Elysium Inc.

Making Calgary's First Video game Bar

[elsm-inc-blog]

All the way corporate

We decided not to make a post yesterday because we had the whole share distribution discussion and did not want to publish about some unfinished business. Sadly, Dan decided to reject his share in the business due to the fact that he most likely will not be able to put the necessary time in the project to have an executive position. This is not an easy decision, but an honorable one. I can’t even say how much we all respect it. He, personally knowing that he deserves it, decided to step down because he understands the responsibility, and deeply cares about the success of the project. This is more than just admirable! We decided to call him Dan the Man once and for all starting now. He still is part of the crew and will help out as much as he can, so that’s good news. We also have appointed a new CFO, he’s a talented finance and econ major at UofC, a very good friend and just an amazing person. Very soon we are going to do the individual crew profiles so that you can get to know us a little more personally. 

That aside, some other news. We are going to show our faces at  the Smash Logic event this Saturday to talk to the community, find out what people think and how they expect us to move on with this project. We are also going through with re-designing the logo, maybe we will even start a community competition, we will see. Apart from that, tasks at hand remain the same. Market research, community engagement and advertising as well as approving our fundraising event. Hope you are doing good and are as excited about this project as we are! Stay tuned!

-ELSM crew

[elsm-inc-blog]

Future starts slow

Future might start slow, but the pace in which you have to move to make it to 4 different meetings a day+ classes at University, that pace is really crazy. That’s the main reason this blog is coming today in the morning instead of last night. Regardless of what they say about how important it is to do things as fast as you can and as soon as you can, it is very exhausting. We really should mind our pace and know our limits simply to not burn out. It often seems to us, holy f**k, we have done so much today. Yet, when you look at the final goal it often seems to be as far away as it was a week ago. These steps, they are hard to measure and i often think there’s no need to measure them at all. In that I am wrong for the feeling should not be the obstacle to rational analysis and reflection. Instead it should be the driver of creation, and this is a huge lesson that Elysium project is teaching us. 

Before we talk about people we met, it is important to  say that we have devised our entire social media policy. In the future it will be closely related to some of the activities that will happen at the bar. We will make a post that will entirely describe what is every day for on our social media,but first we want to try and actually field-test this policy for a week to see how it goes. For example today is Wednesday. It is the Unicorn/Rainbow day. Why? First of all, both of those things are the pinnacle of video games. Moreover and most importantly, it is our initiative to support the LGBTQ community that is an integral part of the video game community. In the future, if you to our bar on Wednesday with something “rainbow” or something “unicorn” we will offer you discounts and free stuff (we haven’t decided exactly what yet,but we will announce it in due time)  Se Let’s get to the meetings, shall we?

Two of the meetings were just with some of our friends, that were very interested in the project. Surprisingly they went in a pretty much identical way. It was reddit all over again. Questions about business plan, how it’s gonna be inside, what games are we going to have, what’s the pricing strategy etc. It gets a little bit annoying to elaborate on all those things in conversations again and again, but those are totally reasonable questions of someone who cares about the success of the community. Since we haven’t written in details about these things it is only fair that people ask. (Maybe should reveal more project details soon? Most likely. After the research is done though! Please be patient.)

Third meeting was with Maria. She is a representative (I don’t know if she has a formal title, I will call her a representative because she represents) of Calgary Pokemon League. It was wonderful to see how she imagined the future gatherings at our bar, tournaments, the vibrant community. It gave us all at Elysium so much inspiration. We also have decided that it would be great for our crew to show up Smash Logic Gaming this saturday  to meet more community members and promote our idea. We also have talked about ELSM bringing itself to other upcoming festivals in Calgary and Edmonton. A lot of time was spent talking about how to make all the small communities of everyone who is interested in video games in Calgary into one united group. We discussed a few ideas, so the work on “uniting” has begun,pretty much. All in all meeting was great, we are totally looking forward to more meetings like this one.

