Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

https://medium.com/@josh_taylor/virtual-reality-will-bring-back-the-arcade-16f3f92b52e8

by mfburnett • 11 years ago

64 58 11 years ago

medium.com

anti-shill• 11 years ago

arcades just attract juvenile deliquents with their leather jackets and smoothed back ducktail hairstyles...

mfburnett• 11 years ago

so true, that's the risk we'll all have to take

relh• 11 years ago

did someone say cyberpunk?

richardjs• 11 years ago

At least they're not as dangerous as pool halls.

yellowapple2• 11 years ago

And their Power Gloves.

duvet• 11 years ago

Haven't read this just yet, but the title makes me think of Gmod. The theaters people host usually include arcade machines alongside other activities that you'd see at a regular movie theater.

rezistik• 11 years ago

I've been talking about this with my friends. I think VR creates a really cool opportunity for interactive events.

My favorite two examples to think of are Star Wars dogfights and fantasy exploration.

I like to think about climbing into a scale TIE Fighter or X-Wing and pulling down the helmet and bam dog fighting.

Or walking into a room that includes some jungle-y/forest-y smells and humidity with the helmet. Being able to explore the scenery and maybe even touch mocked plants/animals. Would create an insane level of realism.

Probably out of scope but cool to think about.

mng2• 11 years ago

Your comment dredged up old memories about this flight sim pod place. My friend (well, his dad) took us there a few times for his birthday. It amounted to ten minutes or less inside the pod, with primitive graphics and kind of twitchy controls, but it was pretty cool as a kid. Looking back, it's probably the kind of activity you'd book for a teambuilding exercise; it likely cost big bucks.

This would've been mid to late 90s, somewhere in the Bay Area. I did a cursory google but didn't come up with anything.

pjc50• 11 years ago

Arcades were a product of a time when tech was expensive and real estate was cheap. They're not coming back any time soon.

robotkilla• 11 years ago

Article should be about how VR will be the final bullet in the head of IRL social interaction.

kbenson• 11 years ago

I don't think it will die off, but I think it will undoubtedly lessen. The question is whether that's really a bad thing, when VR social interaction can have much of the same benefits that used to be exclusive to IRL interactions such as facial cues (we aren't there yet), the experience of shared locality (arguably we've had this to some degree for a long time with MMOs), etc.

twiceaday3• 11 years ago

People drink too much VR Kool-Aid.

SapphireSun• 11 years ago

There are also sometimes burdensome regulations about who is allowed to host an arcade in terms of zoning (usually put in place as an anticompetitive measure, local ordinance). I know some people that had to deal with that.

qdot76367• 11 years ago

Super Arcade, a great arcade nearish LA, is having similar problems right now. Had to shut down last December due to rent changes, was set to move, then the city council decided it wasn't going to allow it.

http://superdojo.blogspot.com/

nsxwolf2• 11 years ago

Arcades staged a mini-comeback in the mid to late 90s, because of fighting games. Home consoles offered arcade perfect translations of those same games, but people came in droves.

Online play is probably what killed it off again. I think when there's a reason for people to show up somewhere to play games, they will.

Yuioup• 11 years ago

Wow Déjà vu. For a second there I thought I was in the 90s when 'Virtual Reality' was the next hot thing which never went anywhere.

voyou• 11 years ago

It would be interesting to see a comparison of today's possibilities for VR in arcades, with the VR arcade machines of the early 90s [1]. VR didn't save arcades then; are there differences in today's VR games (or in today's home computing market) that make VR arcades a better bet now?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(gaming)

tadfisher• 11 years ago

The current technology is just loads better. I don't find myself longing to get to an arcade to experience Gouraud-shaded polygons at 10 frames per second.

Likewise, I don't want to throw on a head-mounted display and strap myself into a movement pad just to play another Call of Duty iteration, either. It will be interesting to see what new experiences indie devs can come up with that aren't another rehash of the last ten years of AAA gaming.

(Although the crossbow game looks pretty fun! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6t69mp0ZhE)

TulliusCicero2• 11 years ago

Took a while for cell phone to take off too. They didn't start getting real mainstream penetration until the late 90s. Sometimes the technology just has to mature enough.

bane2• 11 years ago

I'm reminded of a story I heard about some kind of VR experience at Disney or some theme park.

