James Dance's “Gaming Bar For London” flexible funding campaign on Indiegogo has closed with $15,140 raised towards its $50,000 goal. The owner of “Loading” cafe/bar in Falmouth (in the South West of England) chose to use Indiegogo to raise the funds because the project can still go ahead despite not reaching the stated goal. The team still plans to open the gaming bar – and Dance points out that even the full $50,000 would not be enough to do – but wanted to drum up a little extra support to limit the need to rely on investors and banks.
Loading opened in 2010, and is based on gaming cafes in Tokyo. A cafe during the day and a bar at night, it serves coffee, Ben and Jerry's milkshakes, soft drinks, and game-themed cocktails like the Resident Evil-inspired “G and T virus”. As well as free Wi-Fi, the cafe has an arcade table with over 1000 games, a SNES, and an Xbox 360 with Live enabled. When the new cafe/bar opens in London, the team will collaborate with various other companies like Gourmet Gaming and Gamerdisco to provide added experiences for customers.
Dance took to Twitter last night to plea for last-minute contributions to hit the $15,000 mark, and thanked backers with a message this morning:
Thanks to everyone for supporting our crowd funding this last 45 days, to hit $15k is still a massive boost to a small business 😀
