Pilot · Simulation · Venue Operations
What happens when 300 guests arrive early, two people are missing at the bar, the cloakroom overflows or the headliner starts 45 minutes late?
The Cologne Night Live Simulator is intended to model event nights as a dynamic system. Instead of looking at isolated figures, it connects attendance, staffing, bar operations, technology, costs, waiting times, incidents and program flow on a shared timeline.
The goal is not to predict reality perfectly. The goal is to make possible bottlenecks, interactions and economic effects visible and comparable before the night happens.
The roadmap deliberately separates the operational simulator from the later game. They share a technical foundation, but they serve different users and should feel different in the interface.
A practical tool for clubs, venues and promoters. It focuses on planning, analysis, training, staffing, bar capacity, incidents, cost, revenue and scenario comparison.
A later playable game based on the simulation foundation. It may use stories, avatars, roles, decisions, consequences, atmosphere and multi-night story arcs.
Simulator and game should not become two unrelated codebases. The shared engine owns the event-night model, repeatable simulation runs, logging and replay. Simulator and game can then use the same domain while keeping their own presentation.
Planning, analysis, scenarios, training and venue operations.
Story, gameplay, avatars, decisions and consequences.
An event night consists of many dependent decisions. More guests do not automatically mean more profit. A full bar can become the bottleneck. Too little staff creates waiting times, too much staff increases costs. Program delays affect door, cloakroom, bar and technology at the same time.
These interactions are what the simulator is meant to make visible.
Guests arrive, order, move through the venue, wait, leave again, staff switch roles and program items change the dynamic. The simulator should represent these processes over time so that not only final results, but also critical phases become visible.
The simulator should make multiple variants of the same night comparable. It should not only compare revenue and cost, but also waiting time, overloaded time windows, staff utilization, lost orders, peak capacity and resulting margin.
An event night never runs exactly as planned. Later, the simulator should not only calculate one sequence, but run many slightly different variants of the same night.
A Monte Carlo model can vary arrival time, ordering behavior, length of stay or incidents within defined boundaries. A single forecast becomes a distribution of possible results.
No artificial production values are shown here. Reliable ranges only make sense after calibration with real venue data.
The model should be calibrated with real event data. The pilot must also work with small, incomplete data sets because not every venue has a fully digitized system.
Real nightlife stories can become structured, anonymizable story events. The roadmap does not force a fixed game mechanic yet. First, the material should be collected in a form that can later drive scenarios, choices and consequences.
title: Headliner kommt zu spät
category: artist
trigger: 00:30
impact:
guest_flow: high
bar: medium
staff: medium
program: high
choices:
- wait
- move_support_act
- extend_dj_setTest capacity, staffing and flow before one night starts.
Compare scenarios before decisions become expensive.
Understand effects of running order, changeovers and disruptions.
Explore event operations as a dynamic system.
The target milestone is a presentable and playable build: a usable simulator, a playable vertical slice, at least one consistent venue, multiple night scenarios, anonymized story material and stable demo material for a public presentation.
Pilot partners
For the next development phase we are looking for real event data and venues where the model can be tested against actual operations. Incomplete data is useful too: attendance, bar revenue, shift plan and a rough program schedule may already be enough for a first comparison.