What do you think of LAN/Video Game Cafes?

AutemOx

What do you guys think of video game cafes that are basically a big room full of computers and people go and pay per hour to play?  Have you had positive experiences with them?  Are people pretty friendly there or does everyone keep to themselves?  Did you enjoy it?  Does it end up racking up a lot of costs or do you find it pretty reasonable?  

I have never been myself but I was thinking about it and I think I will check a couple out that we have here in OC, California.  Recently I wasted a bunch of money on an expensive laptop which is not even that powerful because I don't want to have a PC set up in my room anymore.  I've been trying to sell the laptop on ebay ever since (Aspire S7) mostly because I cannot stand its keyboard and mouse (absolute s*#t).  I think I may get a surface RT for travelling and not use a PC regularly at home anymore.  I came to the decision for a few reasons...

1. I waste too much time on PC at home doing nothing (like mmorpg.com).
2. I already have PC at school, work, girlfriends house, old one in my closet (running a game server for a game I made), and our phones are pretty much PCs too.
3. If I ever -really- need photoshop or something I can use the PC in my closet.
4. When I decide to play a video game on my days off I inevitably spend 1-3 days doing nothing but playing and acting anti-social in my room.
5. I am too torn between wanting cheap laptop, pretty ultrabook, and gaming (thick) laptop.  I probably need to accep that one device cannot satisfy all 3.
6. I am not playing video games often enough to justify spending money on a gaming rig.

Of course I wouldn't want to give up gaming all together so that is where the game cafe's come in.  I think if I were paying hourly and getting out of the house it would be a healthier way to play (less binging, pizza, etc).

GroovyFlower

We had for couple of years a gamescafe with 45 pc's but becouse its just to expensive a hour and most in my country have adsl connection they closed few years back.

It was realy nice we had over the years several launch partys lan partys example when Asheron's call 2 launched we played many times in weekend whole saturday untill sunday morning was alot fun.

Quake sessions unreal tournament lan partys.

Many game launches.

I miss gamecafe but i dont think these days it will ever comeback people just play at home.

 

Old days i played quake 2 with friends at some local club over lan bring our pc these days are over.

Squeak69

they where cute back in the day kinda new age arcade but they have to charge huge amounts of money to stay in bussness and in the end it cost alot more after a few months then owning your own high end PC.

so while i did like them back then, i dont really like them now cause they just dont make sence any more with internet they way it is.

 

NamelessC

Rather stay home with my own computer, why pay for it when you have one at home?