Here is what works at Gameworks in Seattle:
- A sizable bar and restaurant
- Mostly racing cabinets, fighting games, and shoot em up / light gun games. Those are unique arcade experiences you can't replicate at home
- An entire area for LAN play and pc gaming
- Space for events / groups
- Kid games
For the record there are like 5-10 arcades here and they are all bar attached, and the others are targeted to young adults mostly
Thisis why I'm glad your back on the board because I swear every time I think about someone you make a thread about it
I have as recently as 3 days ago looked into the logistics of building up an arcade franchise in my city.
The truth is that, yes, you want those things, but you'll need something else to hold it together for the regular foot traffic. I've seen various things, most arcades now are barcades and they seem to work but it doesn't have the arcade spirit because people go to them while barhopping, play a game once, get a drink or 2 once and dip. They also aren't designed for kids and kids often feel alienated there and I think that's bad financially. I do think you want to go for family friendly.
I think you would have to focus in on bringing in regulars, so that means different nights for different gamers, perhaps a weekly tournament for FG players, I've seen board game nights for certain arcades, so on and so forth, but for kids you'd want to have try to see if you can make your place a field trip destination, idk, it's a lot to juggle and balance.
Let's not even mention the startup costs, from my math it'll cost you a good 100k probably to even get started.
I thought about doing it when some store (don’t remember what it was before) closed…but the space just felt perfect for an arcade…the sell/draw tho would be it just being a place for kids to hang out where they can also play arcade games…I was thinking of having VR stations and shyt too…the more I thought about it tho, the more I realized it was just basically gonna be dave and busters…I liked the location tho bcuz it’s a spot where a lot of ppl hang out at a nearby gas station on the weekends
There's places that separate themselves from D&B but yeah D&B has the casual audience on lock right now. You'll have to market yourself as more of a "pure" arcade to get it to work if you are focusing on the games, which like I said means you're focusing on things like gaming tournaments and such
If Sega couldn't keep those shyts going, it damn sure can't work here.
