Profit from a Video Game Club

[Sir Pinkleton]

Hey all! For some background information, let me explain that I am the president (or the more commonly accepted version "el presidente") of my high schools' official Video Game Club (first ever :D ). Until recently the meetings have been clumsy, but fortunately todays' club meeting included alot of ideas, some of which I wanted your opinion on.
So far, the club has relied on people bringing in there own games and consoles, which is to say the least, annoying. If the community were to raise a profit, then the club could provide consoles and games (we already have a projector, courtesy of a vice president).
Some ideas that came up to combat this:

1) The basic idea is that we'll host a tournament and then invite people, via posters in the halls, to come in and join in the fun. There wouldn't be any entry fee (although I'm still considering it), but we would sell food and drinks there, hopefully gaining a profit.
2) We have a member in the club who has some experience in decorating consoles, so the plan is to have people come in, give us their consoles, pick a stencil (by the time we make this public we'll have a few good ones, I'm sure), and then pay us something around $12 to make it all beautiful. We would also offer more customizable paint jobs, but that obviously costs more (to what extent of price we haven't figured out yet).
3) T-shirts. I'm thinking we'd have different picture and headline for each style of gameplay (i.e.: a picture of a figity guy, drool hanging from his mouth, labeled as an FPS player), but we haven't figured out how much this will cost, and we've only started to make designs (I'll post some later, hopefully).

The biggest problem I can think of is that we'll most likely be buying these supplies from a retailer and not a supplier, so the prices will be somewhat high, which will shy people away and make us lose profit.

I ask you, the usually intelligent individuals of NPF, to either give me more marketing ideas or help me further define my suggestions. I can't help but feel this is the part where "a grown-up" takes control and takes care of everything, but I suppose one has to grow-up eventually, eh?

Oh, one more thing: our chief advisor (and digital designer) found this "music", created by scientists that were attempting to trigger different parts of the brain, that supposedly can give you the feeling of being high, intensities reaching from marijuana to crack. This "music", being sound and all, is not harmful to the user and is not addictive (Afyter a test on one of my friends, the affects seem to wear off immediately after the removal of the earpieces). A suggestion was brought up that at one of these tournaments we would offer (for a fee) to have people listen to it when they're not playing and get the feeling of euphoria. A part of me thinks that this is a good idea because it's legal and it's another item to get easy profit from, but I still think it's a bit controversial considering we're in high school. Should I scrap this idea? Or is this a too-good-to-be-true opportunity?

[Demetrius]

Get your club registered as not for profit first of all (did this with my one act group in HS), this helps a lot with the legalities of actually doing any fund raising. As for the t-shirts and console stensilling, do you have any local gaming conventions you could put a table up at and maybe host a tournament with cash entries/przes etc.? As for your in school tournaments (maybe weekly?), a $5 fee for entry as well as small cash prizes is a good way to start making money to invest back in the program.

[rxm_9600]

ooo can you link me to this "music" you speak of??

[Sir Pinkleton]

ooo can you link me to this "music" you speak of??

Sorry, the source of the music was not divulged to me, and probably for good reason.

Get your club registered as not for profit first of all (did this with my one act group in HS), this helps a lot with the legalities of actually doing any fund raising. As for the t-shirts and console stensilling, do you have any local gaming conventions you could put a table up at and maybe host a tournament with cash entries/prizes etc.? As for your in school tournaments (maybe weekly?), a $5 fee for entry as well as small cash prizes is a good way to start making money to invest back in the program.

The only gaming competition that comes to mind is a "PDX LAN", but I don't think we could do anything there, I'll check for some gaming conventions though. I'll jot down your other suggestions as well.

[Azisien]

No, do an entry fee. $1, $2, whatever. And get yourself hooked up with a big projector, or MULTIPLE projectors, one for each next-gen console, full controllers for each. I can't see how that wouldn't attract a decent crowd.

[Red Fighter 1073]

We didn't have a video game club at my high school, but we did have quite a few tournaments. There was actually a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament with an entry fee of $8 and over 60 people joined the tourney. Provided though, the winner got a DS and I am actually not really sure exactly how they set it up, but many people joined in nonetheless.

Also, if you are really worried about money, I would just scrap the selling drinks/food idea and go with the previously mentioned tournament. Remember, with a video game tournament like the one you and I are thinking of, people are coming to play the video game and try to win, not to go and buy food.

Also, to help with this tourney idea, I would set up a prize for the winner so that people will be enticed to join in. It doesn't necessarily have to be a DS though, it could easily be a $50 game or something video game-ish of that sort.