He thought it was cool and got in line to use it. The guy before him was very physical during his sim and sweated up a storm.

He put the goggles on, got immediately grossed out by the hot sweaty mess inside and took it off before it had even started.

Gross.

josephpmay• 11 years ago

Oculus and the like have developed procedures for wiping down the headset between each use during demos. As long as there is a human operator (which is somewhat necessary for this generation of VR experiences), this shouldn't be too much of an issue.

bane2• 11 years ago

I grew up in the smoke filled arcades of the 1980s and think it's probably likely that this procedure won't survive contact with lazy arcade operators outside of the VR vendor's quality experience control.

AdmiralAsshat• 11 years ago

I thought emulation would bring back the arcade, but that failed to catch on. A dying arcade I visited several years ago had a simple cabinet and a marquee that said something to the effect of "500 Games in One!" After trying it, it was pretty clear that it was running some kind of legal version of MAME. I wouldn't be surprised if the innards themselves were just a PC tower with a MAME-GUI loaded onto it.

The point being, however, it probably cost them less than $200 to put the thing together assuming they had an empty cabinet, and you paid a quarter to be able to pick from 500 games on which you could have a "vintage" experience. It was cheap, it was space effective, and to be honest it was alot more enjoyable than most of the other games they had there.

I kinda figured that would be the sort of thing that would survive in this day and age. I came back six months later and it had been replaced by a "Deal or No Deal" cabinet...

sayangel2• 11 years ago

I think the experiences at an arcade have to be ones you can't get at home for it to be compelling enough to come back. You said it yourself: it probably was just a PC with MAME running. You can do that at home. What I can't do at home is sit on a stool with a bunch of flashing lights and Howie Mandel asking me to pick a suitcase. And perhaps have people cheer me on.

I think the same will go for VR arcades. It's gotta be more than a bunch of PCs running software. It's more about the experience.

jsprogrammer2• 11 years ago

800 plays just to break even. It would have to average over 4 plays per day for 6 months to to cover the (likely a low estimate) $200 cost.

Why would I play a MAME cabinet for $0.25 when I could do it at home for nothing? How many people actually even play a MAME game any where on any given day? They probably barely collected enough quarters to pay for the electricity to power the machine.

joezydeco• 11 years ago

But a) 80% of those 500 games are garbage and b) even the 20% that are enjoyable and/or "classic" are dated.

You can grab the older retro-loving crowd for a little while, you won't grab the kids at all. If you were 12 which would you prefer to play for more than 10 minutes? Mario Bros (Arcade, 1983) or New Super Mario Bros (WiiU, 2012)?

damon_c• 11 years ago

Mario Bros (Arcade, 1983) had concurrent multiplayer and was more like today's Super Smash Bros. So maybe if I had two people...

gertef• 11 years ago

some kind of legal version of MAME
I came back six months later and it had been replaced

are you sure it was legal? Seems unlikely.

sayangel2• 11 years ago

Stuff like this will thrive: https://thevoid.com/

The VR experience has to be enhanced from what people will be able to get at home. Having a bunch of VR headsets in a room and calling that an arcade will quickly become obsolete. But what people won't have as much access to is spaces that mirror the virtual world and allow you to "feel" the space. A 1:1 physical mapping with a virtual world has a very powerful effect on the suspension of disbelief.

neuro_imager• 11 years ago

That looks really impressive. How far away are these sites from being live?

TrevorJ• 11 years ago

The problem is capital investment. A VR arcade will be cutting edge for what, 18 months at the most? After that the hardware is no longer better than what you can achieve at a consumer level. That's not very long to make back your investment.

I do think there is a place for a third party business when it comes to VR though in the realm of 'guided' RPG's and narratives. Imagine paying 25 bucks for you and your friends to join a 3D D&D style adventure with a professional DM and actors in mocap playing the part of the major characters. There's a lot of compelling things that could be done in this arena, and it takes the focus off of the tech and makes it more about interactivity and immersion. There's also quite a lot of relatively cheap untapped talent in local improv/community theater scenes to find some reasonable acting talent. Heck, mocap is getting good enough that your actors could have home studios easily enough withing a few years.

jsprogrammer2• 11 years ago

Would you really need a physical arcade for that though?

