I'm on a writing spree tonight.

[azurite]

psyjoe_dilandau brought up an interesting topic with the Decline of the Arcade. Death of the Arcade is more like it. It felt very weird to go to an RTA Freeplay night. With four hours in the same place that had barely changed in the four months I hadn't been there, I found myself with very little to do, even with all the games set on freeplay.

In the article, several people claim that the American arcade industry is weak in contrast to the Japanese market, since so many big name companies have backed out. Can they provide a reasonable explanation why? Here's my take --and do remember, I'm hardly an arcade guru, I'm just a player. I like video games, both at arcades and on consoles.



Americans like to change things.

Too much. Why is it that whenever something comes from overseas, American conglomerates feel the need to adapt, modify, brutalize!? Take DDR. All of TWO versions released State-side in English, and they pretty much had the same songs. Why didn't Konami of U.S. ever decide "Hey, we've got all these mixes and versions in Japan, why don't we just make the menus English, add a few American songs, and release it over there?" WHY DIDN'T THEY? If half the songs that ended up on the console versions of MAX, MAX2, or Extreme had ended up on US arcade machines, I would be playing ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME. And there are mixes that are rarities even in Japan-- if a US arcade got their hands on those, I'd have a blast-- Solo, Club Mix-- and ones made only for consoles (sadly) like Party Collection.

The same holds true for all sorts of other games. It's why arcades these days will import games. Before, arcades used to be theme park attractions-- play a game, win some tokens! Get some tickets! Get a prize! When I was little, I went to an arcade in Petaluma called Dodge City. Pay $3 and have 3 WHOLE HOURS of freeplay on EVERY MACHINE in the arcade. And this place was pretty big. Maybe about the size of RTA now, and maybe a bit bigger. I loved the games... Marble Madness, Burger Time, Buster Brothers, that Michael Jackson game (hehe, I BEAT the game!), and this weird thing where you sat in a chair and got bounced around, pretending you were this high-jumping, dragon-taming hero out to destroy bots from Hell. THAT was a great game.

Japan has some games I would hit up their arcades for. They have some great stuff you won't even come close to finding here in the States. Yeah, we have our share of classics and such, but REALLY. There are so few titles that get brought over successfully and STAY. Look at Initial D. It has a massive following here *and* in Japan. But for how long? Can we really afford to import the better Version 2s (and I mean the *real* ones, not the Version 1 upgrades)? Or is it because everyone's afraid we won't understand Japanese?

The only time that ever really matters, btw, is when you're playing an RPG or strategy game. Something where you need to know This does That, and Character A cannot perform X Action. I blasted through Soul Calibur II Japanese edition without ever knowing how to work an X-Box controller, or even knowing which buttons performed which actions. Everything was in Japanese... but oddly enough, everything ELSE was in English. You know, 30 COMBO!! and "YOU DID IT!" from the announcer and such. That's how it is for DDR, and countless other imported games... why would the language barrier be a deterrent from bringing games over to the US? Arcade owners surely see the feasibility of this.

What I'm getting at is this:

- US games are tired, old, and spew out the same old stuff. Classics are fun, but only for a while.
- Arcades import. It's better than waiting for English versions of games, and they tend to have more options. Importing might actually be cheaper and in the end, bring in more revenue than English equivalents or knock-offs. Language barriers are non-existent for games that don't involve strategy or intense planning. I've never seen an "Arcade RPG."
- Go Japan! At least their arcade industry is alive and thriving. We might not have the same giant groupings as they do, but perhaps what we need is a larger selection to choose from-- maybe then, old fans will return to the arcade.
- It's the console vs. the arcade. So many great games to choose from on consoles-- cheaper, longevity... hey, and you have a MEMORY CARD! Why don't US arcade machines keep the memory card slot? Why don't US companies try to bring console games to the arcade? They did it for the PC... why else would there be a Sims for the PS2?

Where to play... the real good arcades are gone. You know where to go for arcade games these days? It's not a joke, but you might laugh.

