New Arcade In DFW? *Updated*

Regional Matchmaking Southwest
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From a fighting game community perspective,

The reason a fighting game arcade would not work in Dallas by itself is because the fighting game community in Dallas has its history in get-togethers and gatherings at people’s homes. The last competitive spot for fighters in DFW that EVERYONE went to was the Putt Putt in Arlington and that was surely before the year 2000.

Houston and Austin on the other hand have both always been centered around the arcade with get-togethers as a supplement to that. The hardcore players in these areas have always played casually at home, and seriously at the arcade. That’s mostly due to having well-run, conveniently located arcades (Houston: U of H, then Stargate, now PZ. Austin: Powerplay/Einstein’s, now UFO).

If you open an arcade in Dallas (or anywhere), you should not be opening it just for people who visit SRK. SRK currently has 78,319 registered users, the size of an average suburb split amongst the entire hardcore fighting game community–and that’s not even considering people with multiple accounts, people who only post in General Discussion, and people who don’t play fighting games anymore (this is probably over 50% of SRK).

Of those 78,319, you’d be lucky if over 50 lived in DFW. Of those 50 or so, 30 might not ever go to an arcade even if they had the option to do so. 5 people here might live within 10 miles of your location.

If those 5 people become regulars, is that enough to support your business? Of course not. What you should be aiming for, then, is to open an arcade for everyone. Don’t worry about SRK. Focus on opening a business for everyone (racing, shooting, puzzle, pool/hockey tables, redemption), and if you want to get some of the new fighting games, keep your machines in good working order, hold some tournaments, have a great location in the city so that more people can go conveniently (not a suburb), and the stars are perfectly aligned, you might get some support from the hardcore fighting game community.

What you’re basically asking by creating a thread like this is saying “we’re creating a business but haven’t planned it out, so we want to know if we can have your support just in case”.

From a logical perspective, any reasonable person’s position will be “I have no idea”. Your arcade isn’t open yet, they don’t know how much you’re charging, they don’t know if the machines are in good shape, they don’t know how well-maintained it would be, they don’t know how much competition will be there.

On the opposite spectrum, if you were to create a thread saying “We are opening an arcade on XXX date at YY location with Z available, come check it out if you have a chance”, you’d probably get a resounding “OK!” and people would make their own judgments about your place after visiting.

tl;dr: Expecting the fighting game community to make a decision about your non-existing place is unreasonable, and you’re likely to get far less support opening in a suburb than you would in the actual city.

Ninja Edit: Then again, DFW is suburban hell, so a suburb might be your only choice. Just do your research, I guess.

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As far as shooters go, dont get the newest as that will set you back more then what its worth. House of the Dead 3 deluxe, or House of the dead 4 standard cabinet. Time Crisis 4 Standard, or Time Crisis 3 Deluxe. Hell we had house of the dead 2 deluxe and that made damn near 250 a week, and that game can be bought for cheap. Racing Games are iffy, dallas used to have a big initial D scene you can try for version 5 which recently came out then advertise your ass off at gameworks in grapevine.

Youll want to go to the auctions in mesquite if they are still around they are bi-monthly, search the web for super auctions, it might be small now or they stopped doing it, but the few times I went I saw full MvC2 Cabinets, one working go for 200 dollars (the big dynamo cabinets) and one that had issues with game for 120 dollars.

May 23rd is the next auction. As I said it might be small in selection now but def worth the look. http://www.superauctions.com/pages/2009/may23-mesquite-tx.htm

Also, I give you this info as a pre blessing if you beat me to this, I have my own plans of opening an arcade so I wont give out all my secrets haha. They may never happen, but who knows, Ive been working the arcade scene for a long time.

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To say I understand the concept of it so far would be a lie, however I see where you are coming from with this information “not only as an arcade owner” but as a customer once in the past.

I think more or less, this is just for comfort on my behalf and to see if one in the area is deserved.

But thank you for the comment fubar, I needed to know this and appreciate the knowledge you are passing down to us.

And to you GGawaran, thank you for the heads up. I don’t expect you to tell us your secrets, but I do hope is if both our arcades manage to open up we can thrive and co-exist in peace!?

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A game that is good to get also that alot of arcades dont have and never think about getting is Buck Buck Safari. I told funplex to put that game in there and it makes them 2000$ every weekend. they have 3 of those games and just the one in the bowling alley generates that income. The game starts you off at 1.50$ then goes up to 20.00$+ as you play. Remind you funplex does have a bar so that can be part of the reason why they make so much money off this game. Just my 2 cents =/.

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no no, any suggestions are up for grabs. Now i didn’t have that game in mind, but i’ll look into it.

46

have a drummania arcade game and i will personally spend 50 dollars a week on it :pray::pray::pray:

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sorry if this was poorly worded-- i wasn’t implying you should invest in PC gaming. imo, PC gaming doesn’t have much of a following left compared to how it was 5 years ago.

i was implying you should ask PC Cafe owners if they wanted an arcade section maybe. you could save some money by doing this. there is a mutual benefit in terms of getting more customers for both sides too.

it’s a bit of a pipe dream, but it was actually done before with a ddr machine in plano off spring creek. they had consoles set up with about 5 projectors too that you could pay a flat fee to play on for an evening.

the owner of stargate actually ended up doing the console thing for a while and it didn’t pan out well. i’d follow up with him to find out why exactly it didn’t work, or more importantly why he had to do it.

location is very important-- animation town eventually relocated to shotokan anime which might have been more convenient for a few people but hardly attracted any new regulars.

i dont think cyberzone failed. it’s not around anymore, but i think i spent enough money as a consumer there to open my own arcade. sure, they only cared about money, but that’s how business works.

