Make Arcades Successful Again....

[SoulBlazer]

Also, a hot l00king lady employed as arcade operator is reason enough to bring people through the doors. They do it at health clubs all the time - if you're hot you get a free membership.

 

This is a old thread (but a great one) but I wanted to comment on this since I missed it the first time around.

 

There's MAJOR truth in this guys. A young good looking woman would be kind of sexiest but it does draw in the guys.

 

I recall going to a big arcade with a friend at Fisherman's Warf in San Fran about....oh, ten years ago now, I think. I can't recall the name of the game, but they had this big multi-player sit down game from Namco that was a rail shooter. It was about six people who all played together as a gunner on the space ship as you blasted through various foes and finally fought a boss. There was a small room where the game was, due to it's size.

 

There was a arcade operator employed there, a young good looking woman with a Namco shirt who operated the game. She let people in, told us quickly how to play, and encourged us doing the game. It made the experience ten times better.

 

At my local Dave and Busters most of the bar girls and the servers are women...they seem to realize that.

 

Last time I went a few weeks ago I really enjoyed the Terminator game they had. They also had added a new Rambo game, along with a couple of other new ones.

[JamesD]

I really don't see arcades springing up everywhere again. Home gaming has gotten too advanced to really wow people enough to draw them in with economically feasible technology.

 

Places like Dave & Busters are successful because they have food, pool, games, a bar, etc... all under one roof.

And then you have upChuck E Cheese on the low end. The thing they have in common besides games is food and people aren't just there for the arcade. But that's just not practical everywhere. I suppose you could have 7-11 style hotdog cookers and drinks but I think you need more to appeal to adults.

 

The only thing I see having a chance would be a mix of old school games, higher priced games that are difficult but not impossible to have at home (you have a cockpit at the arcade, heads up display, etc...), and some sort of pay by the hour gaming.

I've seen PC based games used for by the hour play in a mall but they just aren't enough to draw for an arcade.

The thing I see as having the wow factor would be a World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, or Halo type of game with 3D headsets that let you look around just by moving your head. The capability has been around for a while but it's pretty expensive for home use. Especially if you want to go on a quest/mission with 4 or 5 people in a party. The drawback is that you need multiple setups so that you can have several groups going at the same time. Otherwise people would get sick of waiting.

The ability to switch between death match games, fantasy RPG, and war games would offer enough variety to appeal to a broad audience. Hmmm... imagine Portal played with a 3D headset and a handheld gun... that would be cool.

[potatohead]

Perhaps make them mobile?

 

On my drive home yesterday, I saw a guy driving "The X-Bus" featuring multiplayer gaming!

[nshollingsworth]

I'm not much for starting "what if" type topic but, I figured, why not. When I was younger I spent a lot of time at the arcades (1985-90ish). I think it is obvious that home tech just caught up to the arcade tech. So, the question is, what would it take to make a successful arcade today.

 

Here's my take. People like to be rewarded when thay play a game. High score is not good enough for people anymore. I think a combination of redemption machine and arcades are the way to go. Forget tickets, I mean instant redemption. I know similar things exits already but to be honest they suck.

 

Make a pinball machine (a good machine with scoring just like a regular pinball machine) that uses super balls and when you are done racking up a score you get that ball. Not only that but, maybe more or different super balls depending on your score (or some other game theme related prize) but at minimum you get a standard super ball (even if you opt not to play after inserting the money).

 

How about a modern type Frogger game. At minimum you get a small rubber frog but depending on your score you make you might get a die cast car or a small stuffed alligator. These prizes would be dispensed at the game. Think of them as high tech gum ball machines but with a video game attached. If you decide you don't want to play the game, you could hit a button saying so and it would just dispense the standard little prize (just like a standard gum ball machine).

 

If scores are important maybe a small certificate card could be printed right from the machine with your name on it stating you have the high score as of (what ever date and time it is) and maybe it could have a cell phone camera in it to take your picture and print it on the certificate.

 

Just think of the different things that could be done like this. Heck, you could use standard game systems (with custom games of course) to pull this off. By doing these type of things, you would get a different experience than you would ever get at home.

 

space games with prize, first person shooters with prizes.......The sky is the limit. Or maybe I'm just thinking too much about it.