Golflands.

I remember when Scandia had a small mix of the usual games-- racers, shooters, side scrolling fighters... Nothing incredible. No DDR, nothing really special. But now you can go to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk for what is likely the largest collection of Bemani games in NorCal (short of Milpitas Golfland, maybe). Places in Reno and Vegas can hold their own too-- and those are CASINOS! For adults, where money is raked in playing poker and slots!

And regular arcades are stuck with the same stuff they've had all this time. Your usual button-mashing fighters, your shooters... maybe even a few puzzle games. The biggest assortment is bound to be ticket-spewing games, because the allure of cool prizes is too much for people to pass up. You can walk out of an arcade with a giant stuffed animal, claiming that your l33t arm strength earned you that plushie-- when you really just dumped $20 of tokens into a machine for a $3 animal. Go arcade! I like those games, but they never change. There's never any variety.

It's like, "if you've played this game once, you've played it for the rest of your life."

Oh, and I'm sorry, but this holds true for almost everything imported, including video games.

Americans are scaredy-cats. Oh, we're trigger-happy as all get-out, but we've got the biggest pants-pissers when it comes to anything --ohmygosh, should I even SAY it?-- VIOLENT. Things that are trendy, popular, MONEY-MAKERS in Japan are "too much" for Americans. This means movies, tv shows, and yes, you guessed it... video games. Admittedly, the Japanese are notorious for a lot of things that might really *be* raunchier than anything American counterparts could spit out... but not by that much.

Violent video games could influence our poor, midguided youth into starting another Columbine! O_O!!

Hey, do they have age limits on arcades in Japan? I see kids as little as 5 or 6 playing with the best of them, showing off their incredible eye-to-hand/foot/whatever coordination. They play everything from the Bemani selection to the button-mashing fighters. And I've never heard of a controversy sweeping all of Japan because parents were afraid their kids were going to be shootin' out their classmates.

What is it that we, as Americans, are doing wrong? What have the Japanese got right in almost EVERY industry that their kids are smarter, faster, and not as violent in real life situations? Or maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe there's a Japanese kid out there RIGHT NOW getting the Killer Instinct in his brain, and he's out to hurt someone real bad.

We put age limits and restrictions on EVERYTHING, and call it human nature, call it youthful rebellion, but the more laws you lay down, the more likely people will break them. I'm sure there are arcades with school hour restrictions and the like, yet Japanese kids somehow balance their likes of video games and arcades with the necessary school work (which, as I'm sure you know, is a VERY BIG DEAL out there). I really don't think parents out there complain when kids play violent video games, because it's a Swiss Cheese theory that violent video games result in violent kids.

After all, the kid has to CHOOSE to waste their money on the game, right? And even if they do, who's to say that a kid will immediately be ADVERSELY affected by the game? Most shooters involve a scenario that's utterly impossible or ridiculous. My favorite shooter isn't even an arcade game.

DOOM II. And guess who got me into it? My loving sister, may she rest in peace. We played that game for HOURS on end. Call it sisterly bonding or whatever, but I LOVE that game. It helped me relieve stress. Yeah, it did suck up too much time in junior year Journalism, back when Cassie and I networked the computers and blasted the living Shnoz out of each other, but it's a memory I look back FONDLY on. Neither Cassie nor I, despite our share of enemies and high school angst, grabbed a gun and started fragging our classmates. This is not to say other kids WON'T, but it's likely a statistical improbability.

When you bring "well meaning parents" into any equation with video games, it's asking for trouble. You know the saying-- "The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions." There are parents who won't care one way or another. There are parents that will raise an eyebrow, but not put up a harsh fight. They know their kids, they TRUST their kids, they TALK to their kids. And then there are those that try to bubble their kids into a world that does not exist.

Parents will complain about the smallest thing to "protect their children" and in the end-- everyone loses money. REALLY. No one honestly gains anything when a parent whines and bitches about something being too violent. It is NOT a reason not to bring games into arcades. As was so aptly phrased in a loverly Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic I read the other night...

