The Once and Future Arcade

By Ponder of shoryuken.com
From http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=34763

I want to talk about something slightly bigger than just winning at SF today, but
something I suspect is of interest to all of us anyway- the status and future of
arcades. I was inspired by the remarkably shoddy discussion of same that I had the
misfortune to read on Gamespot. What’s most depressing is that this simplistic,
lazy, and ultimately worthless piece was the product of a combined effort by the
entire editorial staff of one of the popular sites in the gaming world. [editor's
note: Gamespot's original story can be found at
http://www.zdnet.com/gamespot/storie...686662,00.html] Is this really the best
that can be done? Is the current state of thinking about arcades really this
pathetic? No wonder they’re in trouble.

That’s what we agree on: arcades aren’t doing nearly as well as they once were.
The further question is "why?". Here’s where the gamespot think-tank and I part
ways. Their claim (re-iterated by essentially all of the authors) is that arcades
"can’t compete" because their games used to be technologically superior to home
systems, but aren’t anymore. In a nutshell, they’re claiming that people aren’t
willing to pay for what they can get "for free" at home (we’ll ignore for the
moment that the cost of a newish console + games is hardly "free"). A lot of
arcade-goers have noticed the same thing, and have probably been satisfied by the
same explanation. Should you be? My claim is: "no".

In fact, I think this is a terrible answer. By "terrible" I don’t mean simply

wrong- instead I mean that it’s incomplete, lazy, and totally unilluminating. It’s
an answer that no one who actually cares about the question should be happy with.
While it’s obvious that the development of consoles has affected the arcade
industry, it’s hardly the whole story- or even particularly important. When you
look at this from a business perspective (which is the whole point- the failure of
arcades is a business phenomenon), ask yourself- does this line of reasoning ("why
pay when I can get it at home for free?"), in itself, explain the failure of the
business? Since neither Gamespot nor anyone else of whom I’m aware offer anything
else, they apparently think it does.

Blaming consoles because "they let you play the same thing for free!" goes wrong
in at least two serious ways. First, it doesn’t explain why the same thing doesn’t
seem to affect other industries of which EXACTLY the same thing is true. Take for
instance the absolute *explosion* of coffee houses over the last few years.
Gamespot reasoning: "Can’t people get coffee at home? Virtually everyone has a
coffee machine- and they’re cheap, too. Sure, the coffee houses have fancy
machines with lots of chrome- but that’s essentially just a gimmick, right? It’s
still coffee. And 3$ a cup?! Who do these coffee places think they’re kidding? No
thanks- I think *I’ll* just stay here and drink my perfectly-good coffee in the
comfort of my own home!". Seems "logical" enough, right? So coffee houses then too
are doomed? And what about of our precious pubs and taverns! What will become of
these community pillars if (as liquor transportation technology continues to
advance) we’re someday able to transport beer into our own homes? Will they be
reduced to nostalgic memories as well? The Gamespot editors (and anyone else who
wants to single out consoles) owe us an explanation of why these (and MANY other)
industries are somehow immune to the problem. The second way merely blaming
consoles goes wrong is this: It doesn’t explain the history of the arcade
business. If you’ll recall, arcades were in an even more serious recession around
1991, only to be saved almost single-handedly by Street Fighter 2, and the
successive wave of fighting games. Despite major advances, consoles of the time
were a *far* cry from real arcade machines. So arcades seem subject to disaster
quite apart from home systems co-opting their product. The lack of enthusiasm was
coming from somewhere else.

Next: The complaint that the modern arcade is filled with "gimmicky" games with
specialized cabinets/interfaces? ALL the old favorites the editorial staff
reminisce so fondly about were "guilty" of EXACTLY the same thing they’re
criticizing in modern games. From Defender’s insane controls, to Tron’s annoying
"dial+trigger stick" all the way up to the six buttons (! remember when that used
to be a lot?) on Street Fighter 2 and beyond, arcade games have ALWAYS had
specialized, frequently non-interchangable controls, which could often not be
replicated at home (much less the games themselves). Suggesting that games today
are degenerate merely for committing the same "crime" is- what?- you know the
answer by now- that’s right!- it’s dumb. It’s thoughtless. It’s lazy because it
ignores history. Simply crying "gimmick!" as a criticism is ridiculous.

