Opening A Lan Network Gaming Center

[brock 0]

I am looking to open a LAN network gaming center, nothing too big, around 20 PC?s. I have some questions like:1. Where do I get the games from? 2. Do I download them and run them on all the computers? 3. What is a good program for the administrator to make accounts and add hours? 4. How can I block all the PC?s from entering windows? And only showing the Game List when they log in?

[Iniyila 2]

1. most of multiplayer games which are released in past 2 years are not capable of playing offline using LAN and they are only available for playing through STEAM network, so my suggestion is that you create 20 accounts on steam and then buy the games you want to be playable through those accounts from steam itself, after that you only need a programmer to do somethings from preventing your customers to access those accounts directly (like being able to change pass and etc) and also you need a nice internet connection, yes i know this is an expensive way of building a Game Center but this is what you have to do if you want to have good games like recent Call of Duty and Battle Field in your gaming center.Now if you don't want to do that then you have to choose only from games which are available for offline multiplayer on local network. my suggestion is to buy every game you want from online shop of its producer website, by doing this you will be completely sure about original license. for some games you can buy 20 license with huge discounts, again for getting that discount you need to contact their shop support to see if they give any discount and how they will do the process. 2. Look, if you want to download them and run on all of computers you need a different license for each or if you can get a license for 20 then you will need only a license (which is called a license for 20 devices) and then install each game on each PC using same license, and of course you can download them directly from the producer website. most of the times downloading a game and buying its license is much cheaper than buying the Disc of the game itself. if you don't want to spend a lot of money for your game center then you can just use free games which are capable of multiplayer mode. you can find many of them on the net but some of them i can say right now are : Savage , Nexuiz , Cube , ... but anyway most customers prefer some other games like COD for multiplayer playing.3. There are many softwares available you can choose but i will introduce you two of them and you can find any other one you want in google, first is Cyber Cafe Pro , i don't know if it is free or not but one of my friends were using it and he was completely satisfied with its abilities and features. it can handle up to 250 PC in the network and can manage many accounts and give you results of usage in shape of charts for easy calculating in weekends , now the second one Cybera which is free and open source but with less features compared to previous one, any way it is regularly updating and you can start your gaming center with it and if it didn't suited you then you can change it in feature but i don't know if it supports any export type for transferring accounts to use them in any other software.4. I think for doing that you need a programmer, i haven't seen any software doing such a thing, you can disable every thing on windows but preventing customers for seeing the desktop of windows is something i haven't tried or seen anywhere, by the way you can do more search on google or wait to see if here anyone knows the solution.

[brock 0]

Thanks a million Iniyila.. You have been a huge help :DOne more thing.. for 20 PC's, If I run all the games on every PC and enable the multiplayer option, I don't need to have a server right?Maybe I'm not making much sense with this question, but someone told me that I might require a high performance server if I wanted to open a Lan network gaming center.Any thoughts on this?

[Iniyila 2]

the answer is very simple in every game that is capable of playing in multiplayer mode through LAN, you need to make one of the PCs as server and other ones connect to it for playing, this is a rule and can not be changed, now the PC that gonna act as server should be more powerful compared to those who gonna only manage one player. now it is your choice to make one of the your 20 PC as server or buy a standalone one and make it a server but most peoples buy a powerful PC as server because you need one PC for controlling the accounts of your players, now if you make this one powerful you can use it as server and you don't need to make one of your 20 as server, if you wanna to make one of those 20 as server then you should be aware of minimum system for playing your desire game in multiplayer mode and with 20 players (which needs a powerful one if you want to play recent games).An example: call of duty 4 is not a recent game but many peoples love to play it multiplayer, so this game needs 1.4Ghz cpu and 1GB ram server for being able to handle 8 players, but this is minimum and you know what recommended is ? it is a 3.2 Ghz processor with 8GB of ram, so even this game in recommended settings needs a powerful server for running, now you can do many things to prevent from buying a powerful server, one of them is to split you 20 PC into 4 groups of 5 PC then LAN them together and make one of them in each group as server, now with only 5 player each group you don't need very powerful server and by doing this you can also get more customers because all peoples do not like same games for playing. the second suggestion is what i said before, getting an internet connection and just play through steam network, when you buy games from steam with online playing feature then the server is on their side and you don't need any server at all you only need a good internet connection, and of course it depends on your customers whether they want to play game with each other or with other peoples around the world.You can do one more thing too, just run old stuffs like counter strike and world of warcraft and Battle Field 1942, these games still are very popular and many peoples still play them online and multiplayer, so by doing this you don't need a powerful PC because those games can even run as server in a normal PC with 2GB of ram and can get many players together. now to see which one you choose you should look to your environment, if in your place people are having great internet connection and have access to latest game then i think you should go for steam network but if in your place peoples doesn't have great internet connection and nice PC then the latter solution is the best for you.