If everyone has a black box strapped to their face and can communicate sub-100ms, would people even know that they weren't in the same physical location?

modeless• 11 years ago

People don't need to be in the same physical location. However they do all need to be in arcades so that they can all have access to warehouse-scale motion capture setups as well as physical sets and motion-captured props that would be impractical to keep at your house.

Actually, it would be more interesting if they weren't in the same physical location. A VR arcade chain would be a great way to hang out with friends in other cities; you could all visit the local arcade location in your city and then hang out together in a shared virtual space. The game would almost be secondary. Imagine being able to play pool with your friend on the other side of the world, with a real pool table, real cue, and virtual balls. That would easily be possible with a VR arcade.

Zikes3• 11 years ago

That high capital investment is what makes arcades ideal. Even if they're only "cutting edge" for 18 months, even the previous generation of that hardware will still be outside of the range of most consumers.

kistaro• 11 years ago

There's one thing a VR arcade can have that very few consumers can have, in areas where VRcades might be likely to thrive: physical space.

Immersive VR requires at least some space to move around in, or set up a big omnidirectional treadmill in. As the human population grows but Earth stays the same size, personal living quarters will always be at a premium, the rent will always be too damn high, and space to set up this awesome VR rig will be prohibitively expensive.

VR machines could be consumer-grade and still draw an audience, because of the people locked out of the market due to lack of space to set up a rig. Consider what we have now that isn't even VR- I don't have space to use a Kinect.

ObviousScience2• 11 years ago

Just one minor quibble: the reason we have density issues in cities is not that Earth doesn't have enough space for humans to spread out -- even if we only count the nice parts.

No, the answer is that we actually seem to enjoy living in really dense clusters and spend a premium on trying to pile more and more people in to the mess. (Well, there's some argument that wealthy people have had an undue influence on the societal process of urbanization, but that's digressing.)

Other than that, I actually think that arcades are posed to make a comeback, precisely because of the issue you highlight: the only way to have enough open space in a building (in a major city) to really walk around in requires splitting the rent or being really wealthy.

Zikes3• 11 years ago

I think some folks are forgetting the benefits of an arcade that go beyond the games themselves. There's an establishment near me called Arkadia Retrocade[1] that's doing fairly well attracting customers by setting a flat entrance fee with no charge at the machines. They have great atmosphere and are a popular hangout for gamers of all ages. I've seen some people pay to get in the door while barely touching the arcade machines.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arkadia-Retrocade/29361913074...

unwind• 11 years ago

And that flat fee is $5?!

That sounds really, really cheap. I'm so jealous right now.

Zikes3• 11 years ago

And they recently announced they bought out the store next door! They'll be knocking the wall down and expanding, I can't wait.

programminggeek2• 11 years ago

You know why people don't like arcades anymore? Per play session value is super low. When it was like one quarter to play a game, it was fun, cheap entertainment. When the per game cost jumped up to a $0.50 or $1.00, or even more in some cases, it started to become a bad deal.

There is still a place for cheap arcade fun. It's just that arcade machines aren't cheap enough to hook people anymore.

bryanlarsen• 11 years ago

25 cents in 1977 and one dollar today are equivalent prices.

programminggeek2• 11 years ago

Yes, but they don't feel psychologically the same.

nightski• 11 years ago

I've been to a few arcade bars nowadays where the games a free if you buy a drink. Obviously not a solution for all audiences but it is something I'd go to often. It seemed like a much better value proposition.

drawkbox• 11 years ago

No doubt they will be in arcades in bigger ways much like arcades today have more physical and accessorized games than you can have at home (racers with seats, bikes, guns to use, skee-ball like games etc), but the home experience will be great because most markets are open now and anyone can publish. Content will move very fast.

Plus, just like touch pads, VR headsets are pretty nasty after a while if they are used in public by many players. Joysticks were really funky back in the old blacklit arcades, now imagine putting that on your face/head.

derefr• 11 years ago

arcades in bigger ways ... but the home experience will be great ... because anyone can publish

I'm hoping against hope for the middle-way between those two, though: rentable holosuites, like the VR equivalent of computers at internet cafes, where there are a few titles preinstalled, but you can also run whatever titles you like from the 'net.

(Or maybe it'll just let you log into your Steam account, where all your VR games and apps are. I could totally see Steam as becoming to thin-client VR as Windows is to thin-client PCs.)

nsxwolf2• 11 years ago

Battlezone's visor would get nasty. I wonder how many pinkeye infections were spread from that game.

bobajeff2• 11 years ago

Part of the problem is games today aren't designed to be played in short bursts. Casino's are still going strong so there is still a audience for these kinds of distractions.