I think that when you lit up the star on taito's ice cold beer, you were supposed to tell the barman and get a free beer.

[82-T/A]

I don't know that I'm going to say anything that others haven't already said... but arcades are done and gone... just like the old BBS scene, AOL Instant Messenger, or the old stick and loop game.

 

 

 

... bottom line, arcades were awesome because it was the latest and greatest... and, you simply could not get those same graphics and experience at home. Now you can... and not only can you now... but it's getting better and better. With VR making a resurgence... all anyone needs is a good smart phone a backyard with no sharp objects, and a $100 VR helmet kit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reality is... arcades exist solely for the Generation-X that still occasionally find time to go visit them, and for those of us who try to impose our historical likes and dislikes on our own children (haha...).

 

Chuck-E-Cheeses is more of a prize / arcade.... there really aren't too many actual arcade machines there. And beyond that, you've got Dave & Busters... IE:.. for us Gen-Xers.

 

 

Not trying to be a Debbie-Downer, but I can't be a Dallas-Debbie either... arcades are gone, and they just don't make money anymore. Most kids today have no real interest in them. My daughter (7) likes to play our multi-game unit... but she'd MUCH rather play her tablet.

[Flojomojo]

Other than kids' birthday parties (Chuck E. Cheese kind of thing) there is likely nothing to bring back arcade popularity.

 

When arcades were popular, it was because the games/graphics were markedly superior to anything at home. You played Donkey Kong on 2600 yet still had a desire to play the mucho-superior arcade version. It was probably during the Playstation(1) era, during a game of Gran Turismo(1) that I laughed and realized "I've never played anything in an arcade that's this much fun!" Add in 2 more generations of systems and HDTV graphics and it's only gotten more-so that way. There is also waaaaaay more forms of entertainment overall today and people are generally "spoiled." To create an arcade game that can overcome all of this would be terribly expensive, and require elaborate controls and schemes that would make it more expensive. Sadly, the day of the arcade is finished. Every time I pass by old Atari or Namco arcade machines, I always slow down and stare for a moment and remember the "old days," glad that I was a part of it.

Dang. So true.

 

It's been 20 years since Gran Turismo. There were still a few pay-to-play arcade machines kicking around back then. It's awesome that home technology has come as far as it has, and we should embrace that fact. Modern gaming isn't what we grew up with, but it's amazing.

[VectorGamer]

I don't know that I'm going to say anything that others haven't already said... but arcades are done and gone... just like the old BBS scene, AOL Instant Messenger, or the old stick and loop game.

 

The reality is... arcades exist solely for the Generation-X that still occasionally find time to go visit them, and for those of us who try to impose our historical likes and dislikes on our own children (haha...).

 

Not trying to be a Debbie-Downer, but I can't be a Dallas-Debbie either... arcades are gone, and they just don't make money anymore. Most kids today have no real interest in them. My daughter (7) likes to play our multi-game unit... but she'd MUCH rather play her tablet.

 

Arcades and BBS are not nearly as popular as they once were that's for sure...

 

But, I check into BBSes a few times a month and I have found that there are more posts on Dovenet than there are on several classic gaming forums I visit. Now my opinion is that if you're running a forum that gets less posts than Dovenet than it may be a good idea to close up shop and have everybody meetup at AtariAge and KLOV and not fragment the community . Some of these other classic gaming forums get their information second hand from AtariAge anyway so what's the point?

 

It seems like every week I tweet out news stories about a new beercade opening up somewhere in the US. I just tweeted out today about another beercade opening up in Phoenix. Feel free to look at my Twitter feed to see all the articles over the last several months about new arcades opening up. Heck Timeline Arcade just opened its second location last month and they are planning a third location next year.

 

Keep in mind that this thread was started 6 years ago. A lot of arcades have opened up since then. It remains to be seen if beercades are a fad or not but my hunch is that they're here to stay until Generation X has died off or all the machines die first.

 

If you go to Twitter, search "@realvectorgamer #arcade" and you'll see all my Tweets with the arcade hashtag.

[ubersaurus]

The arcades I've seen that appear to be doing pretty well are places like Galloping Ghost (in Chicago) or The Arcade (in Brighton MI) where they charge an up front fee but let you play all the machines for free all day. The average coin-based arcade gets $5 a person, which isn't sustainable - a place like those can charge $10-15 up front, and it feels like a deal because you can just play whatever you want, no problem.

