Cheers, Mate!
The Mana Bar was the first Australian cocktail bar and video gaming lounge located in Brisbane, Australia within its biggest night-life and entertainment district, Fortitude Valley. The bar held its opening event on 20th March 2010. The bar allowed visitors to play current-generation gaming consoles free of charge while enjoying gaming-themed drinks.
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 Prasant Moorthy, senior designer at The Creative Assembly; Shay Leighton, creative director of local cocktail bar The Bowery; and iconic gaming critic and humourist Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw.
After years of planning and several pushed back opening dates, the Mana Bar opened on 20th 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 patrons line up, with the waiting time for some reported to be up to three hours long.
Make Mine A Double
On 9th August, 2010, it was confirmed that the success of the Mana Bar in Brisbane led to plans to expand to Melbourne, to be opened on 16th July 2011. It was also revealed that there were plans to expand internationally, with the owners interested in opening branches of the bar in the United States and Europe.
The Mana Bar had strong ties with the video game industry, and had been used by developers and publishers as a promotional venue where they were able to preview or launch their games. This included the launch of Blazblue: Calamity Trigger, Just Cause 2 and Raskulls all being playable at the venue prior to the official launch of the games, the latter being a preview exclusive to the Mana Bar.
Last Orders
The Mana Bar has received significant media coverage from prime gaming and geek culture sites including Kotaku, Destructoid, Gizmodo and Joystiq. However, after a little over two years of operation, the Melbourne bar closed in September 2013, citing low patronage further impacted by restricted trading hours. Plans to open another branch of the bar in Sydney also fell through.
Long story short is, we haven’t been getting the traffic we need through the bar […] and the Mana Bar itself can be quite difficult to keep people coming in all of the time, so we haven’t been getting quite enough traffic for us to stay open any longer.”
– Mana Bar Melbourne’s general manager, Meghan Betteridge
Morrigan Moore became the owner and general manager of the main Brisbane bar in May 2014. On 19th May, 2015, the owners announced via the bar’s Facebook page that the venue would cease trading on Sunday 24th May, 2015. The owners thanked “everyone [who] made it the sweet ride it was.”