I think another problem could be that not very many games are geared toward sharing you experience with others. So the experience is the same whether your home or at a arcade because your secluded from everyone either way even if it's multiplayer.

twiceaday3• 11 years ago

Part of the problem is games today aren't designed to be played in short bursts.

Phone games?

Casino's are still going strong so there is still a audience for these kinds of distractions.

That's a stretch.

bobajeff2• 11 years ago

Phone games are hardly big budget attractions.

yellowapple2• 11 years ago

I agree with you on phone games, but disagree on casinos. I happen to live near Reno, where slot machines are like arcade games in other places; you'll often find them in mundane places like grocery stores and restaurants. Nowadays, thanks to the Internet, these can interconnect, meaning that a slot machine in your neighborhood grocer will be connected to every other one in a given area, pooling their money and coordinating their payouts.

It should also be no surprise that most casinos around here have rather extensive arcades for kids to distract themselves with while their parents go waste their money on slots and poker. The article seems to leave that out (perhaps because casinos aren't commonplace throughout all of North America), which was rather striking to me, seeing as casinos are the most common places to find actually-popular arcades nowadays around these parts.

lhl2• 11 years ago

I wasn't very convinced by this article, and it took me until the end to get to the punchline, it's written by a founder of "a startup that is bringing back the arcade as a platform and marketplace for virtual reality innovation."

My main issues:

* The author talks a lot about arcades as a social environment - this is absolutely true, but when people are strapped into HMDs in 15'x15' rooms, I just don't see how those same dynamics come into play. Sure you could have displays of what people are experiencing, but it's not the same kind of visceral or fluid experience that the best arcades have. You can't drop in on a game, or even see multiple players interacting in a physical space - ironically (or fittingly) you'd have better social interactions virtually

* Yep, VR is expensive. It takes a fair amount of gear that will be obsolete in a year or two, and the author's argument that good VR requires 1:1 motion and a large amount of floorspace (individual 15'x15' rooms, conservatively) and it doesn't sound like a very palatable (or profitable) business venture to me.

I could see some aweomse social experiences like The Void that use VR HMDs for shared mix-reality use (cavernous warehouses w/ redirected walking, practical effects, etc), but that's pretty far from the author's suggestion of putting regular consumer VR arcades up (I can also see existing PC bangs/KTV/room-based Internet cafes in Asia transitioning to VR if there is demand assuming that multiple people/headsets can interact in a shared space (otherwise the economics still doesn't make sense), but IMO VR arcades that just house regular VR experiences seem DOA.

josh_taylor• 11 years ago

Your comments are not representative of someone that read the article.

Arcades as a social environment was not stressed in the article. On top of that, 15' x 15' rooms were never mentioned in the article. That is currently the dimensions that the Vive allows for. There is nothing that says that virtual interactions could not also happen within an arcade.

Again what is with the 15' x 15' rooms?

Never once does it suggest that arcades should use consumer grade tech and in fact that is the complete opposite of what the article says.

I think you have a vision of what a VR arcade is and that influenced your thought process. Most of the points that you argue are of your own construction.

lhl2• 11 years ago

Sorry, I must have been reading a different article. Good luck with your non-social environment VR venture.

"People were comfortable playing at home but they would come out to arcades to see the latest improvements in the video game industry. Arcades became a location where people could meet other people with a shared interest in gaming. Socializing was at the core of arcades."

"but with families and casual players looking for the kind of face-to-face social gaming experience hard to find on this side of the Pacific."

"A contributing factor to the success of Japan’s arcades is the social experience of watching people play games that are very talented and learning from them."

"A lot of people will not be able to devote much space in their apartments for entertainment anymore and instead they will start to look for entertainment locations to gather socially, as we saw happened in Japan."

"Specifically within the gaming industry, Twitch has created an opportunity for people to communicate and come together over a shared interest in games. This is a deeply human need that we possess to socialize and group."

"The current gaming industry in North America is purely a home market but this is limiting the possible games and experiences that are available and limiting the socialization of a community."

"the arcade will provide the gaming community a place to socialize in person in a way it has never been able to before."

Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

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