at the top of the list.

At that time we moved an unused 52″ HDTV flat screen to the lobby and mounted it on the wall.  (Yes, I said unused 52″, but that is another story…)  As Dustin (ee TheBum) started working on leaderboard graphics to put onto the screen we ran into the problem of how to display them without causing screen burn.  We wanted a uniform leaderboard but would have to make unique screens for every game to make sure we didn’t line-up the same graphics in the same spot causing the screen to “burn in” the image.

Next thing we knew it was the busy holiday season and the Xbox Kinect came out.  We moved this 52″ HDTV into a private room for the Kinect and put back a 32″ screen in its place.  We use that screen now along with another one in the lobby to stream game trailers for upcoming games.  We sort of forgot about the leaderboard concept.

Then two weeks ago Shawn got one of the two pinball machines going again. (Yet another long story)  The Twilight Zone is an amazing pinball machine and highly addictive to play.  We have them on free play in the store and anyone with time on their account is welcome to play.  It didn’t take long before Logan (Dr Mario65), one of Tucker’s roommates and long-time eBash customer, had the top score on the machine.  Tucker is a big pinball fan and is furiously trying to take down that record right now and Logan reminds Tucker every chance he can get that he is #1.

So… larger printer, leaderboard idea, pinball, high scores and Tucker’s obession with pinball came into play at the employee meeting last night.  We were discussing together what other events or structured formats we could put into place for the store to give players more purpose when playing.  Tucker said “What did we ever do with the leaderboard idea a few months ago” and we were off to brainstorming again and finally put all of those things together.

The leaderboard will go where the BAWLS sign is hanging to the right of the front counter.

We have a large wall right at the front counter with BAWLS advertising information from and old partnership with them.  We are going to take that down and start a leaderboard wall right in plain view of every customer in the store.  This isn’t just about having the high score, we have events and fun challenges all of the time at eBash and this is going to give us a way to keep track of them.  The new printer is KEY to making this awesome right up front.  A few examples we are thinking of starting with:

– We usually hold a BFB (Battle for the Banner) event every 18 months.  The past winners have gotten banners (or should have gotten banners) posted in the store with their team name and player roster.  We will have one section of the leaderboard for all of the past BFB events.

– I do a fun thing with customers who play with me personally where we try to win as many games in-a-row online as possible.  We started that with Halo 2 and currently our games are Black Ops on Xbox 360 and League of Legends on PC.  I put carrots along the way as rewards starting with one level that will earn each player a free “power pack” which is a drink, candy bar and bag of chips of their choice.  The next level will get each player a free day pass and the top goal reward is a week pass.  Recently a group of us made it to the 30 in-a-row mark in Black Ops.  So the names of Fred (Stinkyg0at), Skylar (Boonzing), Johnny (B0onzing), Didier (2Good2BMyFriend?), Hobie (xxKITHxx) and I will all start off on the leaderboard wall.

– We will feature a leaderboard vs. other game centers in parallel with the new Game Center Matchmaking service I am starting.

– We will probably have a gamerscore leaderboard for Xbox and perhaps an achievement leaderboard for World of Warcraft.

– Some simple ones might just be the top players in the most popular games.  Most wins in League of Legends, top win percentage in Black Ops, etc.

– We are thinking of giving the “King(s)” of their respective leaderboards the ability to purchase drinks in the store for only $1.  As long as they stay on top they will have that honor.

We have a few more ideas for the leaderboard wall, hall of fame wall, king of the hill wall or whatever we decide to call it.  The key is having the most popular games featured right up front.  After newer games replace them instead of wasting those leaderboards we will move them down the hallway until the entire hall is full of different leaderboards and players can see their titles and names live on in glory forever.  Who knows… maybe in a few years someone will think they can get more than 30 games in-a-row in Black Ops and try to take the title from us????

Game Center Matchmaking Service

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Brackets

There is just something exciting about tournament brackets.

All week I have been working on finishing the details for the new matchmaking service that I would like to build.  I have been getting great feedback via email, phone calls, replies here on my blog and in the iGames forums from other centers.  I will mention a few of the individuals in some points below that I thought had outstanding suggestions.

