I’d be really hesitant to call it “thrived”. The arcade business started slowing down in the late 1980’s. Things started drying up little by little even with hits like Street Fighter 2 being able to bring in quarters. By the mid-nineties most arcades were closing their doors.
And I don’t think it was the Internet. If you knew the market you could see the signs long before the Internet was in the public consciousness. The availability of home systems also didn’t cause it; the Atari 2600 and arcades lived in a harmonious parallel and they peaked at the same time. I’ve got to put the blame on a more insidious, nebulous factor: changing expectations of the audience.
Your typical pre-1985 arcade game challenged the player to get the high score. There’s an aspect of competition with other players through the high score charts. They’re about dealing with escalating waves of challenges. On top of that the value of “a game” was exactly what the player was paying up front.
Then things change and the game becomes a thing to beat. The player’s goal is complete it. There’s a narrative that the player is part of and there’s an end to it. Partly this is due to how developers were handling the NES but that wasn’t the only factor. So suddenly it’s the player versus the machine instead of a player versus another player and “the game”'s price increases exponentially since a player has to keep feeding the machine to complete the narrative.
This is why the fighting game genre did so well when it hit. Arcades were really suffering before Street Fighter 2 came along and the fighters managed to stall the end for a few more years. Suddenly it was about beating the other player again. Of course as the price for games continued to rise the arcade stopped being a reasonable value for most players.
So there you go: narrative killed the arcade. When it stopped being about the player striving to go as far as they can and became about completing the game value was lost on all levels.
I don’t know. I do know that I spent a lot of money trying to beat Dragon’s Lair. And though I was later crushed to find out it was impossible, I never gave up trying to reach the mountains in Battlezone.
***I hunger. ***
I don’t doubt you. In fact I’d bet that every single one of us could point to a game we spent way too much money to beat and I think that made it a bit of a seductive design path for the developers. But by taking part in changing player expectations they shifted their position in the market to something that was unsustainable for arcades. There’s room for a Dragon’s Lair; there wasn’t room for everyone to be Dragon’s Lair.
And Sinistar is a great example of the middle ground transition. The player has a goal of beating Sinistar but when they finally overcome that huge obstacle they go on to the next level which is a harder version of what they just did.
I’m the same age as most people in this thread and spent a lot of rainy days in an arcade in the late 80’s. One thing that people have only peripherally touched on is the fact that around the early to mid 90’s home consoles caught and then surpassed arcade games in terms of hardware capabilities. I remember the days of NES well, and although we all had a ball playing it, graphics-wise it didn’t hold a candle to the arcade games. I can clearly remember many a conversation had with my friends marveling at the graphics of the arcade systems and wishing we had something like that in our homes. So even though it was less convenient than the home systems, the arcade was able to give us something that we couldn’t get at home.
Flash forward a few years to the 16 bit systems, and all of a sudden the hardware, while still not equal, got much closer. When the big games like Street Fighter 2 came out on the consoles they looked close enough to the arcade so that we could get pretty much the same gaming experience without going to the arcades. From there, it was a downhill slide. By the time the 32 bit systems came out, most people weren’t even thinking about arcade games anymore.
I gotcha beat. I knew an arcade where the Dragon’s Lair console was broken. You could start playing… but the joystick didn’t work! That place never fixed it, even years later.
And by 1996 things had been dire going back to the mid-'80’s. I recall there being at least half-a-dozen arcades within a 20 minute driving radius in the early 80’s. Almost all of them closed by c. 1988. Now there’s just Dave-and-Buster’s, where they get a new title in maybe like once a year.
A big fat <sigh> to all that (tho I’ve enjoyed the racing ones of course). For those too young to be around, from c. 1980-1990 it truly was the Golden Age-the amount of innovation was astonishing, esp. considering the crude hardware involved. Go find an emulator and try Defender, Battlezone, Berserk et al. The latter crafted the astonishing concept of working with the crude robot AI. Gauntlet introduced the concept of coop play in the middle of the decade. The ultimate irony is that, as hardware capabilities increased, the quality of gameplay simultaneously declined and contracted (in terms of variety) strongly. The only innovative game that I’ve seen in the last decade was that horse racing Derby game-but the last few times I’ve been in D & B nobody’s been playing it.
