Are all new arcades sucking?

[Jedi Master Thrash]

I haven't really gone to a Circus Circus or Chucky Cheese in a while. But twice now I've gone to these new more adult arcades.

We went to a Dave & Busters last winter, and I was wholely unimpressed with the giant arcade room. I mean, for having 100 arcade machines, it felt like they had nothing.

About half of the machines were lightgun shooters, and half of the machines were racing. There was not a single 1 on 1 fighter in the whole place, and there was not a single traditional shooter in the whole place.

They didn't even have a DDR, just a Beat Me Up or some other copycat.

They had a bunch of casino/deal or no deal type games.

The only game in the entire place that was shooting was this like 4-in-one game where you sit in this moving bubble and you can either be like a tank turret or a helicopter shooter. But the gameplay and cameras were not very good.

I'm serious. You walk up and down, and every single large arcade machine in the middle of the floor is a gun shooter, and every machine against the wall is a competition driving. I mean, a few, of course, even I enjoy a gun shooter. But the whole place? There are so many different types of arcade games out there. I remember when I used to go to Chucky Cheese or Circus Circus as a kid, and every arcade game would be something differfent. There'd be the 4-player brawls (TMNT), 2-player beatemups, one on one fighters, 1st person shooters, flyers, scrolling shooters, gun games, driving, and classic arcade, etc. Lots of variety.

As I mentioned in a previous thread, I recently went to Brunswick Zone XL, and this also had a large arcade in it. And again, same thing, all gun shooters and drivers. That's why I was so surprised to see Afterburner Climax. It was the only different game in the whole place. Though they did actually have a DDR there, but nobody was playing it.

Is this the future of arcades? 10000 square feet catering only to the top grossing genres, with no variety, and no attempt to cater to hard-core gaming fans?

I can just imagine some rich old guy sitting on the 100th floor decide to add an arcade to his latest million dollar moneymaking expensive dining entertainment scheme, and just looks at some rich-person business newsletter and sees that racing and gun games are easy and make money, and loads it up with those, and doesn't actually have anyone who cares about true gamers involved in the decision making process.

 

[ExCyber]

Is this the future of arcades? 10000 square feet catering only to the top grossing genres, with no variety, and no attempt to cater to hard-core gaming fans?

To be honest, I think that's largely a reflection of the American game industry in general. Much the same thing seems to have been happening to PC games, where World War II FPS games have practically become their own genre, and 90% of what you'd find on a store shelf falls into one of three basic genres (FPS, RTS, MMORPG). I suspect that a lot of it has to do with rising production costs and the industry's apparent obsession with producing high-gloss blockbuster titles, much like the movie industry. Satoru Iwata made this point in some early speeches about Revolution/Wii, and I think it's an important one. When the stakes are high, it's only natural for people to tend toward the "safe" options. I think there's some hope in things like PSN and XBLA, but it would be nice if that trend widened into some really open platforms that don't try to lock down everything the user can do.

 

[dibz]

To be honest, I think that's largely a reflection of the American game industry in general. Much the same thing seems to have been happening to PC games, where World War II FPS games have practically become their own genre, and 90% of what you'd find on a store shelf falls into one of three basic genres (FPS, RTS, MMORPG). I suspect that a lot of it has to do with rising production costs and the industry's apparent obsession with producing high-gloss blockbuster titles, much like the movie industry. Satoru Iwata made this point in some early speeches about Revolution/Wii, and I think it's an important one. When the stakes are high, it's only natural for people to tend toward the "safe" options. I think there's some hope in things like PSN and XBLA, but it would be nice if that trend widened into some really open platforms that don't try to lock down everything the user can do.

I'm not sure I'd agree with this. In non video-game specific stores, like your average department store, only about 40% of the above mentioned genres are in the designated PC game section -- the rest are crap Tycoon, or similar games. Although to be fair, they seem more likely to place adventure type games on their shelves then a video-game only store, which is a genre I actually enjoy...even though the vast majority of adventure games are no where near as good as they used to be.

...

To be completely honest, my wife and I also each have a Club Pogo subscription...so I guess I can see why they put those non-major games on their shelves, although I highly doubt I'd actually buy any standalone versions.

 

[arromdee]

What finally killed off arcades is that home systems nowadays have graphics so good that they can easily match any arcade system. So the only games that can do well in arcades are ones where there's enough hardware that a home version can't imitate the experience even by copying the graphics. This means, basically, driving games (or anything where you get in a cockpit, which I assume that Afterburner game is) and big light gun games. And any games which provide prizes (i.e. casino games). And to some degree, DDR. There's no reason for an arcade to have a scrolling shooter or a one on one fighter when anyone can own a Playstation 2.

What really puzzles me is why pinball has died. By the same reasoning, pinball should be doing well too.

 

[SamIAm]

What finally killed off arcades is that home systems nowadays have graphics so good that they can easily match any arcade system. So the only games that can do well in arcades are ones where there's enough hardware that a home version can't imitate the experience even by copying the graphics. This means, basically, driving games (or anything where you get in a cockpit, which I assume that Afterburner game is) and big light gun games. And any games which provide prizes (i.e. casino games). And to some degree, DDR. There's no reason for an arcade to have a scrolling shooter or a one on one fighter when anyone can own a Playstation 2.

What really puzzles me is why pinball has died. By the same reasoning, pinball should be doing well too.

I think perhaps your cause and effect are a little mixed up. Back in the old days, arcade hardware used top-of-the-line technology. These days, the specs of arcade PCBs are laughably weak. It seems to me that this issue was forced by the decline in arcade's popularity, not the other way around.

I mean, if they wanted to, they could make an arcade board with the best technology - stuffing in as much RAM and as many processors in as they thought they could use - and write a custom game program for it that would knock our socks off. The only trouble is that their chances of making money on such a thing would be slim to none. There just aren't enough people going to arcades at all anymore, anywhere in the world.

Just the other day, I finally got in the mail the PS2 port of the arcade game ESPGaluda. I have to say, for a game of this caliber to have stood less than a snowball's chance in hell of being published in the US indicates not only a sick industry, but incredibly poor taste of gamers here as well.