The basis of this new gaming league/circuit/recreation website is that all of our game centers have players who want to participate in something organized for gaming.  Here are some bullet points focused on the need:

  • All game centers could use more regular customers in the door
  • Gamers by nature are competitive
  • The largest percentage of the gaming population does not want to pay an entry fee and play to win cash in a standard tournament format, BUT they still want to play in organized events
  • Gamers all over the US (and the world) are playing at different times
  • It is very fun to play with a group in person on your team against a team in another location
  • Many gamers get bored of playing standard “matchmaking” built into games not because of the game itself but because of the way teams are formed.

So essentially I want to create a site where there are players and teams that can match up and play against each other at game centers all over.  Here is a breakdown of how the system will work from a player and employee perspective:

1. Gamers create their profile on the site.  Quick and simple, username, password, email and game center name.  This is necessary the first time playing only.
2.  For our example let’s say five gamers get together and request a match at the front counter of the game center for League of Legends.
3.  Employee on duty first looks to see if any other centers have gamers waiting on a League of Legends match.  If so they match them up.  If not the employee enters the 5 gamer names as looking for a match in League of Legends.
4.  Employees at both centers give their teams the opposing team’s usernames for the match.
5.  Match is set-up and played by the gamers and then reported to the employees.
6.  Employee enters results and then either removes the gamers from the queue (if they are done playing) or goes back to #1.

Looking at some ideas and concepts for more of the details:

– Badges/Achievements will be used (great inspiration from 360voice.com) for accomplishments associated with the player accounts.  These can be for all sorts of individual, team and center accomplishments.  Some examples that we will use might be a reward for top daily wins (player, center), top weekly wins (player, center), most matches played (player, center), most matches assigned in a day (employee, center), etc.
– System will need to be very focused on personalization.  Each player will have their own profile as well as each team and each game center.  There will be 3 layers of groups:  Centers, Teams and Players
– Everything will be driven by the employees working at any given time.  Those employees will simply login with their elevated membership account that gives them access to queue up players/teams and talk with other game center employees to arrange matches.
– Themed days/nights (kudos to Chris from GameYard).  Although the idea for the site is the concept of play anything, anytime, anywhere there still needs to be certain nights/days especially during the week to focus on certain popular titles.   League of Legends Tuesdays or Black Ops Thursdays for example.
– As centers we always focus on making our weekdays busier, but I think to do this we need to start by focusing on our customers who are there on the weekend.  If this system is going to work we need to actually run it heavy on the weekends to get the word out to players who are at the center.  Then the competitive nature will hopefully drive those players back to the store during the week to pick-up more matches.

We should have the beta site finished up and ready next week for some test matches.  I already have about 10 centers that I know will want to help out and I am looking for anyone else that is interested for a test during February.  Also if any of the owners out there that are really active in their centers want to help out administrate the program with me I would appreciate the help.

Deal of the Day: Little Big Planet + Dead Space 2 + 1600 MS Points = $90

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Saved $100 today! Woohoo!

I picked up two of these today so I can vouch that the deal works.  Over at Kmart’s new Gamer blog (yes, Kmart has a gamer blog… wow) there have been a couple of postings for great deals on new games.  Today’s post was that Dead Space 2 purchased at $59.99 will get you a free $19.99 MS 1600 Point card or $20 PSN card.  Looking down in the blog farther you can see that another current deal is buy Little Big Planet 2 on PS3 and get any other game for 50% off.   I figured, why not put them together?

http://www.mykmart.com/mykmart_blog/tags/Kmartgamer

Sure enough folks over at slickdeals had tried it and had some mixed luck.  The key is not saying anything to the employees because they get somewhat confused and don’t really need to do anything because the computer will ring it up correctly.  Here is what I did:

In 2 different transactions I had them ring up in this order:

Little Big Planet 2 for Playstation 3 = $59.99
Dead Space 2 for Xbox 360 = $59.99 – $30 promotion with Little Big Planet 2
1600 MS Point Card = $19.99 – $19.99 promotion with purchase of Dead Space 2

Total cost $89.98

I did two of these transactions and with tax walked away with the following for under $200:

(2) Little Big Planet 2 PS3
(2) Dead Space 2 Xbox 360
(2) 1600 MS Point Cards

Pretty good day, I might go back for a couple more on the way home.  Hard to resist a good deal! 🙂

New Competition Ideas + Record Setting Lock-in

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Representing the Colts at South Padre Island on vacation with my son Zander.

