Should games stores offer wifi?

[Asmor]

Yet another reason to throttle down bandwidth. The two things you mention can easily veer into illegal territory (downloading copyrighted material) or can upset other customers (viewing porn).

You completely missed the point of the comment you quoted.

Throttling bandwidth to try and stop online gaming would only really be effective if you throttled it to the point that the connection was entirely unusable. That is to say, online gaming doesn't use much bandwidth. All that matters for gaming is latency.

 

[pawsplay]

I think offering wifi and running a snack counter could be a killer money-making combo.

 

[Tewligan]

No. If they want people to stay there all day they swhould be playing the stories games not croding the table with lap tops. It's already bad enough with people that stay in the swtore to long and reak of foul odors no need inviting the unwashed masses of WoW over to.

Agreed.

 

[Mallus]

No. Too great a legal risk. Someone goes to the wrong 'chan and the owner catches the heat.

Have you been to a coffee shop in the last few years?

 

[Festivus]

What about browsing to Amazon.com and comparing prices? I have wanted wifi access two times when at the gamestore before. Once when I forgot my charsheet and wanted access to my home computer files, and once when I wanted to demo Maptool. My FLGS has a snack bar, and it seems like it does pretty good.

Personally, I am fine without the wifi. The image of tables full of laptops isn't what I go to the game store for.

 

[MichaelSomething]

It seems the best solutioin is to offer wifi but make it conditional. Put up a sign that says something like, "We have wifi. Feel free to use it but please be reasonable about it. Do not use/view illeagal activities, porn/etc. We reserve the right to ban people from wifi if they abuse it."

Legal disclaimers are your friend.

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

Having ready access to the Compendium at a game store would be nice.

 

[Umbran]

I don't think they should offer wifi if they don't have the skills on staff to support it all the time - and in my experience games stores don't, in general.

 

[Mark]

With more material and options becoming online-accessible, the FLGS's that offer online access the earliest will be the ones that reap the biggest benefits (and may be the ones more likely to survive as B&M locations struggle in this economy and Net-connected world). It is not a matter of should or should not, it is only a matter of when.