While all the in depth answers make great points, this was it for me. The cost/value of playing a game became increasingly skewed to where now it’s just ridiculous. Even if we’re to allow for the inflated price of a 1983 quarter, it used to be where anyone could plunk a coin into a game of Pac-Man or Tapper or Zaxxon and survive long enough to feel like it was worth it. Now you put a buck into these games and you’re dead thirty seconds later and the game is asking for another dollar.
I was born in '73 and grew up in the age of the arcades and spent way, way too much time and money in them. I’m all for the idea of the arcade and the fun of it. But my kid sees a video game these days and asks to play and I see it’s a buck for what’ll amount to under a minute of game play and you can forget it. Put that dollar towards a new DS, Playstation or Wii game.
There are at least three large, busy arcades in my area.
But I live in a beach resort town, so their customers are presumably tourists trying to keep their kids busy, or teens who need a place to socialize since they can’t hang out in the bars.
Hey, I’ve been referenced in a few posts! Feels nice! warm snugglies
I am a man, for those who were wondering :rolleyes:. And FFS, don’t call me old! I’m 28! I’m feeling old enough as it is!
To further expound:
When I had an Atari 2600, and later when I had a NES - the arcades could always do better. The newer machines could always give a better experience. Better graphics, “real” voice, etc.
That died in the mid-early nineties. Suddenly the 16-bit systems could do the same. Plus instead of the games costing $0.50 per play they cost $30 for a lifetime.
I do miss the live person-to-person competition - I ruled the local MKII machine during the twilight of the arcades (IMO). “Discovered” most of the easter eggs and bugs on my own. Loved it. It was very fun to have your competitor next to you - smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, whatever. I think gaming will never get back the appeal of having somewhat of a shady reputation. It was fun, disreputable and dangerous.
Later, I got my second job ever (first was McDonald’s) in the mall with my favorite arcade. I went there nearly every day on my break.
It just wasn’t the same. There were like half a dozen fighting game rip-offs, three shooting games and a couple worn-but-loved Ms. Pacmans.
I think it really hit home when a friend of my little brother brought over a port of Time Cop and a remember thinking - “Hell, why would anyone pay $1 to play this for two minutes when you could own it and play it whenever you want for $30?”
I’m so old I once had a repetitive-stress injury called “Defender Thumb”.
I agree that arcades started their decline in the late 1980’s, when the graphics capability of the new consoles exceeded the arcade versions, and the home PC started to become a real gaming machine.
I used to work in a large video game arcade from around 2001-2003 or so.
There were several problems we faced:
Cost of new cabinets. You can’t just put a couple of Street Fighter II Ultra Super Duper Mega Turbo Fast Happy cabinets and some air hockey tables in, add a couple of pinball machines and a Dance Dance Revolution machine, and expect to make money. You have to get new and innovative games, and they’re expensive.
The thing is, most customers won’t pay $3 or $4 a game, even if it does involve riding a giant Jet Ski or playing a virtual guitar/drum kit. So it takes forever to recoup the cost of the initial investment, never mind making a proft.
Maintenance. Old games- especially games which involve moving parts- break down, and it was getting harder and harder to keep them working. Spare parts were harder to get, qualified technicians were harder to get, and it wasn’t uncommon for a broken game to be taken offline for weeks before anyone could even try and fix it. Also, the games get really dirty just from being used constantly all day and they need to be cleaned. A lot. And they malfunction. A lot. And then customers get mad at the staff. A lot.
Consoles. Console games are now much, much better than 98% of Arcade Games, in both terms of player involvement and length of game. Things like Dance Dance Revolution and Street Fighter II are all available on consoles, where you can play them at home, with your friends, whenever you feel like it.
Overheads. When you factor in rent, power, lighting, wages, and so forth, it’s not a very economical proposition. Also, coins are fiddly and a nuisance to transport in bulk, and pre-paid swipe cards with credit on them are fraught with problems as well (namely malfunctions). If you have “Ticket” or “Prize” games then your overheads increase further- you’d be surprised how much all that “cheap crap” actually costs, even when you are buying it in bulk from the distributor.