It is both good and bad to be back from a 9 day vacation.  We left South Padre Island yesterday morning where it was 60 degrees and arrived in Indianapolis late this afternoon and it was 15 degrees.  Nothing like a 45 degree shift in temperature DOWN to bring me back to reality.  I loved the time on the beach with our family but we are anxious to get back into the swing of things back home again in Indiana.

While I was gone I have been both discouraged and inspired for our stores and our industry.  It seems like all of a sudden the new year has woken up a few stores that were holding on to hope and a few stores are starting to announce they are closing their doors.  There are always a ton more that just silently fade away but anytime we find out stores are closing it is a bit depressing.  On top of hearing these stories our own store was SUPER slow to start 2011.  So I was in a general funk last week (while on vacation which makes it hard to relax).

Then we hit Friday night and we had 80+ show up out of the blue for our normal monthly lock-in.  That was a record for us by 17 (previous record was 63).  We still had a few seats left because of normal daily customers playing that didn’t stay the night but at one point every seat in the store was full and people were waiting on spots to open up.   We followed that up with a decent Saturday and private group lock-in and PRESTO! our month was trending back towards normal sales numbers.

One thing I have been considering is how organized “events” bring people out to play.  The first two weekends of January we didn’t have anything scheduled and the sales numbers were below average.  As soon as we plan a lock-in over 80 gamers show up to hang out all day and night on a Friday.  Where were those people previously?  I believe that many gamers just need a reason to get out and play.

I don’t necessarily mean big payout tournaments either.  Just an organized, planned and promoted “event”.  Game release party, overnight event, friendly competitions, recreational events, etc.  I would agree that *some* customers organize their own get-togethers for groups of friends to get together and raid in WoW or play some League of Legends.  But most gamers are not that organized and want to be included in something without getting too far out of their comfort zone.

Game Center King of the Hill Anyone?

I am in the process of building a simple tool for gamers that attend a game center to find other players throughout the nation to “scrimmage” or join together to play games.  All of us have a computer at the front counter and an employee sitting behind it that can verify and assign groups to players.  I want us to queue up players who are interested in playing a match against someone that is a bit more organized than a pub match.  It seems like I always have League of Legends and Black Ops Xbox 360 players in my store that are itching to prove their manhood.  I want to use that to create a king of the hill style of ongoing competition between game centers.  More on that later this week.

Another item I want to work with is team gamerscore competitions.  This is based on my own passion for unlocking gamerscore on Xbox 360 and I have a couple groups online that are interested in playing.  These won’t be based on game centers at all, although I will encourage other centers that I work with to join us.  The concept is simple, during a set time period (maybe a week for example), players will unlock achievements in Xbox 360 games and 4 players will add together the increase in gamerscore for their team score.  Anyone can participate and new players have an advantage because they have many more easy games to unlock than those of us who have been playing for awhile.

Tomorrow I wanted to start my product reviews with the Turtle Beach Earforce X41 headset for the Xbox 360 but we sold the pair I bought last week out of our pro shop!  I am going to try and get another few sets of headphones, controllers, mice and keyboards ordered so that I have a stockpile of items to review.  Once I have finished reviewing them I will throw them on eBay and auction them off starting at a $1 for all of my blog followers.

Blogging vs. Writing an Article

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As one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to blog on a daily basis it is no surprise that I sit here this morning frustrated with myself.  It isn’t that I don’t feel like I have enough topics to write about.  Nor is it that I don’t have 30 minutes each day to write up something.  The problem I am having is that when I am creating these blog posts they are more like an entire article you would read in a trade journal and I don’t seem to have any sort of theme or focus.

Still working to be more consistent with daily articles.

My problem is that I have multiple things I could write about but I am not sure they would all go together for one group who might be interested in following me on a daily basis.  Just to get these down on paper here (in no particular order) are the things I feel I could write about:

  • Starting/Running/Managing a Video Game Center/ Starting/Running/Managing a small business
  • Starting/Running/Managing a small business
  • Competitive Gaming
  • Xbox 360 Gaming / Xbox 360 Achievements / New Game Reviews
  • Product Reviews
  • Aquariums/Fish
  • Camping/Outdoors
  • Xbox 360 Achievements
  • New Game Reviews
  • NFL Football
  • Basketball
  • Website Design/Programming
  • Social Media Marketing

As I am typing these out I just want to pause a minute for an idea.  Perhaps each day of the week could be focused on a single category from my list I am creating.  As I continue to write today’s post I will just go back and add more ideas to the above list.  At some point when I run out of ideas/inspirations for the list I can then select the top 5 ideas as my daily post categories for the week.  I think I am getting somewhere here…..