By the way, if you are afraid of losing money with the whole "winner gets a prize" idea, then write, on the posters, that the tournament will need a certain amount of people before it can start. That way, if only a few people want to join and you think you are going to lose money, you can always scrap the idea.

[Lord of Joshelplex]

People who play games at my school that are not Madden, WoW, or CS get knifed.

[Sir Pinkleton]

People who play games at my school that are not Madden, WoW, or CS get knifed.

That's, that's great Joshelplex... really worthwhile info there...

Umm, Azisien, although your idea has promise, I feel the need to tell you that the club only owns a projector and a PS2 game so far, so getting multiple projectors and next-gen consoles will probably only be possible until next year.

Good ideas Red Fighter, although it will take some time to find a suitable place to host the tournament, figure out what the prize will be, and who will be providing the console (and what game we'll play), I think it could work (it also doesn't help that the mid-term tests are coming up soon, so I'm kinda jammed for time). But keeping in mind that I earlier said that we only have one projector, I figured that having food and drink would be a good idea, seeing as how not everybody would be playing.

Actually, I think that scrapping the food idea and just having that "mind-tripping-music" would be more efficiant and less-costly, but noone has given me any suggestions yet. I'll talk to the club members about it, but I'd still like an opinion.

[musicalmechanic]

I can help you out with the details and rough pricing ideas with shirts. With shirts, it depends on a couple of key factors:

-- Do you already have the art, and if you have it, is it already vectored properly?

-- Make sure the art isn't copyrighted in any way. This is a biggie.

-- How many colors is the piece? The more colors, the more expensive. But at the same time, I've found the more colorful a piece is, the more people are interested in it. The trick is to find middle ground.

-- How many shirts are you planning to order? Most printers will print shirts in set numbers starting at 100.

That's about it. The next trick is to not get greedy. Set a price-point that's reasonable. Because your a not-for-profit, you might be able to get away with a higher price, but you have to find people that are sympathetic to your goals. Websites are always a good thing too, and this is something else I can probably give you a hand with.

I can give you some ballpark figures based on what my printers cost me per shirt. Let's use a minimum of 100 shirts as a base.

$350 - 100 black shirts at about $3.50 per shirt. This seems to be the average of the shirts I pay for. It should be noted that white is ALWAYS cheaper, but doesn't look nearly as good as images done on black.

$30 - Most screen printers won't do above 6 colors for one design, unless they have access to a 4 color process setup (it's a bit confusing, but 4 color process can duplicate all colors). For each separate color, you have a screen. Printers charge per screen. Our printer charges $10 per screen, so I'm averaging in 3 colors here, or 3 separate screens. Should be noted that I've found a bunch of printers who charge $20 or more per screen, so this is very up in the air.

$250 - Your ballpark for printing 3 colors, based on my experience. This'll come to around $2.50 per shirt X 100 shirts.

And then shipping, if it applies.

So right now we're looking at around...

350
250
30
------
630

or $6.30 per shirt.

These estimates aren't gospel, and are going to vary highly depending on the printer involved, just so you know. And this estimate doesn't include any vectoring or labor costs for the shirts involved.

And to repeat Demetrius' point about getting yourself rated as a non-profit, do it. If you aren't rated as a non-profit, and you sell merchandise, it's your responsibility to collect taxes on everything you sell, and the state will get a chunk of it. In our state (Ohio) that's another 7 1/2% tacked onto every sale. That only includes sales of merchandise inside the state, so if you sell anything online, and someone buys it out of state, you don't have to worry about it.

I also have a friend who is pretty versed with setting up tournaments and could probably give you guys some serious advice. I'll give him a call next week to see what he thinks.

Hope this helps man. Might be willing to let some of our shirts go at a nice discount for you guys, if your interested. I'll e-mail you some of our designs if you want. Up to you.

And good luck with everything, seriously. This can seem overwhelming, but I've found it's worth it.

[Sir Pinkleton]

A thousand thanks musicalmechanic for the extremely vital info, and for the understanding. If we can't come up with anything, I'll give you the go-ahead to e-mail me some of your designs, but I son't think it will come to that.

[musicalmechanic]

Sure, I'm game either way. Wasn't looking to make money off you guys or anything like that, just giving you an option. I'm really interested to see if things take off, so keep us up to date. And if you have any questions, or need any advice, drop me an e-mail.

sales @ blackhatcreations .com

[Phlegyas]

Per the music idea, I think that is a really risky venture there. Schools and people that examine what schools do are rife with ignorant people that will try and mess with you and you will already have enough to deal with when the Jack Thompson fans get a hold of you. You really don't need something like that holding you back when the proverbial shit storm comes in and attacks you saying you guys are encouraging violence or whatever.

