Will arcades ever return to relevance?

As I've been getting older, I've noticed that gaming culture has taken on a pandemic of mass proportions. There was once upon a time in the era of the arcade where gaming wasn't a generally cherished hobby and it had not fully integrated into the mainstream yet. Because of this, arcades are popular with a very certain demographic of people that wasn't accepted by mainstream culture. Nowadays, people are not afraid to express their pleasures when it comes to gaming. You see guys walking around wearing Mario hats everywhere, people playing on their advanced portable gaming devices such as the Nintendo 3DS, Vita, and iPhone, and people openly and happily discussing gaming.

It's hard to believe that in 2017, the arcade gaming platform is still shamefully lingering in the dust. This is because the philosophy of the RPG and the XBOX took over, and things have changed. But with the popularization of gaming culture and drinking, arcades combined with bars are a good way for gamers to come out of their shells and engage with others in the form of good old arcade and spilt screen goodness!

This would be a dream, to bring the arcade back into prominence. This is the ultimate dream, for the arcade and bar combination to thwart the home console, The end result is that the home console will be abolished, and people will either play on PC for their single player experiences or they would have to leave their house to relish the console, arcade style games they have been craving. The system war would be over, and gamers would exist in a newfound harmony. The incidence of online trash talking will be greatly reduced to a minimum, since gamers will have to coexist in the real world and let's face it, nobody will talk shit to you if you can suplex them and then pound them into the marble flooring with your foot!

Will arcades ever return to relevance? What do you guys think?

Sure for phones or tablets. Those are the arcade types of games will land. Not in bars and stuff.

I would say online gaming contributed to the decline of arcades. People don't need to leave their house to play with friends. Even local-play is struggling to keep up.

I don't know how RPGs put an end to arcades. Especially since RPGs were big in an age where arcade gaming was popular.

These are a form of handheld gaming that has surpassed and exceeded the capabilities of traditional handheld gaming. But we are not discussing solitary but portable gaming in which people stare into their phones and do not do anything else except play their game. We are talking about an exclusive, social platform for gaming with its own games and bars!

are we giving up on the console already?

Nada snowballs chance, at least not like VG arcades were in the 80's. Dave & Busters may do okay tho but that's a bit different.

There are a lot of problems with arcades. The pay-per-play model doesn't really integrate will into a society that is used to buying a game once, or simply getting the initial game for free. Even if the price-per-play is low, like back down to 25 cents, it still kind of sucks to consistently suck away money.

Another major issue is that arcade games today cannot hold up against even mobile games on smartphones, let alone console and PC games. Their pay-to-play model does not allow them to have the depth of home gaming and thus many end up relying upon gimmicks to be attractive. Gimmicks like sitting on a fake motorcycle to control the game, sitting in a cockpit of some sort, having a big ass light gun, or just having large screens.

There are a few problems with gimmicks. The first is that the cost of the actual machine is much higher than a simple arcade box. Larger with more parts that need to be maintained. The second is they take up a lot of floor space within the arcade itself. So where you could have put two smaller arcade boxes, you can only put one of these big machines. These two factors combined increase the price-per-play of these machines. You can't just offset that by increasing the amount of time you can play per play as that would then lower the overall revenue the machine can bring in over a 24 hour period. Less plays per hour.

Yet another massive issue for arcades is location. Just like any commercial entertainment, location is incredibly important. Putting your arcade 10 minutes out of the "downtown" area will kill it. People aren't going to go that far out of their way for an arcade no matter how cool it is. So you're kind of stuck. You can either pay the big bucks to rent a facility in a very high traffic commercial area, or build a larger facility with far more amenities than just the arcade as to give more incentive to bring people to you. In both cases the base price of keeping the facility running is high and thus you have to offset those costs with the price-per-play. Those 25 cent per-play games just aren't going to bring you in the money.

There are ways around this of course. One of my favorite places to go right now is a bar that is also an oldschool arcade. It's focused on more of the young adult crowd, but has 25 cent per-play games that wrap around a very large bar with a lot of drinks on tap and whatnot. They also serve food and have all of the normal amenities you would expect a bar to have in the midwest. The place gets packed on the weekends and it opens at 11 am every day, so if you wanted to just come in and play games when there aren't many people around you can. It's a great balance and has a fantastic location.

So despite all of the woes I've listed, the arcade can still survive, it just needs to be more than an arcade. A lot of "arcades" today are in kid-focused environments with other games like laser tag and go karts. However the traditional arcade is pretty much dead. Too many factors working against it.

Arcades were declining way before online play came around. They were pretty much dead by the mid 90s.

Home consoles were ultimately the device that killed the arcade.

They wont get anywhere close to where they were. But i've noticed them coming back into the light recently. I have 3 or 4 within 25 or 30 minutes of my house alone.

Is is like asking whether adult film theaters will return to relevance? It is unlikely due to the introduction of home videos and now the Internet.

The same goes with video arcades.

@Wasdie:

That's true. As soon as people could get the arcade experience at home, there was no need to leave the house. But when we consider that people traded in arcades for local play at home and now local play is being trumped by online play, then what you have is a youtube killed the video killed the radio situation.

Dave and Busters is the closest we are gonna get. Luckily Dave and Busters is glorious. They have giant Rock Em Sock Em Robots ffs.

The reason arcades will never make a return. Smoking. Or the lack of it. Smoking and arcade went hand in hand. This is why most arcade games had built in ash trays. Many people would just go to arcades to smoke or to watch others smoke.

With the smoking ban now in place for indoor areas they will never have that magical cloud of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, that smell of old nicotine and of course the coughing.