 

There's also beercades and restaurant arcades, but the games are incidental at that point. If you're talking an arcade focused on the games, that model seems to be the one that works best. Beneficial, too, to get in touch with the local pinball or video game tournament leagues to see if they want to use your venue.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

To add onto Vectorgamer, there are many new venues that have opened out there. And for those of us running them, we see packed venues all the time. The past six months at my own arcade have been the best and busiest times I have seen since opening in 2008. This post is two years old but shows that arcades can still bring people in the doors:

 

http://arcadeheroes.com/2014/06/17/arcades-dead-packed-customers-wait/

 

One thing that a lot of people don't realize since the gaming media doesn't really detail or report on it, is that over the past ten years there has been a pretty consistent level of new arcade game releases from several different manufacturers. Not everything uses tickets...I've documented those cabinets as best I can here:

 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.836353026448953.1073741829.120939574656972&type=3

 

I also don't think that VR is the death of the arcade - that line is trotted out every gaming generation. Before VR it was the Xbox 360/PS3/Wii, then it was smartphones, etc. VR still has inherent issues that cause problems where it does not work for every game and it's already accumulating shovelware; costs are also high for users and some games to complete the "immersion" experience require several accessories - not something that helps drive sales.

 

Funny enough with stuff like The Void and several arcade manufacturers looking into VR, arcades using VR in a better way than at home is certainly possible. But as people will find, VR is limited in what it can do, just now it has better tracking and higher resolutions. It's still essentially a camera on your face and there is only so much you can do with that.

[82-T/A]

 

Arcades and BBS are not nearly as popular as they once were that's for sure...

 

But, I check into BBSes a few times a month and I have found that there are more posts on Dovenet than there are on several classic gaming forums I visit. Now my opinion is that if you're running a forum that gets less posts than Dovenet than it may be a good idea to close up shop and have everybody meetup at AtariAge and KLOV and not fragment the community . Some of these other classic gaming forums get their information second hand from AtariAge anyway so what's the point?

 

It seems like every week I tweet out news stories about a new beercade opening up somewhere in the US. I just tweeted out today about another beercade opening up in Phoenix. Feel free to look at my Twitter feed to see all the articles over the last several months about new arcades opening up. Heck Timeline Arcade just opened its second location last month and they are planning a third location next year.

 

Keep in mind that this thread was started 6 years ago. A lot of arcades have opened up since then. It remains to be seen if beercades are a fad or not but my hunch is that they're here to stay until Generation X has died off or all the machines die first.

 

If you go to Twitter, search "@realvectorgamer #arcade" and you'll see all my Tweets with the arcade hashtag.

 

 

I try to visit BBSes every now and then, I have a buddy that runs one right now through TelNet, and I can only bring myself to log in once every couple of months... if that.

 

I ran a BBS back in the mid 90s, and then again from 1996-2003 when BBSes were fading away. Kind of sad, I still really like them, but compared to what was out there in ~1995, I mean... it's like comparing the number of Yugos on the road in America to the number of Chevrolets on the road in America.

[nshollingsworth]

This is a old thread (but a great one) but I wanted to comment on this since I missed it the first time around.

 

There's MAJOR truth in this guys. A young good looking woman would be kind of sexiest but it does draw in the guys.

 

I recall going to a big arcade with a friend at Fisherman's Warf in San Fran about....oh, ten years ago now, I think. I can't recall the name of the game, but they had this big multi-player sit down game from Namco that was a rail shooter. It was about six people who all played together as a gunner on the space ship as you blasted through various foes and finally fought a boss. There was a small room where the game was, due to it's size.

 

There was a arcade operator employed there, a young good looking woman with a Namco shirt who operated the game. She let people in, told us quickly how to play, and encourged us doing the game. It made the experience ten times better.

 

At my local Dave and Busters most of the bar girls and the servers are women...they seem to realize that.

 

Last time I went a few weeks ago I really enjoyed the Terminator game they had. They also had added a new Rambo game, along with a couple of other new ones.

That enormous room would be the amazing galaxian 3

[Syzygy1]

Just put in some games, a snack bar, some music, and a high score booth and you're good to go.