Mana Bar is the first Australian cocktail bar and video gaming lounge located in Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 within its biggest night-life and entertainment district, Fortitude Valley. The bar held its opening event on 20 March 2010. The bar allows visitors to play current generation gaming consoles

Video game console

A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...

 free of charge while enjoying video game themed drinks. The bar is open seven nights a week and often runs special events such as prizes, giveaways, live entertainment and special guests.

The Mana Bar is a collaboration between Guy "Yug" Blomberg, co-creator of Australian Gamer

Australian Gamer

Australian Gamer is a video gaming website that focuses on the gaming scene in Australia. It was created in 2005 by gaming friends Matt Burgess and Guy "Yug" Blomberg in order to give Australia a voice within the gaming world after the release of Dance Dance Revolution was cancelled in Australia;...

, Pras Moorthy, senior designer at The Creative Assembly, video game critic Ben Croshaw

Ben Croshaw

Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw is an English comedic writer, video game journalist and author of adventure games created using Adventure Game Studio software. He writes articles for Australia's Hyper magazine, a major games publication...

, and Shay Leighton, creative director of local cocktail bar The Bowery.

History

The idea was first conceived by Australian Gamer co-creator Guy Blomberg, in December 2007 after a house party in which Guy himself noted the successful combination of alcohol and video games made for an excellent social environment. Guy was later joined in this enterprise by Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw, Prasant Moorthy and Shay Leighton. After years of planning and several pushed back opening dates, the Mana Bar opened on 20 March 2010. It is also reported that there are only a handful of venues in the world that offer a similar experience. Despite the 50 person capacity of the venue, the opening night saw over 100 line up, with the waiting time for some reported to be up to three hours long.

The Mana Bar has received significant media coverage from prime video game and geek culture sites including Kotaku

Kotaku

Kotaku is a video games-focused blog. It is part of Gawker Media's "Gawker" network of sites, which also includes Gizmodo, Deadspin, Lifehacker, io9 and Jezebel. Named to CNET News' Blog 100, Kotaku is consistently listed in the top 40 of Technorati's Top 100...

, Destructoid

Destructoid

Destructoid is an independent video game-focused blog based in San Francisco, California that was founded in March 2006. It has since grown into one of the most widely read video game sites on the Internet, reaching more than 3 million unique visitors per month...

, Gizmodo

Gizmodo

Gizmodo is a technology weblog about consumer electronics. It is part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton and is known for its up-to-date coverage of the technology industry, along with topics as broad as design; architecture; space and science....

 and Joystiq

Joystiq

Joystiq is a video gaming blog founded in June 2004 that has since become one of the most successful sites within the Weblogs, Inc. family of weblogs. It is the centerpiece of WIN's own network of video gaming blogs, which also includes a blog dealing specifically with the popular MMORPG World of...

.

On 9 August of the same year, it was confirmed that the success of Mana Bar in Brisbane has led to plans to expand to Sydney (no opening dates were mentioned) and Melbourne due to be opened on 16 July 2011. It was also revealed that there were plans to expand internationally, with the owners looking at opening the bar in the United States and Europe.

Video game industry relations

The Mana Bar has strong ties with the video game industry, and has been used by developers and publishers as a promotional venue where they can preview or launch their games. This has included the launch of Blazblue, the Halo: Reach

Halo: Reach

Halo: Reach is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 console. Reach was released in North America, Australia, and Europe on September 14, 2010. The game takes place in the year 2552, where humanity is locked in a war with the...

 multiplayer beta, Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2 is an open world action-adventure video game developed by Avalanche Studios, published by Eidos Interactive, and distributed by Square Enix. It is the sequel to the 2006 video game Just Cause....

 and Raskulls

Raskulls

Raskulls is an action platform game video game independently developed by Halfbrick and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade. It was released on December 29, 2010. In Raskulls players must navigate through platform-based levels filled with blocks of varying...

all being playable at the venue prior to the official launch of the games, the latter being a preview exclusive to the Mana Bar.

Politics

In March 2010, the Legislative Assembly of Queensland released a report into alcohol-related violence, suggesting a connection to violent video games. On 20 April 2010 the Mana Bar responded to the report, stating that there has not been a single violent incident within their present four weeks of operation, and encouraged the Queensland Government to include the Mana Bar in their future studies.