The last one of the day was a meetup of Chitter community at U of C. Chitter is that new student app (Anonymous wall, comments and stuff, pretty much a confessions page but in the app). There’s was lot of pretty energetic and fun people there. They prank called some girl’s mom saying she is suspected of drug trafficking, but we were all laughing so loud that we gave it away. It was childish,but it was fun. Few people there already knew about Elysium, so we talked with them about it in slightly greater details. Chitter community is new and it was really important to connect with them, see their opinion, most importantly see how they envision the place when it opens.

This is pretty much it. Then i came home and had to write a blog but fell asleep at my desk. Sorry for that. Actually not sorry. We all gotta sleep sometimes, right?

We wish you a good day,

ELSM crew

[elsm-inc-blog]

Wrong  animal, right trap.

I don’t even know where to start. Well, on the plus side, we’ve focused on additional revenue streams and marketing today. On the negative side, we’ve expected people to have a certain stigma against gaming, but it seems stigma is twisted in a slightly weirder way, then we expected. Reddit poured a lot of shit on us. We understand that people have their scepticism and that’s good, but telling someone that their project is not gonna work is sort of going far. Good thing that we were ready for the haters, but there was a slight sadness in the crew. Then,we just sat and decided, well, they think this ain’t gonna work? That means we have to work harder, push harder and get our point across.  People really think about gaming as a very narrow niche market, undermining the diversity of the videogame community. It is sort of funny, but it is also sort of sad. Our vision is to make Elysium an ultimate entertainment spot, that goes beyond just dedicated gamers. Dedicated gamer are the backbone of the community, but we should not make this community elitist. We should always welcome new people to learn about gaming culture, have fun with their friends without having to be super hardcore gamers to be accepted there. We have to promote gaming as the most direct interaction of a person with technology and pop culture. Only then we can move our community forward, and the gaming forward as a whole. This is the point that we are trying to get across and we will. 

Many people asked if we have a good business plan and if we have accounted for everything. We have accounted for everything we could have accounted for at this point. After the research, there obviously are going to be changes,but it’s the point of research - to make the project better. One thing is clear though, we need to have a great exposure and a united community of gamers in Calgary to be successful. That is another goal for the coming months, to unite all the spread out gaming groups in Calgary under one flag. We are going to reach out to people at LANified tomorrow to ask if we could present our project at their event. A lot of ground work in general.

We are really happy with the survey responses and people sending us emails about focus groups. Research participation is truly great for the span of 24 hours. We wanted to post more pictures of the crew on instagram and other media, but at this point everyone is so tired it’d not be a great picture. We will do it though, be sure. We have a meeting with the representative of the UofC Pokemon Club tomorrow. Really looking forward to it. 

That’s how it is right now. Have a good night!

-ELSM team. 

[elsm-inc-blog]

Days gone by

The Sunday has passed in the blink of eye. Most of the day we spent on finishing the Moderator Manual for our focus groups research as well as we have launched the survey monkey, as promised yesterday. Moreover, we were making sure our financial projections look solid for we have been tasked to make them as far as next 20 years (landlords and investors insist on this and we understand) It required from us to come back to some sort of  a dreaming stage. Elysium was a dream for a long while, but in the past months we have got used to aiming at more tangible things and strived to create real results. But to simply do these projections we had to imagine, what else apart from Virtual Reality might appear in the market in the coming years. 

First we thought about just the future of videogames. It is a popular theory and it has some valid points to it, that somewhat soon videogames might replace movies and the entire industry itself (goodbye Hollywood!). As of now,we have video games that both and visual and storytelling levels are fully caught up to those of movies. The main point being, including everything mentioned above, that you would rather BE in the story instead of just watching it. That allows you to create your own story inside another story (some “Inception” stuff, eh? Btw DiCaprio did good in that one, let’s wish him an oscar for the “Revenant”). That’s that, most video games already allow you to do that, theory is mostly based on the fact as there’s more and more games that are fulfilling both visually and in terms of storytelling + the younger generation that plays a lot of games will gradually overtake the market, games really could destroy Hollywood.

