Permanant LAN!!! Help!

[loganwh944]

Background: 

As the resident 'gamer' at my current job I got asked to help with the new gaming center we will rent out for birthday parties. I'm a gamer that had built a couple PC's but I've never delt with LAN or some of the other detials. I need Help!

Here's the vision:

6-8 gaming PC's in the same room for lan and online play. Simplicity and control is key here as there will be kids from early Elementary school to High School using these systems. My idea was to have wired controllers coming from each system so that kids will actually know what to do.

***(I was thinking of possibly having the PC's in a seperate mechanical room like Linus and running fiber optic?? This would prevent tampering and reduce heat/noise)****

Questions (Answer as many or few as you can, I need the help) :

• Any problems with my current vision?
• What kind of network setup would I need? (router and switch type things)
• Is there any really good software I could use to simplify and lock down these machines
• Do I have to make individual Steam acocunts for each machine, and buy individual game copies?
• Game reccomendations (espically for the littler ones) 
• How would you execute this?

 

 

 

[loganwh944]

I'm new to this forum so please forgive me if this isn't supposed to be posted here.

Background: 

As the resident 'gamer' at my current job I got asked to help with the new gaming center we will rent out for birthday parties. I'm a gamer that had built a couple PC's but I've never delt with LAN or some of the other detials. I need Help!

Here's the vision:

6-8 gaming PC's in the same room for lan and online play. Simplicity and control is key here as there will be kids from early Elementary school to High School using these systems. My idea was to have wired controllers coming from each system so that kids will actually know what to do.

***(I was thinking of possibly having the PC's in a seperate mechanical room like Linus and running fiber optic?? This would prevent tampering and reduce heat/noise)****

Questions (Answer as many or few as you can, I need the help) :

• Any problems with my current vision?
• What kind of network setup would I need? (router and switch type things)
• Is there any really good software I could use to simplify and lock down these machines
• Do I have to make individual Steam acocunts for each machine, and buy individual game copies?
• Game reccomendations (espically for the littler ones) 
• How would you execute this?

[FloRolf]

How much money do you have for this? You see Linus has this setup because he's rich and gets lots of sponsors for his stuff. Setting up 8 'decentralized' machines like that won't be cheap. 

 

I cna only answer some questions:

Yes, you need multiple steam accounts, otherwise you can only play on one machine at the same time. 

Games: Minecraft for sure. Maybe something like AmongUs or Fallguys, I just played SpongeBob Rehydrated which is only 2 player but was fun. Maybe L4D2, Payday or CSGO for the older kids. 

I probably would just get separate 'on site' machines, because it's easier to manage and doesn't require too much care or setup issues. 

[loganwh944]

2 minutes ago, FloRolf said:

How much money do you have for this? You see Linus has this setup because he's rich and gets lots of sponsors for his stuff. Setting up 8 'decentralized' machines like that won't be cheap. 

 

I cna only answer some questions:

Yes, you need multiple steam accounts, otherwise you can only play on one machine at the same time. 

Games: Minecraft for sure. Maybe something like AmongUs or Fallguys, I just played SpongeBob Rehydrated which is only 2 player but was fun. Maybe L4D2, Payday or CSGO for the older kids. 

I probably would just get separate 'on site' machines, because it's easier to manage and doesn't require too much care or setup issues. 

I haven't quite gotten the boss to confirm a budget as of right now, but I was planning to maybe kit the machines with 3070s maybe. The mechcancial room is just maybe 20-40ft away and I thought of just having the PC's in there, not on a rack. I'm not sure though

[BrandonLatzig]

personally I think its a good idea, but also I would ask first if pcs are a good idea. Yes they are good for playing many games and for more but, if its for kids, won't they understand a console better? plus they tend to be easier to set up. If you stick with pcs, I believe it depends, since some games allow for one machine, multiple players, but imo those are rare. 
This is a very cool idea, I had something similar but for a cafe. I hope it goes well for you!

[loganwh944]

16 minutes ago, BrandonLatzig said:

personally I think its a good idea, but also I would ask first if pcs are a good idea. Yes they are good for playing many games and for more but, if its for kids, won't they understand a console better? plus they tend to be easier to set up. If you stick with pcs, I believe it depends, since some games allow for one machine, multiple players, but imo those are rare. 
This is a very cool idea, I had something similar but for a cafe. I hope it goes well for you!

