Games people play

Shelley Richins is the owner of Invictus Computers & Games Center, a new computer repair/pay-to-play gaming complex equipped with top of the line computer and gaming consoles with HD TV's. Invictus is located in northwest Reno at 3695 Kings Row.

Why did you get started with this business?

We actually decided to start this business because we are all gamers, and we love playing games, and we are also a bunch of computer nerds. We wanted to give parents a break on the cost of gaming because it can become expensive. Most kids in this day and age can beat a game in a few hours, and those games are $60 a pop. Some of them are a little more than that—it just depends. We wanted to cut them some slack and provide a gaming environment for the gamers in this town. We did the computer side because these computer shops in this town are ripping people off with their $95 labor rates. Why are you raking people over coals? Just because they can’t fix their own computer? That’s not right.

What are your rates?

We charge $55 an hour for the first hour and then it’s $45 an hour after that. It just depends, really. We have flat rates for certain things, like virus removal, operating system installment, system tune-ups. Gaming rates vary by hour. One hour is $8, and a day pass is $40. You can find a full list of pricing on our website.

What does the business offer?

We can fix any computer, PCs or Macs. We can build any computer, we do costume builds, we usually ask the costumers what they plan on using the computer for, then give them recommendations for a build. As for the gaming, we have PlayStation rooms and Xbox rooms. We have 8 to 10 games for the computers. We have 12 for the PlayStation4. The Xbox1, unfortunately, doesn’t have as many. That’s because a lot of these are specific for the PS4, but it looks like we have eight for the Xbox1. We do plan on investing in more games as we move forward with the business.

Do you allow people to bring in their own games?

Not generally, because most of the people that come in here have PS3 or Xbox 360 and the games are not backwards compatible.

How long do kids usually come and play for? Do you have a time limit on it?

No. Actually, the parents normally put the time limit on them. We have had kids say anywhere from one hour to four hours. Now, the older people, they have a tendency to stay a lot longer than that. So we have an all day pass that’s eight hours of gaming time.

How long does it take to build a computer?

It just depends. As long as you don’t run into any issues with things, you can usually have one built in three to four hours. We go by the request of the customer. If they are like, “Oh, my god, my computer is completely dead. I’m dying without it. I need this quick hurry, hurry,” we can usually bump it up a little. It also depends how busy we are, so if we are really backed up with jobs, we’ll tell you. We will never take on a job until we tell you, ‘Hey we got this many people ahead of you, and it could take a few days.’ You also have to consider time to order the parts if needed, so it could take about a week for a customer.