By Relly Carpio
INQUIRER.net

“FOR the next seven days, i-Hooked Buendia will have various promos in celebration of our opening,” said Maribel Thomas, franchise owner of the newest branch of power gamer hub i-Hooked. “From 1 to 6 p.m. everyday, various local game distributors will hold sponsored events, themed towards their games at our branch: e-Games (March 12-13), Amped (March 14-15), and AMDG (March 16-17). On the 18th, i-Hooked will have the finals of their Ownage DOTA competition, where the winning representative team will take home P10,000 in cold hard cash.”

Here’s a photo I took of Thomas with Benedict Villanueva (left), general manager of Sabiclub, the company that owns the i-Hooked franchise, and Dong Hun Lee, president and CEO of Sabiclub.

The branch is located near the corner of Gil Puyat and Chino Roces Avenue. “This is our fourth i-Hooked cafe, and we’re very happy to open one in Makati. Also, we have two more that will open soon, one in Las Piñas and another somewhere along EDSA, though I cannot disclose the exact location yet,” Lee said.

i-Hooked cafe has been known in the power gamer circuit, as well as its sister cafe, Station 168, for having very powerful units that are great for gaming.

“We have 75 high-spec computers here. Every one has an Intel Core 2 Duo chip, and we use all-original software. We also have high-speed Internet access of up to 4 megabits per second which is perfect for online gaming,” Villanueva explained.

Acoustic band Jeff’s Crib performed for the crowd mostly composed of college students from the schools around the area.