Gaming centres prove video games can be a group effort

You don’t have to look very hard in the Lower Mainland to find an Internet café. Less common are gaming centres—not to be confused with bingo halls or joints with banks of video lottery terminals—which offer patrons a place to play video games on PCs.

The Georgia Straight conducted a survey of the best places to sit yourself down for a gaming session. Our list includes centres in Vancouver, Coquitlam, Langley, Abbotsford, and Richmond. (In the latter city, there are three centres boasting a total of about 300 computers in a one-block stretch of No. 3 Road; two of them made our list.) During our research, we only considered businesses that have licensed software from Valve Corporation, which has a service called Steam that digitally distributes games.

While many of these places allow customers to check e-mail and print documents, you won’t see much of that going on. Instead, you’ll find young people hunched over keyboards or slouched back in chairs, happily fragging away. The most popular types of games at the centres we visited were first-person shooters (including Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare), real-time strategy titles (Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, in particular the Defense of the Ancients mod), and massively multiplayer on-line games (World of Warcraft).

VS Gaming Arena
(124 East Broadway; www.vs-gaming.ca/; open Sunday to Thursday, noon to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday, noon to midnight; $4.75 per hour, $3 per hour with membership)
A bright, clean space, VS has 20 computers in two rows that run the length of the room. Even though more than half of the computers were in use during our visit, the room was quiet because all of the customers were wearing headsets. Owner and manager Dustin O’Brien, who opened VS two years ago, told the Straight by phone that people like to play games in the same room as others. With World of Warcraft players comparing accounts and characters, he said, “It’s really becoming a social place.”

Space Time Internet Cafe
(1160–1163 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam; open daily, noon to 2 a.m.; $3.50 per hour)
With 28 computers, this venue takes up a corner of Coquitlam’s Henderson Place Mall. As I was speaking with owner Kwan Baik and his son Chris, a group of six 20-somethings came out of the karaoke box across the hall and took up seats in front of computers. In his seven years in business, Baik said he’s watched customers grow up as they’ve returned regularly to play games with their friends. Chris added that the opportunity to try new games before buying them appeals to customers.

CyberSpace Internet and Games Centre
(20483 Fraser Highway, Langley; www.cyber-space.cc/; open daily, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; $4 per hour)
Owner Adam Nickerson opened this business three years ago. He’d visited successful gaming cafés in Los Angeles and noticed that they were bright and friendly, and attracted younger kids. That’s why CyberSpace, with its 16 gaming computers, is well lit and spacious. Older Internet cafés and video arcades, with their dark rooms, gave the business a reputation, he told the Straight, as “seedy little caves that were filled with drug dealers”. With modern LCD screens, Nickerson said, glare isn’t an issue, so rooms don’t need to be dark.

Mike’s Gaming Center
(100–32750 George Ferguson Way, Abbotsford; www.mikescomputershop.com/gaming-main.php; open Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to midnight, Saturday and Sunday, noon to midnight; $3 to $4 per hour, depending on amount of hours purchased)
When the Straight paid a visit one August afternoon, Mike’s, which is nestled in a strip mall in Abbotsford, was full of teenage boys taking advantage of the summer holidays and half-price Tuesday. Manager Stuart Raven, who also operates a computer sales and repair business, said the most common repairs done to the gaming computers involve their video cards and power supplies. In one year of operation, he’s only had to replace two keyboards and one mouse.

DNA Gaming Lounge and Internet Cafe
(175–4351 No. 3 Road, Richmond; open Sunday to Thursday, 9 a.m. to 1 a.m., Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 2 a.m.; $2.50 per hour, $6 unlimited play 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.)
Chris Wang opened DNA on July 8 of this year. It has bright fluorescent lighting and linoleum floors, all of the computers are new, and it wins the best chair award. He special-ordered the comfy seats from a supplier in China, requesting lumbar and neck support. Wang told the Straight that, although most of his customers have computers and high-speed Internet connections at home, “Nobody comes here by themselves.”

Rush Gaming Centre
(120–4351 No. 3 Road, Richmond; www.rushgamingcentre.com/; open Sunday to Thursday, 10 a.m. to 1 a.m., Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 a.m.; $2.50 per hour, $6 unlimited play 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.)
A veteran in the local gaming-centre scene, Rush started as an old-school arcade and has been in the same location for more than 15 years. Due to its origins, Rush is a darker, louder room that still feels like an arcade. Owner and manager Richard Kim told the Straight that the zombie survival game Left 4 Dead has brought more women into Rush, in part because one of the characters is female.