I thought the same thing, but after considering game compatibility, versatility, and lack of subsriptions I landed on PC. I thought to just have the games loaded up for the kids all connected and ready so they can just pick up the familiar controller plugged in and play. 

[BrandonLatzig]

27 minutes ago, loganwh944 said:

I thought the same thing, but after considering game compatibility, versatility, and lack of subsriptions I landed on PC. I thought to just have the games loaded up for the kids all connected and ready so they can just pick up the familiar controller plugged in and play. 

well first I would do a little asking around. cuz what if none of the kids want to play on pc? what if they wanna play nintendo games or party games? Maybe jackbox. 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, loganwh944 said:

 

• Any problems with my current vision?
• What kind of network setup would I need? (router and switch type things)
• Is there any really good software I could use to simplify and lock down these machines
• Do I have to make individual Steam accounts for each machine, and buy individual game copies?
• Game recommendations (especially for the littler ones) 
• How would you execute this?

 

If this is intended as a fixed setup, keep in mind that:

- Games often do not deal well with latency, so that means expensive connecting devices

- Ideally, you have a boot server that just pulls a "hard drive" image / iSCSI mount, so if something goes wrong, you just power cycle the machine and it's restored to the way it was setup initially.

 

The easiest solution is probably a little more obvious. Put the computers on one side of a wall in a locked room, and just drill a hole in the wall to run the cables through to the other side. Plus this affords you the option of running a monitor in clone mode in the locked room, if you need to supervise, without having someone hover over them.

 

You can setup Windows or Linux in enterprise type of configurations if you are particularly concerned about what someone might do with it, but again, it's probably easier to just have a boot server, and just power cycle the machines at the end of the day. Your master machine runs updates, downloads game updates, etc.

 

Now, Yes and No on the steam question. What you do, at least initially, is buy all the games on one account, and then use the same account in family locked down mode on all the machines. Once you have the games installed and everything works, consider: https://partner.steamgames.com/pccafe

 

This is where you get the floating license's for games.

 

That said, my main concern is the same concern I've seen with other PC-Cafe/PublicLibrary systems, where people often don't follow the rules when there is no supervision.

 

So your main concern should be not exposing the physical machine, or it's USB ports. Keep plenty of spare keyboards and mice, people will break/spill things on them. Use only monitors that have no exposed ports, and wired keyboards with no built in USB hubs.

 

The secondary concern is making sure that they can only play/launch games from Steam and nothing else. This is probably easier to do on Linux, but you can still do it with Windows, just make sure you disable "internet access".

 

Likewise, make sure you do NOT have a payment method saved to your steam account you downloaded the games from. This is primarily why you want to make sure you have family mode enabled, even if there is no intent of using it that way, having it enabled, implicitly disables purchases and browsing the store.

 

Now, if you're concerned about games for children... well unfortunately most of those games are actually going to be on the Nintendo Switch. I would probably stick with platformers, or just minecraft with a MC server that only exists for that group. 

 

At any rate, concern yourself first with how much it would cost to setup, because if you are aiming to be "PC Cafe" style, you need to stay on top of the ball for hardware upgrades. The most popular games are always going to be the ones that are least appropriate for children (eg CS GO is the most popular.) But the hardware requirements are known, so if you're not intending to be a full PC Cafe experience, and cater to younger children, then find the game with the highest requirements and only overbuild by 10% for that. So if a game needs a 9th gen i5 and a RTX 2060, maybe consider the i7 and a 3060 for the build.

 

You should also make sure the monitors are "the minimum" needed and nothing more. As much as I love IPS screens, spending the extra money on them for people who might break/poke/punch/sneeze on them, is not worth it. Make sure you get like a screen cover or even a polarizer if there is no physical separation between people playing. The polarizer will cut down on the people accusing each other of cheating if they are all playing the same game.

 

Try to avoid screens that are reflective.

