It felt a little like Christmas today. Â I got 3 boxes of “stuff” and one poster tube. Â Ok, two of the boxes o’ stuff stucked – well, they were little mini-ball and and cup catch things. Â That was lame. Â The good stuff though? Â Oh yeah…Â
We license in lots of games of course, but it also allows us the opportunity to do some different marketing. Â This time, it’s music. Â We got a sample CD of new tunes (some good, some bad IMO) to play for the store. Â And posters to give away. Â And stickers. Â And the full CD’s of all the sample tunes (which, well, are mine damnit . Â And other giveaways. Â Pretty cool stuff.
But there is a marketing point behind doing this – anyone who listens to it basically says “good, bad, or crap” to any of the tunes played, and we report back to the music producers how people felt about it.
So I think I might have my first real “event” for the new GZ location, but I’m gonna have to figure out how to do it best. Â GZ had a maximum capacity of 20 people right now – we don’t have a fire escape. Â After the fire escape is done (the architect is not impressing me at the moment – it’s taken 3 revisions and nearly 3 months to get this done!) then our max capacity is 50. Â I’m exploring piping the music down the hallway and out onto the sidewalk to have a bit of a street party type thing for anyone who wants to come. Â As more is know, I’ll post info about it, plus a list of the tunage to be played for anyone who caresÂ
OK, the DDR community may be a bit more interesting than I expected. Â I had a 30 minute phone conversation with someone who wanted to find out a little more about what we’re up to and all that good stuff. Â It’s nice to see a community that is that interested and concerned about the execution of a game. Â Granted, part of this is also a “hang out” issue – a place for everyone to gather, play DDR, chat, and generally hang out. Â No problems with that here – though that 20 person cap on the place is going to be an issue sooner or later. Â (I instructed one of my partners to but the architect DAILY until the job gets done now. Â I need that fire escape done!)
You’ll probably see me talk about games from time to time from the business standpoint – if anyone wonders if I’m a “real gamer”, I’ve got my Mac setting beside one of the GZ floor machines typing this entry whenever I take a flight or a long run on WoW Â If you are a WoW player, look for MidnightMoo (A Tauren Hunter) on Lightnings Blade some dayÂ
Sometimes random stupid things go wrong in business. Â Two great examples: Â Air Conditioning and my fire escape fiasco.
GZ didn’t have Air Conditioning in the current location when we moved in (hell, in the old location the AC sucked so bad you couldn’t hardly tell we had it on a hot day, and eventually it died. Â The landlord didn’t want to change it out. Â That’s one of the situations that lead to us moving.) Â A month and a half early, Kansas starts setting records for heat – crap! Â Not even close to my plan, but, we had to start putting in AC already. Â Extra expense at a time I could really stand to not have to deal with it. Â
The fire escape was a “known problem” when we moved in here. Â We laid a plan to fix the problem. Â Nothing went right, and we ended up having to completely redo the plan. Â Hire an architect to do the job, and nearly 3 months later I’m still waiting on drawings so I can get the job done. Â
I hate problems like this – you actually put down a plan (and I almost always have 3 or 4 backup plans as a “just in case”), and everything STILL goes crappy. Â Sheesh. Â Sometimes I gotta wonder if it’s even worth setting down nice plans at all – just cause too many things are gonna go wrongÂ
Tomarrow I begin constructing the new DDR pads.  I’m gonna have a lot of fun with this  I’ll probably post some construction pics (with the crappy cell phone camera  as I go along, for anyone who’s following along.  After I get the first pad done, I’m going to try and get some people to come down and beat the hell out of ’em to make sure everything is PERFECT before moving to the next oneÂ
Time to take the counter – Psycho (Olivia) just finished her last training shift with me, so she’s ready to go onto the schedule for real. Â But it also means it’s time to get to work. Â Plus I’ve probably rambled long enough Â
First, I laughed when I saw you put “Currently Gaming-WoW” Does it really need to be said? XD
Air conditioning would be nice, but the fire escape is far more important. The first time I was at GZ, it was the day it snowed randomly over spring break, and it was darn cold in there. The second time, was last saturday when it was fairly hot outside, and sadly, it was hotter inside GZ. The air flow isn’t very good, which is something else I forgot to bring up earlier. DDR players would be hot enough playing in normal conditions, let alone over heated conditions.
Anyway, just thinking ahead. You have a new location in mind??? o.o;; I want to hear about this.
Goodluck with construction!
Posted 4/18/2006 9:28 PM by Aur0raXXBorealis – reply
New location? Heck no – we’re not movin’ from here, we love it hereÂ
When it comes to AC, we’ve got that mapped out, and right now it’s nice in here. Hopefully the heat can stay away long enough to get that done. But also, if the fire escape is up, I can (GASP!) Open the back door. That might sound trivial, but we’re in an upstairs location with no exhaust (well, it didn’t have any until I put in the first AC unit this weekend), so it acts about like a downdraft kiln – heat from the outside during the heat of the day starts flowing up the stairs, and it just gets hotter and hotter since it’s got no place to go. The first AC unit has helped, but still need more to get the job done (one of the AC units is destined to be right beside the DDR setup so that it stays cool right thereÂ
Posted 4/18/2006 9:56 PM by GamerZoneCenters – reply