Adding more interests and knowledgeable material to the list has me thinking also that I should focus on things I do every day.  That would allow me to draw inspiration from what happens on a regular basis and keeps the content fresh.  Back to the list to focus more along those lines…..

Now that my list is getting longer some of the things I am listing sound completely lame to write about.  I think I will start eliminating some of them based on whether it sounds exciting to write about daily……

I enjoy a nice To-Do list. Almost like an Achievement List! 🙂

Perhaps I can move some of these into similar categories…..

Performing this activity this morning is kind of enlightening as I think about running my own business.  Why in the world would we do something that we don’t enjoy as a small business owner?  The purpose of running your own company is to do something that you get excited about doing on a weekly basis.  Obviously not all tasks are fun (bookkeeping, maintenance and other generic busywork suck) but the core of our days should be enjoyable right?

My list after merging similar topics, eliminating things that seem boring to write about and then taking out ideas that don’t seem relevant to the core theme of my blog I now can put together a weekly schedule that perhaps looks like this:
Monday – Weekend review of the store, general thoughts
Tuesday – Product Review article
Wednesday – Competitive Events/Tournaments article
Thursday – Video Game Center article
Friday – New Game Review article

To produce content on those days of the week I will need to prepare ahead of time on a schedule of tasks that looks like this:

Monday – write Weekend Thoughts article, write Product Review article, publish Weekend Thoughts article
Tuesday –  order new product for following week review, write Competitive Events article, publish Product Review article
Wednesday – write Video Game Center article, play game for New Game Review article, publish Competitive Events article
Thursday – test product for product review article, write New Game Review article, publish Video Game Center article
Friday –  misc catch-up day, busy store day usually, publish New Game Review article

I am on vacation next week so I can use that time also to continue to streamline this process.

I feel much more focused now.  If you enjoy reading and following me feel free to leave some comments and suggestions of topics you would like to see me cover.

Why is eBash Video Game LAN Center Successful?

/ ebashbozack / 5 Comments

My first store location opened in 2004 in an old warehouse as part of another business I was operating at the time.  In 2006 I moved the store about 150 yards away to a new location that we custom built.  Since that day we have opened 3 more locations and then proceeded to shut down 2 of them.  To this date we have not yet been able to duplicate what we have created in Terre Haute, IN.  I thought today I would try break down exactly why this location works.

eBash Terre Haute with the new Brick Facade. Photo courtesy of JF Copp.

Location – I know that this seems obvious, but I have seen 1st hand in 5 locations the difference this really makes.  In our first location we were set back off the road in an old warehouse building.  Not appealing and also not visible.  When we moved to the new location we are 50 feet from busiest road in the city (40,000 cars per day).  We were in a stand alone building that we built a brand new brick face on the building.

How do I know location is that important?  We have tried other locations.  Obviously this new location was 10 times better than our old one.  Our sales jumped 35% the first month we moved into the new building.   When we created our Clinton store it was actually a very good location in a new building beside the county BMV (Bureau of Motor Vehicles).  So every year we would see every single person in that county renewing their licence plates.

Also I know location is important because we struggled in our 3rd location in Bloomington, IN.  We were in a relatively busy shopping center, but WAAAAAYYY off the road and not visible at all for people driving.  Also they had no street sign available for the tenants.  There was a busy Subway next door and quite a bit of foot traffic but I know from experience that the location was not ideal.

At eBash we make relationships with each customer.

Community – We focused on the people from day 1 at our facility.  My wife and I want to invest in the players lives and not just their wallets.  From the very beginning I was giving players rides home, taking them to tournaments in other cities and inviting them to activities outside of the store. When we moved to the new location in 2006 and did most of the construction work on our own and these players were all there to help.  Seven years later we still have a solid group from the beginning that come and play at our store.

