The Virtual Internet Café
An internet café is a place where people come to research, study, and play video games. Gamers from all over the world experienced multiplayer for the first time in gaming arenas, or internet cafés dedicated to gaming.
But what if it could be more than that?
What if it doesn’t need to be a physical place?
Let’s start from the beginning: Timisoara, Romania 1999.
I was 7 years old the first time I ever stepped into an internet café, and it was amazing! The games had such detailed graphics! Since my family still owned a black and white TV, this was a huge improvement. I was accompanying my brother and his school friend as they skipped school to play video games. I still recall vividly playing Mortal Kombat 4, Heroes of Might and Magic, Duke Nukem, and Carmageddon with them, along with many other titles.
Half a decade later I was part of an internet café gaming community and even took care of the place for the night when the owner was sleeping. Although it was an empty bedroom in his apartment with a side entrance, I felt like I was the king in that room. Everybody was asking for my assistance when it came to games… Anything from cheat codes, skips, secret levels, and easter eggs to competitive gaming strategies.
I’ve spent the following 7 years in and out of internet cafes either working and organising tournaments, participating in competitions, or visiting them with friends to just have fun.
I like to say that I’ve learned more from video games than I did in school, at a cognitive level at least. That became even more obvious when I started playing World of Warcraft — now that’s where things become interesting. From leading 40 men raids to managing 300+ guild members as a Guild Master and being a mentor to tens of players, to teaching them the most complex aspects of the game and how to min/max their cooldowns and rotation, to squeeze the most performance out of their characters. After 15 years of playing the game, I still am a part of the community and I still enjoy helping others achieve greatness on the virtual battlefield.
The experience of playing World of Warcraft has even helped me during interviews with my employer, Version 1. You can read more about it in this blog post “Day In The Life — Junior Project Manager”.
When I joined Version 1, I was surprised and pleased to hear that they have Dungeons & Dragons events, as well as a gaming social club. I’ve just come from the retail environment, and I wasn’t aware of the perks and lifestyle a great company can offer. Three years, a promotion, and a role change later and here I am, using my skills and pioneering an engagement event that helps gamers and newcomers to the hobby to connect and play in a safe and secure environment.
The Virtual Internet Café is meant to be an event in which everyone can participate. No matter the skill, hardware ownership, or title. Hence, work laptops are the one piece of tech I can guarantee we all have. The journey was not an easy one, however here are the steps for anyone looking to replicate it:
- Writing the project
- Presenting my ideas to over 20 people for feedback
- Meeting and convincing influential stakeholders of the benefits it would bring
- Researching the best cloud provider for the job, as well as the game clients’ policies, games to use, and cognitive benefits of each game genre
- We settled on Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming Beta with a browser plugin to transform mouse & keyboard inputs from controller functions
- Presenting a range of prices to the executive sponsor, that reflects the scalability of the environment to best weigh in the budget required
- An internal survey was sent to gather data on the best dates, times, and types of video games that people enjoy
- Testing and reviewing the cloud solution with the internal security engineers to guarantee security above all else
- Creating a few plugin profiles for FPS, racing, and fighting games to simplify the controls on PC
- More testing with non-gaming team members of the engagement team
- Determining an acceptable date and advertising the event internally while setting up a Sharepoint page and Teams channel for the event
- Hosting the event full time and being there for every single participant
After months of development, the event concluded with over 100 participants over the span of a week. The engagement team and I consider this a complete success, and the feedback was amazing. We’ve handed out prizes like an Oculus Quest 2, a Corsair 4-in-1 peripheral bundle, and a couple of Playstation controllers, while also having over 500 euros rewarded as spot prizes in the form of Amazon gift cards.
I believe such initiatives are an amazing and refreshing take on team building and meeting people from within the company. Any questions about how to organise such an event are welcome, as I’d like to help as many people as possible to experience the benefits of gaming.
About the Author
Samuel Stan is a junior project manager at Version 1. Sam is a very competitive person both professionally and in gaming, and enjoys building and advising on custom PCs whilst not in the gym or playing video games.
