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Author Topic: Percentage of video game users Gary Davidson Expert Film Handler Posts: 101 From: Santa Monica, CA Registered: Jan 2004 posted 02-22-2004 10:27 PM                     A while back I was asking about the use of video arcade games in theater lobbies. Can anyone tell me approximately what PERCENTAGE of total moviegoers attending your theater used these machines?  |  IP: Logged Paul G. Thompson The Weenie Man Posts: 4718 From: Mount Vernon WA USA Registered: Nov 2000 posted 02-22-2004 10:42 PM                     Probably depends on what type of video games you have as well as how many.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 02-22-2004 11:06 PM                     I think the dedicated video game arcades in large theaters do better business than a lobby featuring one or two machines. Customers have more of a choice, although IMHO most newer coin-op games just suck. Pretty much all fighting and driving games. Boring. Overall, the whole coin-op thing needs to be re-thought. I like the old classic 1980's games. Although their graphics schemes were primitive by today's standards, they worked around the limits by abstracting lots of things. The older video games had a better sense of graphic design by doing this. My favorites were the Williams Electronics games like Denfender, Joust and Robotron: 2084. I loved the look of those games and their very unique sound effects. Today's games are more "realistic" but at the same time pretty damned boring. I loved coin-op video games when I was a teenager. But now I just buy my ticket. If the theater has an arcade I typically pass by it without stopping. Most theater lobbies have limited space. The thing that needs to happen is gaming companies like Bally/Midway need to come up with single cabinets that offer a multitude of "retro" 1980's games. Since Bally/Midway also bought out Williams and has the rights to a lot of the old Atari coin-ops as well, it would seem like they could have the whole thing covered --legally speaking. Lots of video game enthusiasts have used MAME to build their own multipurpose classic video game machines doing exactly what I suggested. Only they're doing it almost illegally. They download the MAME program and then collect the video game ROMs from elsewhere. The actual assembling of both is where legal boundaries are broken. So, you wouldn't be able to put one of these MAME machines in a commercial theater, even if you weren't charging 25 or 50 cents a play. But one single cabinet offering 50 or so "classic" arcade games would be something more likely to make me stop and shortly relive some long but not lost memories of video game heaven.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-23-2004 01:37 PM                        Bobby - you're right about the '80s games. They leave more to the imagination and are much easier to learn. Anyone who could do well on Defender was held in pretty high regard among the gamers around here, since it really required some skilz. My other all time favorite was Missile Command which is more hair-raising than any modern game I've ever seen.  |  IP: Logged Aaron Garman Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1470 From: Toledo, OH USA Registered: Mar 2003 posted 02-23-2004 02:45 PM                     In many cases, arcades at the theatre are great for killing time. I would much rather kill time playing Pac-Man than Time Crisis or Tekken. Thank God for pinball! AJG  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-23-2004 06:53 PM                     Holy Cow! There are people on this forum that actually have time for that... Life is way to precious to waste it away like that! Mark  |  IP: Logged Wolff King Morrow Master Film Handler Posts: 490 From: Denton, TX, USA Registered: Feb 2004 posted 02-23-2004 07:18 PM                        Unlike the others here, I also like the newer games, despite having grown up on the older games. I find most older guys have the same attitude that newer games somehow "suck" compared to their old favorites. Such is not the case, but rather a feeling of Nostalgia getting in the way of objective thinking. I've had many a debate/flame war over this topic. While true there are a lot of pretty bad games out there, this was also true of the golden era. You just have to find what suits your style. I for one found I was extremely good at snowboarding and other X-based video games. The thrill of competition was more exciting to me than memorizing a Pac Man maze (imagination indeed). With respect to fighting games, they have some absolutely fierce competition available with fans that master the games. Big tourneys are held and people make quite a name for themselves. So what you call boring is actually extremely intense for someone else. This is what my point boils down to. I don't like it when people my age and older decide newer games are somehow inferior to the crap they played. That's just simply not true. They are merely a different style to what you like, added to the nostalgia factor I mentioned before. 20 years from now, our kids will be making the same subjective statements when they think back on their fond memories of Street Fighter.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 02-23-2004 11:11 PM                     quote: I find most older guys have the same attitude that newer games somehow "suck" compared to their old favorites. Such is not the case, but rather a feeling of Nostalgia getting in the way of objective thinking. I disagree with that completely. