I’m currently working on this with my father-in-law who has an unused retail location that he wants to make use of as a form of common-ground venue for tournament goers and gamers in general.
Recently, on the opposite side of the street, my FIL saw a CCG shop open up: quickly business boomed. Knowing that the area does not have much for the entertainment side of life like this, and seeing the popularity increase in competitive gaming, he thought that bringing such a place to the area would be greatly beneficial. As he’s not exactly familiar with any of the scenes (be it fighting games, MOBAs, FPSs, etc.), he asked if I could shoot out some feelers, both on the regional interest as well as to determine what would be best to include to bring people in. So here I find myself.
We both figured the obvious preallocated setups (for consoles and PCs) are a must, and similar to a CCG shop, having access to food/drink within will keep people around, but outside of that, what would you, the player, like to see in such a venue? At the very least, we were looking at a 6-PC setup with Steam/et al accessible games (common games pre-installed for speed, but accounts required for access), and at least two console-ready setups for other activities. For the venue location itself, we would definitely need to have some kind of outreach to the respective communities to find people willing to TO for any weekly events/tournaments, but that’s about all we got so far.