[1][6][7][8] The Mana Bar was founded as a collaboration between Guy "Yug" Blomberg, co-creator of Australian Gamer; Pras Moorthy, senior designer at The Creative Assembly; video game critic Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw; and Shay Leighton, creative director of local cocktail bar The Bowery.

[13] Guy was later joined in this enterprise by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Prasant Moorthy and Shay Leighton.

[14] 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.

[15] The Mana Bar has received significant media coverage from prime video game and geek culture sites including Kotaku,[16] Destructoid,[2] Gizmodo[17] and Joystiq.

[19][20] After a little over two years of operation, the Melbourne bar closed in September 2013, citing low patronage further impacted by restricted trading hours.