Games for cafes

N

Naga

Skilled
I'm working on a ROG cafe in Itanagar (that's the capital of my state, btw :p). I was wondering how to go about organising tournos for games like BFBC2 which don't have a LAN feature. Also, inputs on what games to include would be appreciated.

Details of the systems are:
AMD PII X4 955 BE
ASUS M4A87TD
ASUS HD6850 DC
VX450
Corsair XMS 3 4GB 1600Mhz
Logitech K100
Roccat Kova+Roccat Sense
SteelSeries 4H headphones
PC-K62R2
Dell 20" LED LCD

One extra machine for running cafe management software etc. and to use as a dedicated LAN server whenever necessary. No internet browsing as such.

Net would be a 2MBps BSNL initially. Can have 2 lines later on if necessary (4 of us play BFBC2 simultaneously on a 512 line@my home).

I'm going with the fancy cabbies and such cos I also sell PC hardware and really want to push high-end gaming here. + I'll be playing there myself :). Starting with 8 PCs and plan to add more later, if it works out fine. No consoles planned as of now. Wanna push PC gaming along with it's expensive upgrades/ accessories :)

Initially, I'm planning on the following games:

CS Source
BFBC2 (I'll subsidise the cost of individual licenses for the clients and have a generic account for demo/ trial purposes)
Any Car racing games having a LAN component
C&C and the like
Dota
FIFA and the like

Inputs more than welcome.
 
jojothedragon said:
Well its gonna be costly to hold bc2 tournament for sure. If you buy per copy at retail IN price its gonna be 1K, every tournament you need 8 players atleast, i.e, you need 8k. Plus you can't host the server in your cafe itself, unless you are EA Trusted Certified Partner. And if you can't have your own server, you need to rent one for ~20USD approx per month. Check out Fragnetics or BSNgaming for current server price. And total you need about 16K.
Click to expand...
quoting this from the other thread,.
 
^^Noted :). That's why, for BFBC2 I'm gonna have a key or two for general gaming and subsidise the cost of individual keys, if the players want their achievements etc. Server rentals/ tournos can be looked into if the game catches on.

The main issue is LAN play supporting popular and newer games.
 
The Valve program will cost approx Rs. 230 per pc/ month and as far as I can see, only CS Source and TF2 (link)are worth playing in a multiplayer setup. Considering most CS players here have jumped to BFBC2, I'm not sure I wanna go with additional recurring expenditures. But if anybody thinks that there are other games (re the linked list) which will make a good addition to the cafe, please do share. I might trial a 1 month membership.

About WoW, isn't it available for retail here? What's the grey area? I personally have never played the game but warez Dota is very popular here.

I didn't quite get what Garena does :S...

About legality, if I have one license installed on 1 machine at a time and charge customers for PC/ Net rentals or if clients have their own individual licenses, will it be deemed illegal?

Also, can somebody help me in compiling a list of good games supporting LAN play?
 
For LAN , I can suggest
1) CS or CSS, Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 1 & 2,
2) Age of Empire Series or Age of Mythology
3) Dota,
4) Call of duty 4 Modern Warfare (5,6,7 required Internet)
5) Red Alert 3 or 2,
6) GTA IV & Episode from Liberty City
7) Battlefield series
8) Need for Speed Most Wanted (Older one also, if you want)
9) Fifa

But most people in Cafe will play CS, Dota, FIfa
& If u are looking for Coop Play use this site to decide game
Code: 
http://www.co-optimus.com/
 
CS 1.6 still has the numero uno position in India esp in cafe's :D

btw I dont think many CS players permanently jumped ship to BFBC2. another point to look is that CSS and BFBC2 players play from home for obvious reasons.

to get a good idea of what games are played much just look at these links during different times of the day and in different days:

Game Server Search, Player Search, Server List, Stats, and Rankings in India [IN]

Servers in India | Server / Player Search | Game-Monitor.com :: Server Search, Monitoring, Stats and more

leave the few tf2 and cod4 servers that are not in India but wrongly represented so in the geoipcache.

_
 
Naga said:
The Valve program will cost approx Rs. 230 per pc/ month and as far as I can see, only CS Source and TF2 (link)are worth playing in a multiplayer setup. Considering most CS players here have jumped to BFBC2, I'm not sure I wanna go with additional recurring expenditures. But if anybody thinks that there are other games (re the linked list) which will make a good addition to the cafe, please do share. I might trial a 1 month membership.

About WoW, isn't it available for retail here? What's the grey area? I personally have never played the game but warez Dota is very popular here.

I didn't quite get what Garena does :S...

About legality, if I have one license installed on 1 machine at a time and charge customers for PC/ Net rentals or if clients have their own individual licenses, will it be deemed illegal?

