Ryan, I too am interested and have this post bookmarked from a while back. Some information there, but not too helpful.

We are currently adding new systems to our video game room and were planning to let the students sign-in using their own accounts. We are concerned if they didn't sign-out what problems that will cause. Never thought about having to wipe data, but that is a good point. I would think annually?

At a previous institution we did have XBox Live subscription, but eventually it just became too costly for the amount of use our systems were getting. Most students visiting the game room were looking to play pool or table tennis and would rather game in their room.
We had a suggestion box where users can drop in the titles they wanted and we usually reviewed those each semester. The more there were for one game, the more likely we are to get it.

Hi Ryan, 

I was able to get some answers for you from our AV manager here at VCU. 

I'm mostly thinking about accounts and downloads. Do people allow users to sign into their own accounts and download games/software they may have purchased on their own. How often if ever do you go though and reset the consoles / wipe data We do not allow people to sign into their own accounts, the consoles are not connected to the network.  Even if the consoles were connected to the network I would still not permit people to download games to the consoles.  If I am not mistaken the account needs to be logged in and active in order to play the games that were downloaded.  Its just a space hog for the consoles.

Does anyone have a institutional subscription to PS network, Xbox gold or EA access to download games or get access to different publisher libraries that are included with the subscription. This would be great to have access to.  Having extra free games that come with the subscriptions is nice but there would need to be external hard drives to store all the games. With the extra drives there would need to be a list of what games are on each drive.  Swapping out multiple drives may be more of a headache than its worth.

How do you keep your gaming library up to date and decide which console to buy games for especially since there are new sports games every year. Keeping up to date on which games to buy generally comes from the students.  We have a list of upcoming games/current games that people have mentioned to us.  If a certain game gets enough votes then that would be something we could explore buying. I personally would stay away from buying sports games as its a 60 dollar game every year with little to no changes other than updated rosters.  The games that we bought are all games that tend to stand the test of time.  Games like GTA 5, Rocket League, Super Smash Brothers will always be popular.


Best, 
Rochelle
 

Hey Ryan,

We used to have 8 consoles here and pared it down to 4 the other year. 

We probably buy three or so games a year, normally two sports titles (soccer and football) and then if a new mario kart or smash comes out, or something similarly non-sportsy, we'll generally pick that up too.

We do have a policy against realistic human violence, so no GTAV or COD, but we do allow Halo etc. Kind of a gray area, but *shrug*.

We don't explicitly allow users to log into their own accounts and download games, but we don't really do anything to stop it either. Just kind of a cost of doing business if you want to be connected to the internet (to allow for roster updates, etc). We go through during each major break (winter/spring/summer) and delete accounts and remove downloaded games. It's on our AV maintenance calendar.

Spencer

 

I'm mostly thinking about accounts and downloads. Do people allow users to sign into their own accounts and download games/software they may have purchased on their own. How often if ever do you go though and reset the consoles / wipe data.  We have created our own generic accounts so people do not sign into their personal account.  I have had an XBOX shut down for a week and had to call Mircosoft to release the console since we could not sign into anything.  We go through the system at the end of every semester to see if there are games on the systems that we do not have.  

Does anyone have a institutional subscription to PS network, Xbox gold or EA access to download games or get access to different publisher libraries that are included with the subscription.  We do not have it; we would have to go through the process with ITS and University Counsel to get approval and I know they will not agree on the terms.  

How do you keep your gaming library up to date and decide which console to buy games for especially since there are new sports games every year.  We try to buy two+ games every month to keep up with the games.  I did buy external hard drives, set them up with the system so the gaming systems have more memory.  With the external drives, it has helped to keep more games in stock and not limited to 3-6 games due to hard drive space.  

Chris Adrian
Jackson Student Union Manager
Coastal Carolina University
Email: cmadrian@coastal.edu

 

Currently on our PS4 Pro I have created an Admin account that I have access to and students are allowed to log in as guest or as themselves. They can download their own games that are associated with their personal accounts but they do not have access to purchase games and download them to the system. In our gaming policy I mention that the consoles hard drives are periodically wiped and their digital security is their responsibility while using public consoles. 

Paul Eleazer, CTS
Manager of Audiovisual Production 
Student Center, Division of Campus Life
Emory University 
peleaze@emory.edu