how to start my first gaming cafe business!

[mikeali]

I have many years of experience in networking and programming and after being IT Manager for a company for more than 3 years now I was thinking about getting into Gaming Internet Café business. I did some research and I found a really good Internet Café Management Software to manage workstations and users. With this software I can sell snacks, validate users, remotely start or shutdown a system, and much more.

Setting up the network and computers, managing the workstations, validating users seems to be straight forward but this is all I know at this time about this business and I am stuck with following issues:

1. What’s the right way of purchasing games for my café? Should I just buy it one by one or is there a better solution (like volume)?
2. I will have at least 25 stations so do I need 25 licenses for the games?
3. Since I don’t want to hand-out the CDs to each player, is there a better way to manage games in a server and distribute them to players over the LAN?
4. Do I need anything else?

I would really really appreciate if someone can give me some advice.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[bcastner]

q1&2: The Game manufacturer is who you need to contact. They usually have a license for cafe gaming

Q3&4: with the proper license, you can use a centralized server to store CD images. See my earlier post just below this for one suggestion; there are several alternatives.

Spend some time talking with others already in the business for recommendations. This would be your best resource.