Would you like some Cheese with that Whine?

What are aspects of a game that I find FUN? Why do I go to an arcade? What makes a game have playability?

My Answers:
* If a game has LOTS of options-- secrets, increasing difficulty, multiple options for play... I will return to the arcade and play it over and over. I have not played every single DDR song, and I have yet to get past a 6-step difficult song. So I keep playing. I keep chugging the money in... and my theater continues to make more money.

* I go to an arcade rather than sitting in front of my computer or TV for the atmosphere. The experience. And the challenge of playing against other people. Also, there *are* options on arcades that you CAN'T get elsewhere. Frankly, I don't like the console versions of DDR, because, having a carpeted floor, it's difficult to place a mat on it, and expect it to stay in place. And DDR isn't really DDR unless you're DANCING. Plus, there's games like Initial D that use cards that remember YOU for what YOU are. If personalization is the next biggest boom in every other industry, why not the arcade? Why not develop more games where you can customize characters, vehicles, weapons... ANYTHING?

* A game has playability when it can constantly offer MORE, as with customization, memory cards, and extended options. A game ESPECIALLY has playability when there is nothing like it available for the consoles. Look at the Harley Davidson game, or any other game where you have a moving cabinet or structure of sorts. The skiing, snowboarding, bicycling, boxing, dodging games! I love Police 911 -- THAT IS VIGOROUS PHYSICAL EXERCISE!

If you went to an arcade too many times in a week, you might be labeled a geek or nerd-- but now you can go to an arcade and not only walk away with cool prizes-- but a firm, lean body! Gawd, I see an informercial in the making! Too bad every arcade in the country doesn't pick up on these games with these playable factors. It is these games that people return to play, that people continue to chug money into.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: Of course, you can blame a lot of this on arcade operators and owners. You know why I never see RTA becoming a smash hit? Because it's in the BACK of Pier 39. Yeah, the whole place is a tourist trap, but you an't rely purely on tourists in any given location. You want repeat customers for a place like that-- and RTA *used* to have that huge following, but... but what? Why did the group stop going to RTA?

An arcade doesn't have to just have great games-- plenty of arcades have fantastic games, but that doesn't make them easy to get to. Or cheap. The more accessible a place is, the more people it will attract, and the more money it will bring in. Thus leading to better games, and more return players. The cycle continues.

And what do you call places like CyberHunt, CyberSniper, or Next Game? LAN Cafes? Something like that, maybe. People zonk out for hours in front of computers listening to the prattle of gunfire and the guzzling moans of dying aliens/terrorists/etc. You pay for hourly access, either by the hour or in a lump sum. You get your own account, so it's somewhat personalized. You have access to a multitude of linked games-- and you can either play online, or play against other people in the LAN area. These places make tons of money too, because at the heart of a lot of games is COMMUNITY. It's no fun when you can't brag that YOU won, and HE lost.

Bring back the classics. I liked those games in Dodge City, and while they might be "old and tired fogeys" in contrast to today's high-resolution, motion-sensor, multi-color, three-dimensional polytechnicmorphaseismic games, they still have play value. The aptly named coinage -- "Back in the day" has to start somewhere, you know. And old games "redux" bring in audiences too. That's why DDR continues to be a hit, along with a slew of other games. Crazy Taxi, for example. And I *love* the UltraCade system, with Joust, Ghosts and Goblins, and... OHMYGOSH! KLAX!!!!!! Sometimes simpler is better, you know?

Arcades can offer a lot of things that home systems can't. You can waste money on expensive knock-off devices to get a similar experience, but the arcade offers... the arcade. Whoever is behind the big arcade faces out there-- be they golflands, RTAs, or mall arcades, they need to know that the very place they put up shop is a refuge, a haven, a special ZONE of its own. They have to do their best to make it worth its weight in... well, coins, or it'll go under. And it'll be no one's fault but their own.