Opening a Gaming place in Abu Dhabi, Im interested in your ideas.

By ShamHisham
in Gamers' Hangout

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Neowinian

ShamHisham

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Hello Everyone,

I live in the UAE and am an avid gamer, buy games as soon as they are released and sometimes go to gaming cafes or centers on the weekends with some friends

I have been working for over a year now as an urban planner and don't have that much time to play games, spend most of my free time thinking of opening a business). I would like to set up my own gaming place in my neighborhood, they lack in a gaming center. People here are in love with football games (fifa), and I have seen kids and even adults just playing football on ps4s in gaming cafes day-in and day-out. Especially during Ramadan (holy month for Muslims), it's a gold mine if you ask me.

Now as an initial setup ill be introducing only ps4 consoles (around 10 of them) and a couple of pool tables and a ping-pong table, then I will upgrade to computer gaming (Phase 2).

 

I have attached a few images of what I want the place to look like in terms of lighting / Environment. Graphite walls and vibrant colors (The image is of a gym btw XD)

Maybe add arcade games down the road, but honestly it doesn't seem like its worth it.

 

I am currently working on a business plan, already asked existing businesses from around the UAE about their income and what to expect.

I am also working on setting up costs and looking for suppliers for furniture, equipment, decorations & manpower

 

there is a fair amount of kids in the area that just go around playing soccer under my apartment building, you can see alot of them during winter time, but when summer hits, it's almost unbearably hot outside and almost all kids stick to indoor activities.

 

Now I have found a decent sized place that's going for a decent cost in the neighborhood that I can walk to and from work and my apartment for check ups during my work hours and then after work I can stay and take over (70% of its running time). 

If you guys would be so grateful to shoot me up with advice, maybe from people who run something similar of their own.

 

Thank you so much

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Grand Master

+Audioboxer Subscriber²

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No offense but I was trying to wage whether or not this is a spam post as it's your first post, but you seem genuine!

 

Gaming does seem rather popular in your neck of the woods so I wish you the best of luck. I'm sure you'll have many visitors. The only thing I think you might be up against are the embargoes for release dates, as any time a game is out in the open early it seems to be in the UAE. I'm not sure if by running a gaming hangout you'd be more liable to get in trouble putting games in kiosks before release, versus the retailers and online stores slipping copies to buyers early.

 

A lot of what may attract gamers to your place will be getting to try games on release before buying, and if retailers in the area are selling copies days before release people probably won't be patient enough to wait.

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Veteran

+Asmodai MVC

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Sounds like you've got a pretty good plan to me.  Good luck!

 

One thing I might suggest is that you consider trying to get in early on VR arcades.  It's certainly a risk as VR could tank next year but if it does do well you could be in on the ground floor.  If you're starting with PS4s anyway just keep in mind PlayStation.VR and maybe get a test unit as soon as possible to see how your customers react.  You might even want to contact your regional Sony rep (not sure who that is in the UAE) as well as possibly Oculus and Valve.  They may be willing to give you a discount or get you hardware early or even just do some PR with you.  VR is really a tech people have to try in order to fully understand, trying to explain to someone just doesn't work, so these companies may jump at the chance to have a location to demo their products to prospective customers.

 

For arcade games I wouldn't bother unless you go really old school for nostalgia (like pac man, galaga, and such) but I don't know if there's even a market for that in the UAE or alternately you go competitive such as the racing arcade games where you have like 4 sit-down cabinets that are linked and 4 players can race each other.  Stand alone arcades just don't have much draw anymore (at least in the U.S.)

 

The really important thing though is to know your customer base.  What might work in the U.S. may not in the U.A.E. or heck what might work in Viriginia in the U.S. may not work in California so you really need to try to figure out what exactly your customers are into.  It sounds like you've done a good deal of that already from your football/fifa comments.  I think that's the biggest problem I see with anyone who tries to start a business is that they make what THEY would want instead of what their customers want.

 

 

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Neowinian

ShamHisham

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thank you both for your feedback, I wouldn't know how the US or UK would go on about things (never been to either countries). although, I know a guy who has opened a few places of the same nature in seven different states in the US and has it gaming with alcohol, I belive he calls it "ClickDotNet" or something like that. He bought an 8 million dollar house just last year, so it's safe to say he's making it with those cafes.

 

kinda trying to get on the same level as this guy.

 

 

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Grand Master

oldtimefighter

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5 hours ago, Audioboxer said:

No offense but I was trying to wage whether or not this is a spam post as it's your first post, but you seem genuine!

 

47 minutes ago, ShamHisham said:

thank you both for your feedback, I wouldn't know how the US or UK would go on about things (never been to either countries). although, I know a guy who has opened a few places of the same nature in seven different states in the US and has it gaming with alcohol, I belive he calls it "ClickDotNet" or something like that. He bought an 8 million dollar house just last year, so it's safe to say he's making it with those cafes.

 

kinda trying to get on the same level as this guy.

I think you may have spoke to soon Audioboxer... It looks like he may be really trying to promote/spam --> http://www.click.net/

 

LOL

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