 

That's just about everything I can think of here. Just scale your expectations, purchasing a lot of extra equipment to put the computers somewhere else, is usually not a great investment, when there are more obvious solutions. Expect the lifespan of the computers, particularly any SSD's to be substantially reduced.

 

[BrandonLatzig]

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

If this is intended as a fixed setup, keep in mind that:

- Games often do not deal well with latency, so that means expensive connecting devices

- Ideally, you have a boot server that just pulls a "hard drive" image / iSCSI mount, so if something goes wrong, you just power cycle the machine and it's restored to the way it was setup initially.

 

The easiest solution is probably a little more obvious. Put the computers on one side of a wall in a locked room, and just drill a hole in the wall to run the cables through to the other side. Plus this affords you the option of running a monitor in clone mode in the locked room, if you need to supervise, without having someone hover over them.

 

You can setup Windows or Linux in enterprise type of configurations if you are particularly concerned about what someone might do with it, but again, it's probably easier to just have a boot server, and just power cycle the machines at the end of the day. Your master machine runs updates, downloads game updates, etc.

 

Now, Yes and No on the steam question. What you do, at least initially, is buy all the games on one account, and then use the same account in family locked down mode on all the machines. Once you have the games installed and everything works, consider: https://partner.steamgames.com/pccafe

 

This is where you get the floating license's for games.

 

That said, my main concern is the same concern I've seen with other PC-Cafe/PublicLibrary systems, where people often don't follow the rules when there is no supervision.

 

So your main concern should be not exposing the physical machine, or it's USB ports. Keep plenty of spare keyboards and mice, people will break/spill things on them. Use only monitors that have no exposed ports, and wired keyboards with no built in USB hubs.

 

The secondary concern is making sure that they can only play/launch games from Steam and nothing else. This is probably easier to do on Linux, but you can still do it with Windows, just make sure you disable "internet access".

 

Likewise, make sure you do NOT have a payment method saved to your steam account you downloaded the games from. This is primarily why you want to make sure you have family mode enabled, even if there is no intent of using it that way, having it enabled, implicitly disables purchases and browsing the store.

 

Now, if you're concerned about games for children... well unfortunately most of those games are actually going to be on the Nintendo Switch. I would probably stick with platformers, or just minecraft with a MC server that only exists for that group. 

 

At any rate, concern yourself first with how much it would cost to setup, because if you are aiming to be "PC Cafe" style, you need to stay on top of the ball for hardware upgrades. The most popular games are always going to be the ones that are least appropriate for children (eg CS GO is the most popular.) But the hardware requirements are known, so if you're not intending to be a full PC Cafe experience, and cater to younger children, then find the game with the highest requirements and only overbuild by 10% for that. So if a game needs a 9th gen i5 and a RTX 2060, maybe consider the i7 and a 3060 for the build.

 

You should also make sure the monitors are "the minimum" needed and nothing more. As much as I love IPS screens, spending the extra money on them for people who might break/poke/punch/sneeze on them, is not worth it. Make sure you get like a screen cover or even a polarizer if there is no physical separation between people playing. The polarizer will cut down on the people accusing each other of cheating if they are all playing the same game.

 

Try to avoid screens that are reflective.

 

That's just about everything I can think of here. Just scale your expectations, purchasing a lot of extra equipment to put the computers somewhere else, is usually not a great investment, when there are more obvious solutions. Expect the lifespan of the computers, particularly any SSD's to be substantially reduced.

 

imo, I would at least start with the consoles, because then people can take their friends their and play or play on their own.

[TylerD321]

A lot of good recommendations here. Whether you decide to put the PCs in another room or at the desk, make sure they are not easily accessible. When I was in highschool I knew a guy that would take processors/ram out of a pc and swap it with worse stuff when no one was looking. 

[BrandonLatzig]

2 minutes ago, TylerD321 said:

A lot of good recommendations here. Whether you decide to put the PCs in another room or at the desk, make sure they are not easily accessible. When I was in highschool I knew a guy that would take processors/ram out of a pc and swap it with worse stuff when no one was looking. 

for that, you could find cases with either lockable side panels or screws you can just remove, then replace them with like security torx. then you will just need to make sure that its very difficult for someone to leave the room with a pc

[SansVarnic]

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