Arcades still live on here in a few places- Movie Theatres here often have them, and really touristy areas might have one (because most teenagers can’t go to pubs, after all), but they’re not generally found in Pizza Places here (most Pizza places are takeaway only now, with the exception of “Trendy” or “Boutique” Pizzerias). I imagine they’ll hang around for a few years, but unless there are some remarkable improvements in arcade gaming technology, they’re going to continue to decline in number, I think.
That’s like saying Terry Schiavo wasn’t dead, she was just resting her eyes.
Slightly more seriously, take a look at some of the games you find at movie theaters. They’re all a few years old (at least) and they all come from a handful of franchises (Soul Calibur, House of the Dead, Time Crisis, etc). Movie theaters just picked up the castoffs from dead arcades on the cheap and installed them because having one more popcorn stand would just be overkill.
While the end of the “golden age” of arcade games began in the mid 80s, I would say the release of the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis 4th generation 16 bit consoles in 1990 finally killed the arcade as a stand-alone entity. Why go to the arcade with a sack of quarters when you can just play the same game with just as good or better graphics at home?
Since then the arcade has been relgated to part of a “Funtainment Complex” like Chuck E Cheese, Dave & Busters, Jenkinsons in Pt Pleasent NJ, and Gillians in Boston (which I think may have closed) where they are part of some combination of movie theaters, bar, restaurant, batting cages, night clubs go-carts and whatnot.
I’m a bit surprised by those who say the arcade was in irrevocable decline by 1990. When I was at Penn State from 1989-92 and 1993-94 there were two booming arcades on the town’s busiest street. I was a regular attendee. Many people in the dorms didn’t have gaming systems or computers in their rooms. I know that sounds surprising now, and actually it surprised me then.
What killed those arcades IMO were a number of factors, some of which have been mentioned here but there are a couple of other things that haven’t been. The biggest one is increased rents in malls and downtowns. Most arcades had to rely on some extent to the under-16 crowd, so they had to be within either walking distance of a lot of kids or in malls where Mom could drop off Junior and go shopping. When many malls and other shopping areas started going upscale the arcades were either priced out or forced to increase their income. That’s why games started costing a dollar or not lasting as long (more turnover and more $/hr). Of course then the arcade owners were walking a fine line between making ends meet and pricing their games over and above what the game systems were going for.
I think the other big thing that hasn’t been mentioned is the idea of the save game. It was the main advantage of the console and PC games, and it increased playability because you could have a character that could advance and grow, thus allowing for deeper gameplay. Some arcade games tried a kind of pseudo-save ability (NBA Jam was one) but the technology just wasn’t available that would provide a real game save in an arcade setting.
Bingo. And what you’ve got HERE is the reason why Arcades are still alive and pretty much well in Japan. Why would you play something online when you could hop on the subway or take a five minute walk and go play against people face to face? It’s just easier for people to get around in Japan. Many people don’t own cars, so communities are built in such a way that people don’t need them as much, and it becomes easier for both youth and everyone to get out and enjoy them. Would I hop in the car and drive 30 minutes to play at an arcade? Heck no. Would I drop a few bucks in one with disturbing regularity if I walked by it every day on my way home from work? Very likely.
I think the one thing that’s keeping some arcades on life support is (one) the novelty of some of the games like Time Crisis or the “full immersion” ones, and (two) the games they can get in “preview” of upcoming power-titles (er… fighting games).
In the Arizona Mills mall in Tempe, Arizona there’s a pretty big Gameworks (owned by Sega, I think). It’s actually surprisingly popular, it can be packed on Saturdays. Last July or so they got about 40-50 new machines (and quite a few of those were new games), and set them up between July and December (with a big week long retooling of the place later in that period), the biggest one being four shiny new cabinets of Street Fighter 4, the lines for that thing for weeks afterwards were crazy beyond belief.
So I’d say arcades are still crawling along, with emphasis on crawling.
But they aren’t popular in New York City where most people walk or use public transporation.
Another thing that I don’t think has been mentioned is the length and complexity of modern games. Kids don’t really play the mindless 2 minute Donkey Kong style arcade games anymore.
Ultimately the arcade game just can’t compete with the gaming PC or game console, for all the reasons mentioned.
