Square Enix's new arcade game Gunslinger Stratos. Don't hold your breath for a US release
Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending my very first MagFest. While MagFest (Music and Gaming Festival) was primarily focused on gaming music, I was more interested by their large collection of arcade machines. The crowds gathered around the top players, the clanking of Joysticks, and other bells and whistles harkened back days to the world of gaming when I was growing up. Sure there was home consoles and PC gaming but, my main form of social gaming was at the local arcade. While at the festival I got to relive piece of my childhood, I knew that the times of arcades being commonplace has long past (well at least in America). But, what if arcades kept going strong in the US? How would they be affected by current gaming trends and technology? I’ll explore a few possible ways arcades would have adapted to modern times.
Social gaming: The world has come a long way from the days of using your initials to mark your territory. With social networking and the prevalence of cellphones, people are now more connected today than ever before. Yesterdays arcades could have really taken advantage of this level of connectivity. How about your high score posted immediately on twitter or Facebook? Using Foursquare to let your friends know that you’re looking for a challenger. Why have your arcade gaming stats limited to one machine; you could save them to the internet and see how you rank in Leaderboards around the world.
Controls: Some of the arcade games of the past were ahead of their time when it came to controls. The six button layouts are still standard amongst fighting enthusiast and leave it to the arcade makers to try new peripherals to draw in customers. But maybe the complexities of the old arcade machines may have deterred some potential gamers .Today’s touchscreens and motion control devices have allowed people new ways of more comfort interacting with modern games. Touchscreens in particular gives games the type of versatility of controls that retro arcades never could. The video below of Microsoft’s Surface technology shows even the old game of Catan can be made easier using a touch screen.
Free to play Arcades: The Free-to-Play model seems to be all the rage into the current videogame community. Having the option to play a game without paying is just what customers need in today’s economic climate. One of the motivating factors to why many chose home consoles over arcades in the past was the long term savings. Today, arcades could use this free-to-play model in arcades by allowing paid ads to replace quarters. Watching the trailer for the next Twilight would be worth it to get a few lives in the X-men arcade (maybe a bad example but you get the point).
While my time at MagFest was short-lived my time was well spent. Sure I have to track down the last few arcades out there to gain the same experience but it’s more than worth it. While todays’ gaming is more advanced, it still can’t replicate the authentic arcade experience. It would have been great to see it thrive through these years but for now we can only speculate on its evolution. So how do you think arcades would have adapted to modern gaming?
I agree with everything besides the free-to-play part, mostly because arcade games have been, are, and always will be, designed to suck money from you and give back to the company (not a problem in the advertised free-to-play idea you posed) and the owner. The owner of the arcade and/or machines isn’t getting anything back there, and even if he was it’s doubtful he would even be making enough to stay afloat. This is why arcades failed in the US and why they’re finally toppling in Japan, having teetered on life support for the past 12 years. Companies have become too greedy and ask the player to purchase extra points and cards, sometimes in lieu of spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on their machine doing things the old-fashioned way. Even if these players aren’t playing 16 hours a day like they used to, the companies get the same profit and the middle man (here, the owner) gets almost nothing.
As an aside, it’s common to see arcade distributors (again, not arcade owners) in the US get 90 or 100% of profits from the machine, or even CHARGE the owner to have their machine in addition to that high price. Japan is not as bad, but still things are far worse than the “buy and profit” times of the past. The newest machines can cost from USD 10k to 80k EACH, and often the company will ask for 2/3 of their machines’ income. Times are rough and I doubt many arcades will survive another decade.
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I agree with everything besides the free-to-play part, mostly because arcade games have been, are, and always will be, designed to suck money from you and give back to the company (not a problem in the advertised free-to-play idea you posed) and the owner. The owner of the arcade and/or machines isn’t getting anything back there, and even if he was it’s doubtful he would even be making enough to stay afloat. This is why arcades failed in the US and why they’re finally toppling in Japan, having teetered on life support for the past 12 years. Companies have become too greedy and ask the player to purchase extra points and cards, sometimes in lieu of spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on their machine doing things the old-fashioned way. Even if these players aren’t playing 16 hours a day like they used to, the companies get the same profit and the middle man (here, the owner) gets almost nothing.
As an aside, it’s common to see arcade distributors (again, not arcade owners) in the US get 90 or 100% of profits from the machine, or even CHARGE the owner to have their machine in addition to that high price. Japan is not as bad, but still things are far worse than the “buy and profit” times of the past. The newest machines can cost from USD 10k to 80k EACH, and often the company will ask for 2/3 of their machines’ income. Times are rough and I doubt many arcades will survive another decade.