As for the rest, I'm not really versed on a lot of the stuff you are mentioning here but I'll have to jump on the bandwagon and say to definitely make yourself non-profit. Thing is, if and when you do that, you need to make sure you keep track of your books and be aware of the fact that any money you make in this club needs to go back in the club, otherwise you start breaking laws.

Anyways, kudos on the ideas. I hope it works out.

[Sir Pinkleton]

I just got an idea.
Because I'm doubtful that we'll need 100 shirts, I figured we could use that Iron-it-on printer paper. I don't remember what it's called obviously, and there's always the chance that it'd be off center, but I believe it's cheaper and I think we can manage enough control to not have it be a botched experiment. Anybody have experiance with it?

[Demetrius]

Yeah, your designs will wear off after a few washings, the thicker and more solid you make it the longer it will last.

For your tournaments don't just use the projector, your school should have TV's and possibly other projectors you should be able to access, seeing as you are a school club. As for the consoles needed members will have to get hold of their personal ones for large tournaments. You don't want people standing around waiting, that is bad and will spread via word of mouth and your events will...blow.

[Sir Pinkleton]

Yeah, your designs will wear off after a few washings, the thicker and more solid you make it the longer it will last.

For your tournaments don't just use the projector, your school should have TV's and possibly other projectors you should be able to access, seeing as you are a school club. As for the consoles needed members will have to get hold of their personal ones for large tournaments. You don't want people standing around waiting, that is bad and will spread via word of mouth and your events will...blow.
That last part actually made me chuckle a bit. :D

About getting school projectors for the club, we kinda, uhm, "messed up" one of their projector's earlier this year. My technical advisor told me that it was really their fault, that we were the scapegoat for their mistake. Regardless, I know we can still use their tv's, and who knows? I've been told that our auditorium has held tournaments in the past, maybe they'll lend us a projector or two if we go there? Fingers crossed.

[Nique]

Public schools, in my experiance, are notorious for being scarred of any after-school activity that isn't sports. We had no official 'theatre' dept. at my highschool, so the 'Theatermaniacs' had to rent the auditorium and make all sorts of requests that they wouldn't normally have to go through. Also, the "dept." died when the teacher who headed it off left.

Even a more school-sponsered activity like the website crew I was on were serverly limited in when we could use our crappy closet that we put the computers in. :(

[Sir Pinkleton]

Damn, Nique, I feel for you (but not in the dark).
Fortunately, our school doesn't seem to care or mind for any kind of club we could've made. Hell, they practically forced us into making our own club. I mean, on the posters around the school they said we could make any club we wanted, one of their examples was of a wiener schnitzel club.

So yeah, I think we'll be fine.

[Phlegyas]

wiener schnitzel club

Absolutely made of awesome. We have one Wienerschnitzel in all of Texas and it happens to be located in the middle of nowhere by San Antonio. God, I miss my Wienerschnitzel... :(

[Nique]

Is this conversation getting metaphorical? Cause Weinerschinitzel is a metaphor for one thing, and one thing only.

But yeah, thats cool... I just hope you guys can get your tournaments off to a good start and find some support. Maybe, just to gain some cred with the school, you could do some research on gaming schools or Multimedia degrees offered by local colleges, and provide information on those during club meetings/ rallys/ bakesales. Edutainment always pleases the academic world.

[Sir Pinkleton]

I wasn't aware of any metaphoricalness, but now that you mention it... poor Phlegyas...

Actually, I was once given and idea that we should, at the beginning of each meeting, talk about a programming language, how a console works, etc., but the gaming-college info during events is a great idea! I'd talk to some people at school about it but we just had an awesome snowday (I got to destroy some snowmen with my friends claymore. Like a fuckin' hot knife through butter, I swear), and we'll be having another one tommarrow. =D I also like the bakesale'ing that you mentioned, finally a place to express my kickass cooking skill!

[Phlegyas]

I got to destroy some snowmen with my friends claymore.

The image of an unawares snowman stepping on a mine and blowing up is priceless. Thank you for this.

Oh and about the Wienerschnitzel... Get your minds out of the gutter! *Craves wieners covered in chili and is not ashamed*

[Demetrius]

Umm, dude by claymore I believe he meant the large as hell scottish/anglican sword, the mine is far funnier though.

[Sir Pinkleton]

Umm, dude by claymore I believe he meant the large as hell scottish/anglican sword, the mine is far funnier though.

The sword was alot of fun to use though, I think moreso than any mine could be.

[Phlegyas]

Yeah, I got that he/you meant claymore as in sword, but I am an avid MGS fan and an only sub-par Middle Ages fan, so naturally I thought of an exploding snowman first... still made of awesome, by the way.