Now imagine all of the above but in the situation of fully developed virtual reality. By fully developed we mean the one that has overcome motion sickness, is able to keep constant 120fps in any application it supports and allows simultaneous cross platform functionality. In case of that happening, there might be only one outcome. Multipurpose VR platform. Developed by one of the current huge developers such as Sony, Microsoft, Google, Apple etc. Interestingly enough, to make it truly multipurpose it’d require them to either cooperate or enhance current competition and the winner, that has achieved the goal first could create a natural monopoly. That would require us as a bar to purchase that platform at whichever price the manufacturer sets it and can be a potential risk (huge cost) .

Last, but not least, is augmented reality. The case where using a pair of glasses (google has a prototype) or helmet, reality and virtual reality get fused into one. We are talking again, about a fully developed product, that would allow you to virtually access the functionality of a console or a PC anywhere. Say, there’s a blank wall and a person sitting in front of it in Augmented Reality glasses. He might as well be playing games, like on playstation or xbox, right now, but only using his bare hands and a wall as a surface to project a virtual image on the inside of the glasses (or helmet). This kind of technology would totally destroy any video game bar or any other gaming console in a nutshell. Yet, we are sure we could figure something out by then (I mean we are thinking  20 years in the future, and who knows, maybe we will be the ones to develop and promote it to the full stage(dreaming dreaming...))

Those are our projections for possible gaming related technology in the coming years. We though it would be interesting to share our theories and dreams with you. Yet, we have to come back to work to make something awesome happen (details about that will come soon) Hope you have a good night and stay tuned to us!

-Elysium Crew

[elsm-inc-blog]

The Story So Far.

Our story has started months back, when we first sat to put everything on paper, write up the business plan, do the business canvas, basic secondary market research, costs etc. etc. Since then we all got used to sleeping way less than we’d like to, we’ve hit a few roadblocks and a number of breakdowns based on fear. The fear that usually appears when you encounter huge problems and in that moment it feels like they can not be solved. But we are proud to say that we’ve made it past those obstacles. We thought we knew how to fight and how to not give up, we thought we had a pretty good idea of what it is like to take on the weight of starting up a business. It all was pretty much put to the test. We reflected a lot. Argued a lot. We figured stuff out. Probably we also drank too much coffee (oh, how cliche, isn’t it?lol) Anyway, here we are. We know that the path we are walking is not easy, we chose it ourselves and we are going to walk it till the end. We have amazing friends by our side, a great community that has your back and we have you. We want to build Elysium together with this city and we’d like to invite you to be a part of our story.

 We want to make our bar a place of equality in all matters, where there are friends and no foes, where there is good times, liquor and video-games.The idea of a video game bar is not ground-breaking, neither is it revolutionary, but it is something that needs to be pushed forward and actually made. It is 2016 and it is about damn time Calgary got itself its very own local video game bar. So here’s the important part. We wanna hear from you what you think about it. We have our vision about how everything should look and work, but we don’t wanna impose anything at the same time. Again, we want it to be a place that you build together with us and that you can call home when we launch it. 

You might be sceptical about this idea,and that’s good. We all gotta be realistic here. So, we mentioned that general market overview has been done, but for us to be fully confident that is not enough. Thus, tomorrow night we are going to launch an invitation to focus group research paired with the ‘thorough’ surveymonkey (we obviously are more aimed on focus groups, for in many cases the “surveymonkey” proves to be not so valid, even though we tried to minimize validity threats as much as we could). We are going to keep you posted, so you will see for yourself how that works out. Follow us on social media to be able to get our full story from all the possible angles (links will be down below, or you can find them in the Social Media tab of this blog). We also have a tab above that shows the current Project Status in terms of funding as well as our fundraising strategy so be sure to check it out. + you can ask us any questions through the following question tab above, we will answer them all, be sure about it.

Paperwork and preparations end one day, and it comes the time to act. This day is today.  

Social Medias: 

https://www.facebook.com/ELSMyyc

https://twitter.com/ELSM_Inc

https://www.instagram.com/elsm_inc