A non-ridiculous criticism would be that these "gimmicky" games are also BAD
games. Unfortunately for the Gamespot team, however, many games that have
specialized interfaces are still good (obviously SOME suck, but the percentage of
gimmicky games that suck seems roughly similar to the percentage of more standard,
you-could-play-this-on-a-pad-at-home games that suck (re: most, but not all)).
Some are even better than good. Dance Dance Revolution, for instance, is a truly
excellent game. It’s fun, extremely interactive, challenging, addictive,
competitive (or cooperative!), and even healthy, boasting a huge following despite
a US "release" so limited that it scarcely deserves the name. It’s also the #1
money-maker in most of the arcades that it’s made it to. These "gimmicky" games
aren’t using the interface as a substitute for an interesting game- the interface
is an integral part of the game itself. Ignoring this and dismissing them as
"gimmicks" is just more laziness- maybe okay for Senator Lieberman and co., but
unacceptable from gaming "professionals".

A lot of explanations for the decline of arcades simply overlook the very obvious.
Remember back to the heyday of arcades... Remember who ran them? Almost
universally, they seemed to be run by remarkably unpleasant troll-like men, who
(apart from their overwhelming greed) were distinguished primarily by the fact
that they didn’t like games, and they didn’t like the people who played them. A
lot of them came from the vending machines business, and most of them seemed like
they wished they’d never left. Their new arcade "businesses" typically consisted
of renting a dank hole someplace, often in shady neighborhoods, and then just
cramming the games in there. Voila! Instant money. Some arcades noticed that they
could continue to rake in the cash without even doing things like bothering to
repair obviously broken machines (the vast majority of arcade employees are
completely incapable of even the simplest of repairs). Better still, they could be
openly hostile to their customers! Should it really be such a surprise to see a
lot of "businesses" like this fail? Especially when you consider that as their
clientele ages, they become less interested in being openly and needlessly abused?
Can you imagine a restaurant with the same kind of service? Should we blame its
failure on advances in refrigerators and improved home-cooking? Please. A lot of
arcades fail because they’re badly run by non-geniuses out for a quick buck, who
neither like nor remotely understand their product. Duh.

Contrast this with, for instance, Southern Hills Golf Land’s operator, John
Bailon. He runs a premier arcade with a steady business, home to some of the
greatest players in the country. He does such shocking things as (gasp!) *talking
to the players*. He finds out what games appeal to them, then gets those games. He
performs *routine* maintenance on games, sometimes replacing parts even before
they’ve broken (standard operating procedure just about anywhere else, but unheard
of in arcades). He also runs simple promotions like tournaments, that encourage
people to come in a little more than they might otherwise. And he’s a success.
Maybe people in LA just don’t know about consoles or something, right?

Arcades have also completely failed to promote themselves. In "the good ‘ole
days", it seemed as though the games needed no advertisement. They were so
irresistible that people would go anywhere to play them. This is no longer true,
but arcades continue to act as if it were. There’s been essentially NO effort at
promotion whatsoever, despite their diminishing profits. To this day, about the
most advanced marketing technique you see from an arcade has been some kind of
pathetic "special" deal on tokens. Even today, sickeningly enough, tournament
organizers in some locations actually have to hunt for arcades even willing to
host them. Operators are so resistant to the idea of change, much less doing ANY
extra work, that they’re happy to pass on the chance to generate easily 10x their
ordinary business. I mean, think about it- you see ads for EVERYTHING. But do you
ever see ads for arcades? I haven’t. Ever. For that matter, do you see ads for
arcade games? Nope. The only people who see those, are the arcade operators
themselves. Apparently Capcom/Namco/Konami, etc, seem to think that once they’ve
sold the machines to the arcades, their job is done. In one (very short-sighted)
sense, this is true. However, in a market as crowded as the one today, you can’t
simply expect a game to sell itself. The companies seem to realize this as far as
console games are concerned (even where the "console game" is an EXACT PORT of the
arcade version), yet nothing seems to be spent on their arcade counterparts.
Apparently that job falls to the operator alone, and the operators simply aren’t
doing it.