Also, can somebody help me in compiling a list of good games supporting LAN play?
Click to expand...
Garena is a app that tracks your gaming stats and stuff and also lets you join servers directly, like xfire(see my sig).
And for good lan games:-
Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 Co-OP.
Borderlands Co-OP.
Call of Duty 4
AOE3
Warcraft 3 + Expansions
Call of Duty WaW
Fifa
 
I dont think retail copies can be used commercially (cafe usage). the cafe program is the only way you can *fully* legally run cs in a cafe.

hey, if you want to run jack sparrow editions, why not run them all.

We wanted to go for a 100% legal ( with no grey area involved) setup. Anyway the cafe program may not be feasible if you are running a lean operation. We've scaled back our subscriptions, since most of our customers are happy with dota/wow

garena, we werent big fans, but our customers asked for it :)
 
greenhorn said:
I dont think retail copies can be used commercially (cafe usage). the cafe program is the only way you can *fully* legally run cs in a cafe.

hey, if you want to run jack sparrow editions, why not run them all.

We wanted to go for a 100% legal ( with no grey area involved) setup. Anyway the cafe program may not be feasible if you are running a lean operation. We've scaled back our subscriptions, since most of our customers are happy with dota/wow

garena, we werent big fans, but our customers asked for it :)
Click to expand...

Nah, I don't want to run warez stuff. I'm at my wit's end though on how to run a cafe what with almost no support from game publishers for the market. I mentioned the warez Dota cos I've never bought/played it (not my type) and didn't get what you meant by the "grey area" regarding the game. I have yet to find a source for the game (looking for bulk deals cos I'll also be selling games). How are you guys running it? Can you PM me or post here about the games you're running and the licensing roadblocks you've faced?

Thanks, jojothedragon, DigitalDude and joel.monty for the suggestions. Since there are some other games from Steam which are being suggested, I can try the Valve thing for a month or two. In fact I'd already contacted them in Dec 10.

Btw, @DigitalDude, CS 1.6 is the most played game in cafes cos min 90% of Indian cafes run crappy hardware, mostly assembled for net access and moonlighting as game machines :p! It's also number one here in Itanagar at the 3-4 "game" cafes in town. I used to run a cafe (around the time Source was launched) which unfortunately had to be closed and I remember all the CS 1.6 players had jumped to CS source then. None of them have gone back to 1.6 yet, afaik. I'm definite that the present crop of 1.6 players will do the same once the setup is there. Gives me an edge over the others here, too.

Btw, most of my friends haven't played an hour's worth of CS Source online since they got their hands on BFBC2. We do it only for the odd lan-gaming sessions at my place.
 
dota/wow licensing is still a question mark. Dota has very permissive license terms ( anyone can run a server, can host online if it is not for profit etc) , but at the same time does not say anything explicitly about commercial use. and then there is the question of owning a WoW license, and there are two distris for it somewhere in South East asia ( SG methinks) each of them who claims they are the legit distri, and the other is unauthorized, going to the extent on setting law enforcement on cafe's running s/w sold by their competitor :S (this is hearsay)

we havent found a legit source for wow/dota either. We've emailed all their international sales contacts, with no reply.

PS: do you want *That* exotic hardware?

we run a basic amd dual core , M68AM+ mobo, 2GB ram and a 9500GT in most of the base machines. It runs Dota, people are happy :D

Our rates are very cheap ( cheaper than they should be. 15/ hour!) Unfortunately my partners think that price is the only way to compete. Anyway, its their money...
 
stalker said:
He's the Managerial Brains (or lack off it) :p
Click to expand...
You hit that nail on the center there! :p

Nway to be on topic, i dont think you would require any licensing for Dota. Just copies of WC3 would be fine as Dota finally is just a mod for WC3.

Wt about good old COD4? :)
 
greenhorn said:
we havent found a legit source for wow/dota either. We've emailed all their international sales contacts, with no reply.

PS: do you want *That* exotic hardware?
Click to expand...
Can you tell me where you've sourced WoW from?

About the hardware, there are enough cafes here running 1.6/ dota etc. I wanna push newer games like BFBC2/ Crysis 2 and other such games demanding high end hardware. Remember, I already deal in PC hardware and have a well established business in that area. The cafe will familiarise people about what a gaming machine should be. In fact, the server is going to be on water :), just for the bling/ novelty/ marketing value. Margins are lousy on branded machines and assembled PCs have a "cheap" perception here. Want to change that.

As a cafe, no one else here can run the newer games and as a marketing program, what better way to show off than bling+performance setup I'm getting :). Also, I don't think I'll need to upgrade anything for the duration of the setups warrantied lifetime.

P.S: It's not going to be very cheap either. I'm also opening a small lounge bar side by side (in the basement actually :p) with free wifi and free console gaming (just one PS3/ Xbox on a 50" with wireless headphones). The bar is my brother-in law's actually.
I'm the Managerial Brains (or lack off it), to quote stalker :p
 
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