This community aspect is what builds your regular customer base.  Players just come by the store to meet up with others to go to the movies or the mall.  Our store is literally the main meeting place for hundreds of gamers throughout our city.   I think this applies to all sorts of entertainment based businesses like bowling alleys, skating rinks, bars, pool halls, etc.  There are tons of choices when it comes to a place to hang out but you only go where you friends are going.

Layout – Once again we have found this out from experience.  So many video game LAN centers take a strip mall location and just line up tables in rows in one giant room.  This does not work long-term and let me explain why.

To get the community aspect you have to appeal to different peer groups that DO NOT mix well together.  These centers that have one big room might get a base of 25+ year old gamers that enjoy it darker, quieter and play PC games.  If a group of middle school kids come to the store and start playing Xbox both groups will conflict with the normal group of older players.  Neither will have fun and the atmosphere will be strained.

We have 9 private rooms in our Terre Haute store.  In the back of the store we have a section of 3 rooms that are for ages 17+ only.  We have divided the 4000 square feet of store space into a family friendly zone, a professional zone and a mature zone.  This has allowed us to build a community of players from each type.  Youth groups from churches feel comfortable bringing their kids for events and we have birthday parties in the front of the store.  In the Pro Zone we run big $1000+ payout tournaments for serious competitors and players can play higher rated games.  In the back it is more quiet and the older crowd has two rooms of PCs and a room of Xbox stations that all have doors on the rooms.

The key to the layout is something we missed out on our other designs.  We tried some new things to cut down on A/C problems by doing fewer rooms and open ceilings.  When we did this basically we could not create these zones like we have in the Terre Haute store.  One group of players can dominate the center and make it uncomfortable for the other groups.  A big group of middle school kids are annoying for the older customers.  A group of college guys swearing while playing Halo or Counter Strike makes the parents and family groups uncomfortable.

Our $3k Master Chief suit waving at 40,000 cars per day driving by our store.

Atmosphere and “Feel” – I think the community and layout add to this tremendously but there are other things to take into consideration when we formed our atmosphere.  One thing that many game centers struggle with is the flooring for their store.   We have used carpet from the beginning at our store and in our other locations did not repeat this because of cost and cleaning.  However that hurts tremendously in forming the COMFORTABLE atmosphere that makes people want to stay for longer periods of time.  It also helps a TON with sound dampening for the store.  Our old Bloomington, IN store had concrete floors, wooden walls and a metal ceiling.  It was terrible for atmosphere as one Guitar Hero player could annoy everyone in the entire building.

Another design factor is the lighting and music.  Combining our layout with lighting and music changes works perfectly in our Terre Haute store.  The front of the store is well lit and has music playing.  The middle of the store (Pro Zone) has Bose speaker systems for game sound ambiance and medium lighting.  The back of the store (17+ zone) has no music, headsets and is dimly lit.

Once again with atmosphere you can only serve one type of customer if you only have a large open space.  If you cannot divide up these smaller community groups then one group will ruin the experience for the other one.

Management – This has to be the most important of all.  You can overcome problems in the other areas I have listed somewhat with excellent management.  I am not only referring to the way the store is “managed” but more how the store is “led”.  There are many good managers out there that can direct employees, pay the bills and control expenses.  But there are very few that can connect with the customers to make them feel welcome and pass that direction on to the other employees.

I feel like the manager/owner is also responsible for the community, layout and atmosphere.  You might be restricted on the location but as the one responsible for the store all of the other categories can be changed as you feel is necessary.

Constantly Evaluate – This is basically what I am doing when writing this article.  I am going back through our history and thinking about what makes us successful and what we can do to be even more successful.  History is so important when looking back at what has worked and not worked in our store so that we can make better decisions moving forward.

One thing I would suggest is to look through your current customer base.  Do they all seem to be of one certain genre?  That isn’t a bad thing, but don’t stress yourself out trying to figure out why you are not booking any birthday parties for middle school kids if your entire center is PCs, dark and full of bearded World of Warcraft players.  You just need to focus on making a better experience for the genre you are serving instead of trying to bring in customers who will never be comfortable in your center.

My opinion is to divide up your store so that you are able to serve more than one community in the same building.  Instead of making an all-kid friendly location or an all-adult location you can serve multiple groups just like we do at eBash Terre Haute.  If your store is only seeing 5-10 customers total on a slow weekday then it is time for you to get to work and build up that customer base!