Arcades... Where the fuck has the innovation gone?

[Ben Reed]

Popularity of a game can shift or deminish in a matter of 2 months easily.

I hear that, the first few months that SC2 came out in arcades, I had to practically fight my way through a crowd to get in one game, but once the home version came out that cabinet was a ghost town.

It's sad, but fighting games more than any other arcade game genre are a very risky investment in today's climate. People will play DDR in the arcade rather than at home because it's more of a social experience than a competitive environment, kids will play racing games because they're simple and inoffensive for the most part to the mothers that line their pockets, people will play lightgun games because they're for the most part not worth playing at home -- they're best suited to small doses. But fighting games are different -- they have a hard time retaining a casual audience, and the couple bucks the hardcore people bring in isn't worth all that much.

Then again, you've run one of these things, and I merely pour money into them. I don't have much room to make a call here.

 

[Zombee]

I hear that, the first few months that SC2 came out in arcades, I had to practically fight my way through a crowd to get in one game, but once the home version came out that cabinet was a ghost town.

It's sad, but fighting games more than any other arcade game genre are a very risky investment in today's climate. People will play DDR in the arcade rather than at home because it's more of a social experience than a competitive environment, kids will play racing games because they're simple and inoffensive for the most part to the mothers that line their pockets, people will play lightgun games because they're for the most part not worth playing at home -- they're best suited to small doses. But fighting games are different -- they have a hard time retaining a casual audience, and the couple bucks the hardcore people bring in isn't worth all that much.

Then again, you've run one of these things, and I merely pour money into them. I don't have much room to make a call here.

One of the better scenarios i think might be to take an arcade like mine, and mix it up with a place like Digital Battlegrounds. Offer both traditional gaming, and lan stuff.

 

[FishStix]

x 2000

 

[Reno]

a large-scale powerstone type game would be amazing

 

[SniperOmega]

they need to create more games that will work in an arcade-style enviroment, and play the same way with high scores stored on servers... or a massive multiplayer aspect.

i think the arcade will sooner or later make a comeback. parents are always willing to give up some money to let thier kids have fun for a few hours.

 

[DeadlyRabbit]

When all the games I wanted to play were $2.00+ CDN to play I lost interest in arcades, only games that were still a quarter were the ones I already had at home on a console 2 years ago.

 

[Ben Reed]

One of the better scenarios i think might be to take an arcade like mine, and mix it up with a place like Digital Battlegrounds. Offer both traditional gaming, and lan stuff.

If I were gonna try my hand at an arcade, that's what I'd do too...make it primarily a LAN center for the bread-and-butter revenue, and try to attract interest in the fighting games I so love with maybe a cabinet or two at the back.

Maybe hold special events now and then to promote the games, too.

One of my great gaming dreams that I will never realize is to create a good, solid, traditional 2D fighting game for the PC and promote it as a super-cheap game to make a coin-op or free-play LAN center cabinet out of...you just take a midrange PC (it doesn't take much to run the Japanese PC port of GGX2 #Reload, it probably won't take much to run anything I could come up with), install the game, hook up two arcade joysticks to USB adapters, put it in a MAME cabinet, and let it work such old-school magic as it can.

These games are my favorites of all time. If I had the time, money, and know-how to create such a tribute to their greatness, I would. But I don't.