And don't forget the brawls, man! Man, the fights I used to get into with noobs were wild back in the day! I remember one time I lit up a fella in a match of SF2 and he kept accusing me of playing unfairly, so I grabbed a chunk of hair on the back of his head and slammed him face first into the cabinet. The guy ended up having to get six stitches above his upper lip!

Yeah, I'm not really an aggressive person. I would never assault somebody just for saying I played unfairly.

Probably not. The fact that high-quality gaming experiences can be enjoyed by just about anyone at home means arcades aren't really necessary anymore. Culturally, in America, at least.

This is precisely what I mean about the return of the arcade; it would be an arcade combined with a bar like I said in my original post, it would have all the amenities of a regular restaurant/bar while also having the games.

I also want to emphasize and clarify the fact that these arcades I am proposing do not have to be about gimmicks at all. You see some lower-quality arcades and they usually tend to have the run-of-the-mill, low-tier quality games you would expect an arcade in conjunction with another big entertainment establishment to have, such as a movie theater or a laser tag building. I want to emphasize that these arcades would sport more than just gimmicks. Of course, the gimmicks would be there for the less-acquainted generation of gamers so that they can indulge in relatable entertainment if they wish. But these arcades combined with bars would propose a quality of games unlike anything seen on the consoles, PCs, or mobile marketplaces. What I am talking about is a library of games that are exclusive to the restaurant and bar scenes. What if such a library of games were to transpire? What would it mean for the future of economics? What dimension would it bring to the lifestyle of the daily consumer?

Barcades already exist.

Hmm! There aren't any where I live!

@boycie:

I guess it depends where you live. There are none around where I'm from but it would be really cool!

This is what I am talking about. Imagine if you had access to an exclusive, social platform of gaming!

@hammerthrust: No, never. Online play and consoles have all just about killed the arcade scene.

Now there are some parts of the world that a specific arcade scene can be successful, but for the most part, it's almost dead.

But I suppose if they were going to be the next big thing there would be one on every high street by now.

How exclusive are we talking about here? Am I going to need to carry around a membership card or something?

That would have to depend on the business. I'm sure some businesses could afford to implement an exclusive, membership fee if the demand for their service quality was high enugh and the bar had games worth playing.

@hammerthrust:

Just a simple bar with some good arcade games. That's all you need.

What games do they have? It must be pretty next gen stuff

As they say on Dragons Dens (a show on BBC2 in the uk) 'I'm out'

It can have next-gen stuff, it can have old school stuff, so long as it follows the motifs purported by the social platform this bar is trying to advertise! These bars are designed to offer a next-gen arcade experience that is an alternative to the home console/PC experience. And it would have a large library of new games.

Sounds expensive!

If the fees to play are 25 cents per play, the business would easily make its money back due to being super cheap yet offering a quality game experience. This arcade would be packed every night due to the intriguing experience it would offer.

What happened to the membership?

Na it was powerful consoles that did that,n the 80's most arcade were to powerful compare to consoles,like the nes snes the only home console capable was the Neogeo and was to expensive,i remember how after the PS1 Arcades started to die,all of the sudden an arcade perfect game was in your hand without needing quarter.

Game like Teken,MK,SF were very popular on PS back on the day and all of the sudden you had an arcade perfect version of those home.

Like a month ago i went to the theater here,it has a small arcade area with some classic and other stuff i came across an after burner machine this is a new version i hop in and i was having such a blast with the moving cabinet i was transport to the mid 80's all of the sudden as it was one of my favorite sega games back then.

In the biggest mall here they are building one this year again,i think they will even call it time out like in the old days i can only hope it get tons of good stuff.

The membership would still be there but it would depend on the business if they want to instill a membership or not. The platform I am referring to is a spiritual entity; it encapsulates all the businesses as a whole. Not every single one will have a membership fee, but some will.

How long does 25 cents buy you with the machine?

It can buy you lots of time if you have the skill to survive in the games; something that a lot of gamers don't have today unfortunately.

Dark Souls: Prepare to lose all your Quarters edition?

That would have to be at the special arcade bar for RPG gamers. It would be called the Basement Dweller's Ballroom, and that's where Dark Souls would be.

would that one have a membership?

@tormentos:

You're right. @Wasdie brought that up and it makes way more sense than my original thought. :)

I guess it would have to, unless there's somehow RPG-oriented arcade games so that quarters can be utilized. I'm assuming the people at this particular bar/arcade would be regular customers, so instilling a membership would make sense.

ya Dark Souls, every time you die thats another quarter to keep going and it would use the keyboard controls. Maximizing Profits

It would be a very expensive cabinet to maintain. Overall, it would be a very expensive endeavour. I would have to hire a large janitorial staff willing to work overtime in order to keep the place clean and smelling nice.

Not really a lot in it for the Arcade owner is it though. You pop 25 cents in a machine and sit there all day.

@hammerthrust: You know what...maybe having RPGs in arcades would save the arcade scene seeing that so many people would be dedicated to it :O that's a pretty good idea you got there!

@the_hellblazer: Sounds like a winner to me. Hammerthrust's is a great name for a chain of RPG arcade bars.

@sancho_panzer: We should get a patent out stat.... @hammerthrust, wanna be business partners?

sounds kinky

@aigis: It doesn't sound kinky at all. Please keep your dirty thoughts out of my business practices. It would take a lot of effort to maintain since RPG fans tend to be smelly, they tend to be messy eaters, and they tend to smoke a lot of cigarettes. The place would get a lot of business, but it would be stinky every day! This is what I am talking about. Don't you see what I am saying to you?