The early success of videogames seems to have bred some incredibly bad industry
habits in arcade operators. The initial arcade craze was powered by games that
people played compulsively, against the computer. For the most part, these tended
to be relatively simple. It wasn’t graphics that made these games popular- it was
a more basic cleverness behind them. This, however, plays directly into the hands
of consoles. If you want to obsess over some puzzle game, you don’t need anyone
else around to do it, and you also don’t need a very sophisticated piece of
hardware. This is part of what I suspect was behind the initial decline in arcade
revenues, and should have been a lesson learned. Competition (in fighters like
SF2) revived the industry, because you couldn’t get that by yourself, or even at
home (and you still can’t, with at least a lot of popular titles- there’s still no
national network in place in the US, internet speeds simply aren’t good enough for
a lot of games, and all of this still omits the face-to-face factor, which can be
a lot of the fun). However, success again spawned a still larger number of games,
and constant imitation of successful titles. Both of these things make sustained,
focused competition that saved the arcades difficult to maintain. With everyone
taking a small slice of the player base, there’s less people to push things to the
next level on any particular game. With a market as crowded as today’s, operators
can hope for that lucrative intense competition in two ways. They can wait until a
game comes along that’s so magical, so involving, that people everywhere can’t
stay away. Good luck on that front. The other way is with some damn promotion.
Does anyone remember Capcom’s "Saturday Night Slammasters"? Probably not. It was a
strange wrestling game/fighter hybrid, featuring none of wrestling’s actual
celebrities, and while moderately interesting, was nothing to get very excited
about. What was something to get excited about was the fact that Capcom sponsored
a national tournament for the game, which brought players out in droves. Without
question, the cost for the entire promotion was less than the cost of a few simple
print ads, yet it drove the players in many areas into a complete frenzy over an
otherwise unexceptional game (the success of the national Tekken Tag tournament
was another more recent example). There seems to be absolutely no reason the same
thing can’t work again, and *especially* because no one else is doing it.
Gameworks and Co. have succeeded not simply because they have games you just can’t
play at home ("gimmick" games)- they succeed because they create an exciting
environment where people can be together, and enjoy themselves. Quite apart from
the games, just take a look at the place: it’s nice. It’s comfortable. It’s not
dangerous. There’s a reasonably competent, courteous staff. People can be around
each other, and the games. What’s most amazing about Gameworks is that it has
succeeded even WITHOUT even being particularly concerned about catering to the
historical core gaming demographic of teens and guys in their early 20s. Instead,
they targeting instead older adults and their kids, creating a new market. They
seem to have realized the very obvious fact that people like going out to
interesting places, to be around (physically) other people, and to interact.
They’re willing to use almost anything as an excuse to do so. Games happen to be
one such excuse- and apparently a good one (that’s part of why fighting games were
the smash they were- you’re beating someone down directly- not judged by something
as inert and impersonal as a score, but by outwitting the person themselves. It’s
not "which of us is better able to beat this simplistic CPU?", but "which of us is
able to beat the other person one on one, directly?". Scoring doesn’t matter- the
game doesn’t even record your margin of victory- flawless victory or down and
dirty- a win was a win). The experience of the game itself is, for a lot of an
arcade’s patrons, pretty secondary. Before I became a Street Fighter addict, I
liked to go to the arcade just because it was the arcade. It was fun. Sure, all my
favorites were there, but it was the magic of the place at large, and the people
there that were a major draw. The editors tip-toe around this point, but can’t
seem to zero in on the obvious. Whether they’re remembering the old social aspect
of arcades, or discussing the mystery of people still paying 10$ a ticket to see a
movie when you could rent it on DVD, they still manage to brilliantly overlook the
simple fact that *people like going out to be near other people* (it’s bizarre,
but true- despite all the annoyances that come with seeing a movie in public, it’s
still a lot of fun, and a more profitable as a business than ever). Arcades are an
ideal venue to capitalize on this fact.

