NODE - Gaming Lounge

There are two pricing structres at NODE, guests and members.

Lifetime membership is a one time fee of 10.00. It comes with 1 hour credited to your account. You can add as many hours to your account as you want, and they NEVER expire. Add 8 hours today, use 2 tomorrow, use 4 next week. Doesn't matter =).

* Some other places charge PER CONTROLLER. Add that with their inflated hourly rates, and you could be paying 24 BUCKS an hour for 4 people to play on one console. We charge PER CONSOLE. So no matter if it's 1 person, or 4 people on 1 console, we charge only 1 hourly rate. 

ALL guests are required to leave an I.D. prior to using any computer.

Both  members and guests are required to leave an I.D. for each console controller, and pool table.

"Why do you charge 10.00 for membership?"

Glad you asked. We're well aware that other places hand out "memberships" for free. You walk in, and you're basically given one whether you like it or not. Since day one, NODE has always required it's members to provide a fee. Requiring all NODE members to provide this fee accomplishes some very important factors.

•  People put value on things they pay for, this is 100% fact. You get something for free, it's easier to dismiss then something you had to pay for. This means that, at some point, everyone who has become a NODE member made a conscience decision to make an investment in being a NODE member. Which in turns, makes it safe to assume in most cases, that NODE members are a select breed of gamers that can be qualified as "enthusiast" to "hardcore". Your average wannabe gamer probably won't pay to become a NODE gamer, and prefers playing alone on the couch and/or basement computer.
• Having a paid membership allows us to create a seperate user base (the guests). NODE was always created with the intent to cater to the hardcore/enthusiast community, not the occasional weekend warrior that fires up Crash Bandicoot for an hour or two. By weeding out the wannabe's, whom we're assuming go to "other" places that have "free" memberships, we ensure that if you're a member at NODE, you're most likely surrounded by people who are just as hardcore as you are. Come to NODE on a busy night and talk to some people. We're not jabbing about anime (most the time at least), or favorite cookie recipes (on occasion, but shhh), everyone here is for gaming and gaming only.
• Believe it or not, we really don't make any real money off of membership fees. It's a one time fee. The ONLY reason we have the membership fee in place are for the reasons stated on this page. The last thing we want is an influx of so called "noobs" because we hand out memberships like candy.
• As we've always preached before, NODE's primary objective is to promote the growth of the enthusiast gaming community in Howard County and Maryland. A community is the sum, and quality (not quantity) of it's members. In order to incubate a genuine, hard gaming group, we have to weed out the fakers.