What started as a pipe dream for avid gamer Brad McBride turned into a reality two years ago, when McBride, his younger brother and a friend started up an ELAN Games franchise at Carleton.
Sitting across the hall from ELAN in Residence Commons, McBride, 25, said he wanted to start ELAN (Electronic, or Entertainment, Local Area Network) after he moved to Ottawa from Peterborough and was unable to find a quality gaming café.
“The first ELAN Games is in Peterborough . . . and I hung out there and I looked for a place like that here and I wasn’t able to really find anything of quality.”
McBride, his brother Evan and their friend and silent third partner, Cody Easton, opened up ELAN two years ago.
A former Dell employee, McBride said he used his severance package after the Ottawa Dell location closed to help start the franchise.
To find a location, he said they initially contacted universities directly.
“It’s the right demographic,” McBride said. “Gaming is really big these days with university students.”
“It’s no longer a hermit sitting in his mother’s basement drinking 12 bottles of Coke and playing World of Warcraft for 17 hours straight.”
But the university prices were too expensive, so they chose a cheaper option in Kanata instead.
McBride said after a year of strained relations with their landlord they learned that the Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA) was looking to rent space on-campus.
“We brought the idea to them and at first they were like, ‘What? Students have computers in their dorm, they don’t need computers,’ ” McBride said.
McBride said they convinced RRRA and moved in September 2009.
“We tried to open in September but there was a bunch of delays getting all the stuff in. We didn’t have Internet for about a month so we had to get that in, and you know how bureaucracy at the university is,” he said laughing.
Now up and running for a year, ELAN relies on volunteers, called time shifters, who are paid in gaming hours, to manage the store.
“At first, as any small business, it starts out with you losing money. We’re at the point now where the business is paying for itself, but it’s not necessarily making a lot of money,” McBride said.
He said all three partners have alternate jobs to support themselves and are really in it for the social gaming.
“The whole idea about ELAN is not to be separate. I mean if you want to be separate you can go up to your room and play video games. The whole point is that you’re playing with your friends, you’re in competitions, and you’re together.”
McBride said the majority of ELAN’s customers last year were first-year students, but this year he’s seeing a bit more of a mix, due to returning customers.
Kyle Thine, 19, said he averages two hours a day approximately three to five times a week at ELAN.
“I’ve made friends because I bond with them over video games,” he said. “It’s tightly knit.”
Luc Labelle, 25, a time shifter at ELAN, said he also comes for the friends.
“It’s nice to have the sense of community,” he said.
Fellow time shifter Billy Thebeau, 18, agreed.
“They promote my nerdiness; they don’t shun me for it.”