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the video game industry had a clean slate. There were few rules, few established conventions. There were many more fresh ideas. Just about any game made today borrows from a genre established with a 1980s game, be it sci-fi menace titles like Defender or Tempest or the whimsy of Pac Man, Centepede and Donkey Kong. New video game coin-ops of that age were often fresh, turning conventions on their head. These days if I see a new coin op machine I forget the title right after I saw it. Just another damned fighting or driving game. Blah. The only video games worth playing at all these days are a few for PC or consoles. There's far more variety on the home computing and console end. And the performance gap that existed between home console and coin-op is long gone. A well equipped PC or even an X-Box is every bit as powerful as most new coin-ops, and you have more choice. And you also don't have to feed the motherf**ker 50 cents every two minutes. When Gauntlet appeared in the mid 1980s, a Pandora's box was opened. You had to PAY to get the high score, not use your ability on one quarter to earn it. If someone bragged to me they just got the high score on Smash TV or NARC I'd shrug and say, "yeah, great way to waste 20 dollars."  |  IP: Logged Aaron Garman Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1470 From: Toledo, OH USA Registered: Mar 2003 posted 02-24-2004 12:26 AM                     Bobby, that's why games like Pac-Man and Street Fighter rock: you get a good amount of play for .25 or .50. Imagine: busy Friday night, tons of teens surround the Street Fighter machine. You sit there, match after match, defeating every kid. I did that once back in the day with Blanka. One older kid shoved me after I kicked his @$$ with Blanka time and time again. It was bliss! AJG  |  IP: Logged Evans A Criswell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1579 From: Huntsville, AL, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 02-24-2004 03:26 PM                        I started playing video games back in 1982 and loved the old games (Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, etc.) I don't think I've ever played a video game that cost more than a quarter to play. There's some mental block there, since in the days of arcades, you could often get tokens cheaper than a quarter if you bought a bunch at once. I used to love the game room at the Carmike 8 in Decatur, AL because they had a bunch of 80s video games, including a Ms. Pac man with the speed-up, Tron, and others. Two or three years ago, those games were removed and replaced with others. The Regal River Oaks 8 has a Ms. Pac Man with the speed-up as well. Both locations lost their Ms. Pac Man machines about 3 years ago, and I haven't played any more video games at either place. One game a lot of Carmike theatres have now is the Ms. Pac Man and Galaga combination game. It has the slow Ms. Pac Man and usually costs 50 cents to play. The screens usually have bad convergence/degaussing issues as well. Why pay 50 cents to play a slow Ms. Pac Man ? No thanks. The only game I see a lot of people playing now is that dancing game where you stomp the squares at the right times. The only problem with that one in a theatre lobby is you need a lot of space and it attracts a crowd of watchers. The rest of the games in arcades are either shoot at things or sports simulators or fighting games or driving simulators. Blah. I'd love it if the theatres in my area would get the old classic 80s games and charge a quarter each for them. I'd play those.  |  IP: Logged Gary Davidson Expert Film Handler Posts: 101 From: Santa Monica, CA Registered: Jan 2004 posted 02-24-2004 07:35 PM                     Back to my original question on this thread. Can anyone give me a ballpark on the PERCENTAGE of your total theater patrons that partake in your video games?  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 02-24-2004 07:42 PM                     I'm not sure if the percentage would even register in the single digits.  |  IP: Logged Mike Spaeth Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1129 From: Marietta, GA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 02-25-2004 12:00 AM                        An average game income PER CAPITA (ticket sold) is around $.12 - $.20  |  IP: Logged Mike Pennell Expert Film Handler Posts: 150 From: Tucson, AZ, USA Registered: Apr 2003 posted 02-25-2004 11:50 AM                     gary, just like your snack bar per head its gonna depend on your customer base. If you have a lot of seniors youre not going to make a lot of money on them, but if you have kids to college age you probably will.  |  IP: Logged David Kilderry Master Film Handler Posts: 355 From: Melbourne Australia Registered: Sep 1999 posted 02-28-2004 06:35 AM                        We are former amusement machine operators and have the games on free play in our drive-in snack bar. It drags in all the kids, big and small, and just about all end up making a purchase at our snack counter. What games do we have? Two of the best Addams Family pinball and Gallaga video cabinet. For the coming Easter break, we'll have 8 machines all on free play, the place will be packed! David  |  IP: Logged

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