Even apart from Gameworks, you can see that people still crave the interaction of
the arcade experience. Case in point? This site. In many ways, it’s a forum for
top and aspiring players to know about each other, and to have their own love for
the game affirmed by the fact that there are others who take it (and play it)
seriously. Everyone has a good time, but we work at these games. It fosters an
environment of excellence, and since tournaments are the furnace that shape top
play, that’s what you get. All of the discussion, etc, culminates in major
tournaments. And there are uncountably many more, and better attended tournaments
this year than there have ever been since the height of SF2’s popularity. When you
factor in the incredible level of information-sharing and understanding of the
games (movies, tactics, technical and strategy articles, etc.) now as compared to
then, it’s never been better. What prompted this renaissance? Some mind-bogglingly
great new game? Hardly. With the exception of MVC2, recent Capcom fighters have
been relatively minor advances at best, or even literal steps backwards (CVS). Not
the stuff that generates activity like we’ve seen this year. It’s the experience
of real tournament interaction and play itself that’s exciting. It’s *so* exciting
to the true fans and players that they’re willing to go cross-country- even across
oceans- to play each other. Directly. In the spirit of that OG arcade competition.
And they have a great time doing it (as evidenced by the fact that virtually
everyone who starts going to tournaments, KEEPS going to tournaments- they’re
infectiously great).

The real greatness of this experience is precisely what sets me off when I see
limp-wristed stuff like the Gamespot article. Though they obviously don’t
understand them, these guys at least seem to remember the magic (they all wax
nostalgic about the good ‘ole days- some even claim to still like arcades!).
However, they’re precisely the one’s who’ve abandoned it (one admits he hasn’t
even *been* to an arcade in years). They’ve turned away from arcades, preferring
to stare into their own navels (er, consoles). Not only does this encourage the
(in many ways undeserved) image of videogames as anti-social, it also actually
puts another nail in the coffin of the arcades they claim to love. They’re doing
this by helping to perpetuate a cycle: Given the amount of coverage they get in
the American gaming press (the Japanese press does not have this problem, their
arcades and tournaments get plenty of attention, and (curiously?)- their arcades
have always been far more popular), it seems safe to assume that no one’s at the
arcades anymore- they’re all home on consoles, screwing around with secret codes,
etc. Since no one’s at the arcade, there’s no reason to go, and so on. The truth
is, however, that there ARE people at these arcades- some of the best players in
the world, in fact. But instead of investigating, the gaming press sees fit to jam
their pages with the coolest new code for an alternate costume color, and the
latest rumors about Overhyped Letdown IX, which will be in development for the
next three years ("Tips and Tricks" being the notable exception, and their
excellent arcade tournament section seems to grow every month). Is that really
what loving games is all about? It’s easy to understand how these guys could
overlook the action. It gets a little easier when you don’t leave home. At home,
you see, you can avoid getting that whipping your feeble skills deserve. You can
continue to believe you’re good merely because you can "beat" a game (on max
difficulty even!), or do a bunch of combos, or even unlock some special modes! It
makes me sad that people so intimately involved with games as these editors could
be so confused, and willfully oblivious to what truly playing is all about.

So do I mean then that increased publicity is the solution to all of the woes
facing today’s arcades? Hardly. But it IS a way for the Gamespot editors to stop
contributing to the problem they’re complaining about, and to encourage the
revival they claim to want. Simple-mindedness like "umm... consoles are just too
good!" doesn’t help anything- the pretty game may draw them in, but the
atmosphere- the competition- is what can keep them coming back, and that’s not
available only via gimmicks, or games for kids and lightweights. Stick to your
s33krit l33t c0d3z, boys