[Arcade] Arcades: Now & Then

Originally Posted by nuttyturnip

The only way the arcade is going to survive is with innovative games that can't be played at home due to special peripherals.

Not necessarily true. You should have seen how many people saw Steel Battalion on release and kept saying "You could do this stuff on a controller." If you look at the current boom with Street Fighter IV and a certain Chinatown Arcade in New York, you'll see that keeping an arcade going means getting people involved. Convincing them that they're not just paying for a game, but for a social event and making more of an investment in their entertainment.

The one thing DDR and Street Fighter IV have in common - as Chaotic implies to an extent about DAN-SANG GAME - is that they have a dedicated player base and that player base attracts people because folks think to themselves "Me too!" when they see the kind of things going on. Arcades could produce the most innovative and awesome titles ever and it isn't going to mean shit if you can't attract and sustain a user base to propel it forward and keep it moving. Look at Time Crisis, that's an arcade experience defined and its move to consoles wasn't a response to the arcade game not pulling in money, it was a response to the arcade game not pulling in enough money.

You have little fundamental things that apply to a game's "scene", like competition and game quality. But the business aspect that most people miss here is that the arcade owner needs to breed an environment that is inviting to people. And if you look at most arcades (Read: The ones that eventually go under) the owner neglects their stocked equipment and expects the assumed user base to just come in and have at it.

It just doesn't work that way.

And as a sign of the times, Arcades in Japan are dying, so even with that, we aren't exactly in an economy where people can plunk the kind of cash on arcade titles that they used to be willing to do. It's more than just the games, and it's deeper than design and hardware. Arcades are definitely a business and most people who run them don't know the business of being able to survive. And it hasn't gotten any easier.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Namco blames Wii for arcade closures in Japan - Engadget

This would more support nutty's initial argument, though I find that Arcade tendencies in Japan play out differently than the successful arcades here in the US.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

You have no clue what the fuck "turning a profit" means and I don't aim to bother trying to cram it through your lead thick skull in this case.

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Originally Posted by Crash Landon

It's a natural progression and aside from the nostalgia factor, we're not missing a ton by losing the arcades.

Until fighting games on consoles can consistently deliver from scratch, we potentially lose the body of quality assurance in the genre without arcades. You got Smash Bros, but then you also have Soul Calibur 3. And for anyone out there wanting to say it, there's no point responding back with Soul Calibur 4 because 3 was practically a beta test for that game. That game being a decent yet still rife with issues video game.

The doujin fighting scene makes good bounds, but the amount of revisions and play testing time that goes into that isn't exactly cost effect for most developers.

They're making progress, but developers still rely on those location tests for player feed back. And Arcades are crucial for that. Other than that... yeah, what Crash said.

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Originally Posted by Bigblah

Try me.

You're not clever.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Hey, blah, you got a friend!

GET BACK IN THE CAPSULE, Mo0MARIA

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Bigblah

No, I'm genuinely curious as to why you're imitating Denicalis all of a sudden.

Oh, so you didn't want an economics lesson! Well, son, when obtuse fails, try the direct approach!

If you really fucking care, which you more than likely don't because I have a pretty decent hunch that you're just bored, why don't you pursue this someplace more appropriate (in before you ask me "Where would be more appropriate?"). Y'know, call me out on whatever it is you think I'm doing there and stop making Infernal waste material on trying to get the topic back in line.

How ya doing, buddy?

I have a member clearly not reading what I was saying and completely failing at reading comprehension, so I blew him off (no homo, lol). Moreover, it isn't just that one article I based my stance on, it was just the easiest one to supply him with at the time. There's no doubt it's sensationalist, as I clearly don't agree with what the article states at the end, Japanese players learning what American players have or some such nonsense. But I felt it supported what I said just fine.

Since showing a number of closures is enough.

Because at other boards, I'm reading a similar assessment of Japanese arcades being on a downswing. I wasn't wrong in what I said, because I clearly didn't say "The Arcade scene in Japan is going away and all of their arcades are belong to closure", I said that Arcades there are dying. As in, individual ones are seeing closure, the scene is slowing down, it's not as profitable to have as many as there once were.

I did not say they were going away completely or enough to constitute having a comparison of American Arcades made to me like I don't know what happens to most arcades in the US if you don't live in Southern California, New York, or even Omaha, (Nebraska) of all places.

Foaming at the mouth? I don't know, honestly, it was one comment I left it at and I haven't responded to him since. Because in the span of TWO posts, I could tell that he wasn't listening/comprehending what I was saying. Whereas at least one other person was. I was being amicable, I saw he was blowing me off, I said "fuck this." I've seen worse happen to other people, so I'm really wondering what would have happened if I did start trading petty insults with the guy. Obviously Mo0 was laying in wait for it to happen, but it didn't.

He didn't ask for any clarification, but you started to? Seriously, blah, fuck you for that. You're not unknown_user and possibly (but not really) trying to stand in for the guy is bullshit.

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There's nowhere I can't reach.