Near the end of the pandemic, the Student Centers' visitor population wasn't recovering to pre-COVID 19 levels. I decided to make some changes to the Games Room by introducing the CoogARCADE. To begin with, I created a presentation and pitched it to the Executive Director of the Student Centers and the Interim Vice President of Student Affairs. I came up with three budgets that would mirror the minimum, the affordable, and the overkill costs of this space.
My idea was to remove half of the arcade (the majority of games didn't see any use anyways) and instead replace it with a gaming lounge. In order to solidify my chances of finding success, I 3D modeled the space to test layouts and help the Executive Director and the Interim VP of Student Affairs visualize the space.
Success! The idea caught on, and I was given a budget of $10,000 to make it happen. I reached out to an advisor, and together we refined our budget and began to make purchases. and do some work on the space.
As I was still part of the marketing team, I decided to turn the grand opening of this space into an event. I created marketing materials and built a community that was looking forward to using this space every day!
One day, the Executive Director of the Student Centers met with me and told me that the area was very dim, and severely lacked in visuals. She let me know that I had full creative freedom to create something that I could put onto the walls of the CoogARCADE. So I set off to create a mural that spanned three walls and two ceilings!
A big difficulty I faced with this project was making sure that the space was used as a service, and not a revenue-generating endeavor. Many full-time staff members thought this was a mistake, but I succeeded by making the space free to use, for as long as you want, with controller rentals at $3 for the entire day (but you can still use the space if you brought your own controller)!
We hosted our grand opening, and it was a major success!
