The Story of Gamer Zone » Chapter 3

1. Gamer Zone 2.0

Midnight Ryder — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:17:05 +0000

Gamer Zone was never supposed to be a singular event. The goal was never to build a store and make money off of it. The goal was Gamer Zone Centers – chain of gaming centers throughout the US and even world wide.

The first incarnation of Gamer Zone was really designed as a concept test. Gamer Zone 1.x sucked. Grungy, poorly designed, underfunded, and completely lacking in design.

Gamer Zone 2.0 was a logical step – we needed to have a model that was “sexy”. It needed to show the potential of the place to investors. The Backer’s job wasn’t just to throw money into the place and see if we got a return on it. It was to find investors when we had a working model.

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2. Father Budweiser

Midnight Ryder — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:18:04 +0000

So, a traditional Catholic Priest walks into a gaming center, staggering drunk…

Nope, not the start of a bad joke. This was something that happened roughly every other week at Gamer Zone when we were at Harry & Broadway.

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3. The Big Meeting

Midnight Ryder — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:57:27 +0000

One of the things that remained unresolved for a while was the whole issue of ownership. Under the original plan, I was supposed to be getting a piece of the action for doing PR work. That role didn’t last that long, and eventually I was Big Kahuna of the group.

But nowhere was there a piece of paper that said what my original percentage was, nor did it indicate what the change in percentage was. Even worse, I had basically stolen ownership of the company by opening a bank account in my name as a sole proprietorship. Things had to finally change.

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4. The Noisiest Game Ever Made

Midnight Ryder — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:27:30 +0000

I love video games, in pretty much any shape or form. But some games bring out the kid in me – I’ll totally ignore my age and make a complete ass of myself.

One of the best examples is Dance Dance Revolution. The first time I ever saw a DDR style machine was a Pump It Up two player arcade game at the Warren Theaters East here in Wichita, Kansas. I couldn’t help it – my fat balding ass had to get up there and play.

It was love.

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5. The Friend Factor

Midnight Ryder — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:51:35 +0000

“Sometimes you want to go   

Where everybody knows your name,

 and they’re always glad you came. “

– Theme From “Cheers”

One of the most important factors behind Gamer Zone was customer service. Some of the employees were better at it than others. But, we always worked with the team to try and improve it. I’m never sure if they saw that as bitching, criticism, or just stuff coming out of my mouth that was to be ignored.

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6. The Halo Effect

Midnight Ryder — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:47:35 +0000

We had XBox’s. There was only one game that was completely mandatory when Gamer Zone opened. Halo.

We left Halo in the XBoxes and let them run all the time as an “attract mode” for the big screen setups. Plus, it was just convenient – if someone was going to play on the big screens, it was going to be Halo.

Which, by the way, was an unfortunate mistake on our parts. None of us had ever owned anything like a 60″ HD TV. One day someone noticed when you turned off the screen, well… it still said Halo. Aw, man.

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7. Continue The Fight

Midnight Ryder — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:40:45 +0000

Halo was a big deal to Gamer Zone. Even though I speak a bit badly about The Halo Team, I loved Halo for the number of hours players spent on it.

When the Halo 2 release date was approaching, we had to find a way to really make this work for us.

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8. Tournament Time

Midnight Ryder — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:28:30 +0000

I’ve done two whole sections on Halo & Halo 2. It’s not just because it’s one of the popular games in the site, or even to talk about The Halo Team. It’s to build up to this. Our first tournament – for $5000 in cash prizes.

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9. Too Much Space

Midnight Ryder — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:57:11 +0000

On one end of Gamer Zone at Harry & Broadway we had a bay that was scheduled to become a restaurant. So that takes up one bay. Gamer Zone it’s self occupied three bays in the middle. That just left the bastard stepchild bay.

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10. The Smokin’ Dawg Emporium

Midnight Ryder — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:19:12 +0000

So at one end of the place, we had the bastard step-child bay we could never make anything stick. We slowly bled money because of it. At the other end, where the restaurant was supposed to be, things weren’t going much better.

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