I was just watching a video on some top fighting game players from Japan and saw how intricate their arcades are. It made me really wonder how a small Island like Japan can maintain a arcade business model, but a country as big and financially-dominant like America couldn’t do the same. The game industry in America eclipses Japan (yhat’s why Sony brought PS4 to America first), but they seem to have way better internet connections along with better exterior gaming scenes (We have a hard time compiling frame data for pretty much all fighters while Japan gets giant guides with everything).
Can you imagine what competition would be like if even a small portion of New York City, Los Angeles or Boston was set up like the Akihabara district?:
-Higher population density centered around cities.
-Smaller homes and a culture that prefers going out to meeting up at someone’s place.
-High reliance on public transports, specifically trains that provides places (train stations) with high foot traffic where most of these arcades are.
the “Casual” market popped up because of the American market. Remember when what would be easy mode in Japanese games would be our default difficulty? Americans play games as a means of power fantasy it isn’t so much about the challenge of the game and the feeling of reward as it is just simply about having an interactive way to waste time, hence why guys like Gavin Mcinnes compare it to playing with virtual action figures because that’s what most people are pretty much doing.
Why is this such a mystery, the reasons are obvious
Unless you can somehow shrink America to 1/4 it’s current size or something arcades aren’t gonna be as big as they are in Japan ever. That’s just how it is.
But it is funny that sometimes is the other way around. Most recent videogame example: Nioh on PS4, was “neutered” on it´s difficulty after the japanese market cried on the beta.
When I was in Tokyo I could get to pretty much any arcade I wanted in around 30 minutes, and I knew that because of the high amount of players, I would find lots of competition if I went at the right hours. It’s really hard to replicate that in America because we have not as good public transportation, are more spread out, and in almost all cities, not nearly as many people.
Also it probably helps that Tokyo homes are so small - in America we have relatively large houses so it makes more sense to be a homebody. If you want to chill with your friends you just invite them over. In Tokyo it makes more sense to meet at the arcade instead.
I don’t wanna act like I’m some expert on Tokyo from having been there a month. But those reasons seem reasonably straightforward and likely.
Family Fun in LA and the good Chinatown Fair would disagree with you.
NYC just has a shit CTF and a few LAN type meetup spots like TNL.
Last time I was at CTF, they had a Marvel 2 and 3S cabinet - where the second player was intentionally broken. I asked if they’d be getting it fixed and I was told they didn’t want to bring the competitive environment back. There’s your casual atmosphere @S00perCam was talking about.
It should be noted that a lot America’s infrastructure is atrocious compared to other major cities in other countries. Our bus and train systems are a joke.
I have other opinions as to why Chinatown got rekt, that had nothing to do with transport. The trains in NY were mostly fine IMO. The place was always packed too. I honestly just think they didn’t charge enough to keep up with NYC’s ridiculous rents. There were still games that were 25-cents upon closing. Japan charges a buck.
