RV Select Review: 1st Quarter Edition

GamerBUS turns RV into mobile gaming party

It was just four months ago that Greg Weate quit his 19-year career with FedEx to focus his efforts on the venture.

“It wasn’t scary,” he said. “Luckily my wife is working. We were comfortable enough that no matter what happened with the RV, even if I never sold a rental, we weren’t going to starve.

“It was something we wanted to try and hopefully we make money doing it, but it wasn’t going to cause us to lose the house or something.”

Greg's wife Dana developed and runs the website, GamerBUS.com. From concept to completion the venture has been a family affair.

The seeds for the idea were planted two years ago, when Greg was throwing a party for his son Mitchel’s 16th birthday.

His friends came over with Xboxes and TVs. They had six Xboxes networked together in the room above their garage. They had so much fun, that they played for 12 hours.

However, after going through the hassle of setting everything up and tearing it all down they decided there had to be a better way. That’s when Greg started to see it as a possible opportunity.

“You know it became a topic of conversation at dinner,” he said. “We started saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do this – to be able to do these parties.’ That’s where the idea came from.”

For the next two years it was just that, an idea, but another hobby would help to change that.

Greg races go-karts and was planning on upgrading from his open trailer to a RV for hauling them. “After being rained on every time we go out we were looking to find something different,” he said.

His plan was to strip one out and use it as a toy hauler, but when he found what he was looking for on eBay he realized it could serve another purpose.

“I was looking at it more,” he said, “and saying this really would be a good set-up for getting the video games in there.”

The RV, a 1991 Newmar Kountry Star, had been used by a university as a mobile computer classroom, so there was much less to tear out then there would have been had it been a regular RV.

“I didn’t have to worry about bathrooms or anything like that,” he said.

Still, the process took three months. The roof had to be fixed because of a leak and all of the cabinets and desks had to come out.

“I had to strip the whole thing down,” he said. “I ripped out the framework inside. I tell ya, RVs are not meant to come apart. It was a lot of cutting and a lot of tearing stuff out, but once it was empty it was just like regular home construction…

“My father was a contractor. I’d worked with him for several years. So it wasn’t a stretch to put the things together.”

Add to that the fact that he has always been a car nut and he was good to go. The hardest part was deciding on materials and formulating a plan on how to set it up.

“I’m not good at sitting down and writing up a big plan,” he said. “I mostly just did all the planning in my head and went ahead step-by-step putting the thing together.”

Luckily, generators weren’t something he had to worry about, he said. Because of its previous use as a classroom it came with two 6500-watt generators that ended up being just enough to power his GamerBUS.

With 16 Xbox 360s each with its own 23" Philips HD-TV the final product is more than enough to make any gamer salivate.

Greg said that he decided to standardize on the Xbox 360 because no other system had the networking capabilities and an available library that could match it.

“None of the other systems have a good system link capability like the Xbox,” he said. “The Playstation 3s you can network, but there’s no games available for the PS3.”

He said that with most 3rd party games being multi-platform, he doubts there will be too many games that he won’t be able to get.

“I think for this product the 360s really seemed like the only way to go,” Greg said. “The 360 is only now beginning to come into its own. It has taken developers about a year to get some good programs to come out that have been designed for the 360. I think we’re in a good position right now with the systems.”

He decided to set rentals at $150 per hour on the weekend with a two-hour minimum. Discounts are given during the week and for rentals lasting more than two hours. Most people rent during the afternoon, but it is available at almost anytime of day, within reason.

“If someone wants to do it at six in the morning I’ll be happy to do it,” he said. In residential areas he tries to be cautious because of the noise from the generators and won’t go past 10 p.m., but he will go later in commercial areas.

To start out with business was slow, non-existent in fact. No one knew about him, but as soon as he had decals put on that all changed.

“It’s a forty-foot billboard driving around,” he said. “Coming back from the shop my phone started ringing.”

That night he did his first party, and since then things have slowly started to build through word-of-mouth. His best customers have been 8 to 12-year-olds throwing birthday parties and it has mainly been a weekend operation.

Robin Brickell's son Q was one of those happy customers. She rented out the bus for his 14th birthday.

The rental was a surprise, and when she told the kids to come up from the basement to see what was in the driveway they could barely contain their excitement.

“They loved it,” Robin said. “Once the bus arrived it was the easiest and most hassle free birthday party I've ever thrown. I had pizza boxes and uncut birthday cake because the kids never came off the bus ... I think that bus is fabulous”

Some parents were initially concerned that there kids would get bored before the two hours were up, but Greg said he has never had that problem. The kids have to practically be dragged off the bus when their time is up and try to avoid bathroom breaks at all costs, he said.

“Every time we do a party there are 15 more kids in there who want to have a party,” Greg said. “We are starting to see some kids three or four times. They keep coming back and doing it again.”

The thing that Robin said impressed her most was how helpful they were with a kids who was not familiar with the 360. She said they got him playing and having fun in no time at all.

Greg did his first advertisement in a shopping magazine that covers a little less than a five-mile radius, which has been where almost all of his parties have been so far.

As he gets more exposure he expects to get more business from teenagers and adults. To help with that, he has an upcoming Gears of War tournament in conjunction with a local video game store that is expected to draw as many as 300 people.

He is also participating in four different all night graduation parties that local high schools are putting on for their graduations.

Eventually, he would like to expand to doing promotions with car shows, NASCAR races and video game launches, but much of that will have to wait on new titles.

He has had opportunities to do hospitality tents at NASCAR races but is holding off until a multi-player racing game designed specifically for the 360 is available. Right now he uses Forza for racing, a game that was designed for the original Xbox.

“It works well for kids,” he said. “It does work on the 360, but it wasn’t made for the 360. So it has some lag problems.

“I’m looking forward to being able to go to these kind of things, but I don’t want to do it half-assed. I want to show up and have a proper product and let people have a good time doing it.”

He said that once Forza 2 and some of the other racing games come out with versions designed for the 360 he will begin to do car shows and NASCAR races and will re-evaluate different steering wheel accessories.

His most popular games are for the most part what you would expect. Most people want to play Halo, and the kids whose parents won’t allow them to play Halo want to play Star Wars Battlefront. Another game, Blazing Angels, has been unexpectedly popular.

Blazing Angels is a WWII fighter pilot game and when he played single player missions on it Greg said that he though it was just ok. However, when he has gotten sixteen people playing it together, the game has blown people away. People who only reluctantly agreed to try it out leave wanting to go to the store and buy it.

That really exemplifies the power of the GamerBUS. Being able to play with 15 other people all in the same room greatly enhances the experience. It is something he said goes beyond the experience Xbox Live offers.

“It’s really a different experience from playing Xbox Live,” he said. “The play in this environment, it’s so much more fun. The whole aspect of the game and being able to yell back and forth across the bus at everybody – some of the parties really do get loud.”