“was”? did arcade UFO close? i’ve never even been there but the fact i hear ‘parking is difficult’ indicates its not going to close soon.

do your homework , go talk to people who own arcades. offer to pay them a small amount of money for their time and input. if nothing else, share your knowledge with us so we can create a real arcade if you’re not willing to.

‘theres nothing to do’ is the same rationale people use for a lot of self destructive behaviors. i guess calling it perfect speaks volumes.

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even though tcc is technically a campus, comparing that to UT is ridiculous.

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lol, I’ll look into it. we have gotten some awkward request so far.

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I agree with having the location near downtown. I don’t know how big of a market Fort Worth presents, but putting it near there alienates a lot of the north Dallas community.

The mocking bird station sounds like a good idea to me. I actually work at a bar there, and all I can say is that the foot traffic that area gets is ridiculous. Combine that with the fact that most people frequenting the area have a ridiculously large amount of disposable income and you might have a winning equation. Most of the young crowd over there are trust fund babies. Whether or not they’ll go to an arcade though is something else.

Also, by no means am I knowledgeable when it comes to opening up arcades. These are just my casual observations.

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nice, what’s in the area of mocking bird station?

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Wow, I leave for a couple hours and everything erupted xD

Thanks for all of the suggestions everyone!

We haven’t looked into any shooters or racing games, but we were looking into some classic games like Pac-Man and Metal Slug.

We are planning on mainly being a fighting game arcade because we don’t believe there’s much market for regular arcade games, since they’re single player games you can just stay at home and play a 360 or PS3.
Like I said though, we do plan on having some games like that for walk-ins or people who aren’t into fighting games.

Last but not least, we’ve been asking around our city and about 9 out of 10 people have said they think it’s a great idea and they would come.
Basically, this isn’t the only place we’ve been asking, we just wanted to know what the SRK community thought of our grand scheme. Especially since we plan on hosting tournaments regularly.

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There’s bars, restaurants, clothing stores, the Angelika independent film theater, and some other things. Really nice area. Don’t know how much rent would be though, probably really expensive.

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agreed, right now this was only to see what people think. obviously we would take the time to go over things, but like I said looking for suggestions.

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Also, a suggestion, when your hiring employees. Try and get as many girls as possible working your arcade.

There’s this lan center in Orlando called, Hard Knocks that is nearly 100% staffed with girls. And that place is pretty damn popular if u get my drift.

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lol, I totally get your drift. And not a bad suggestion if I do say so myself .

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many have tried and failed miserably. it’d have to be a social gathering place, rather than being billed as an “arcade”.

you won’t make enough money with just the arcade mindset…dedicated players are CHEAP and FICKLE.

you guys will go bankrupt soon after.

i’m not joking, btw.

<-- O.G. enough with Tony, Logan, JW, and quite a few others.

PFFT. History has PROVEN that the arcades can’t be supported financially by the “dedicated” fighting game community; the money is mainly coming from casual people.

Fighting games are intimidating, no if’s, and’s, or but’s around it.

Maintaining the machines is also another factor…money, money, money is being used for constant maintenance.

…what Tony said. Too bad not many of us are “BALLA” status. :wink:

Seriously, if you guys want to do it, you guys will have to sell alcohol…that’s where the real money is.

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I’ll give you a quick history lesson about DFW arcades:

Roger Tesheira, aka autobotclown, was the owner of the most player-centric arcade here in Dallas/Fort Worth for quite a number of years.

He constantly moved the venue, due to high leases and moderate returns. He got spurned a couple of times, like when he bought the newest GG at the time, and nobody came to play it…thousands of dollars in investment, and nobody played.

Several games were spurned after a couple of weeks of play, like SvC Chaos and Capcom Fighting Jam…I remember, since I heavily supported these two silly games. :sweat:

He finally called it quits, since the arcade scene just flat out died, and consoles ruled the world…since most of the DFW players are: a) broke b) too cheap to come play or c) BOTH. Most were of the “C” variety.

Disallusioned from the arcade scene, he sold all of his cabs and became a maintenance mechanic for Chuckee Cheez, making MORE money than he ever did. He moved to New Mexico, vowing never to return to Dallas.

He often commented on these facts about how the DFW player base was just plain fickle…very few truly dedicated players like 2D Tony (ddr_gakusei) and Logan (amodf) ever constantly came to his arcade. Lots of the SRK DFW players would come, but only every once in a while, due to the sheer distance needed to make the trek.

I tried for a time to do weekly ranbats, to help his business on Sundays (notoriously slowwwwww). I’d see maybe 10-15 heads consistently, but never enough to make a “huge” impact on business. His Sunday business would be less than Saturday, where the bulk of his profit, would be.

His arcade was often criticized and bitched at by the some of the DFW players (not naming names, guys, since it includes a good chunk of you), but he ran it in the best way that he could. It was definitely a demoralizing business venture for him, to say the least. He lasted longer than most, just due to his survivalist business sense. I’m sure 2D Tony and Logan could give a different spin, since they knew him a bit longer than I did.

How do I know all of this? I’m one of his closest friends. :china:

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I think it’s more due to the fact that DFW SRK players are mostly consisting of broke-ass/cheap-ass niggas who didn’t want to get off their DC’s/PS2’s and play Marvel and 3s in a real social gathering place.

…that’s 50 bux less on your Coronas. :sad:

“Saying” is definitely not the same as actually seeing them “at” your arcade.

Have you ever seen pre-registers for a tournament? Some people, if not many, flake out, unless it’s one of the Majors.

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ok, first of all, there’s an edit button, there’s no need to triple post.

Second, if the players didn’t like his arcade, he was doing something wrong.
We’re not opening an arcade to make money, we’re doing it so we can have a cool place everyone can come hang out and play some games.
There’s a total of three of us opening it, and we plan on having secondary jobs to support ourselves.

I personally believe one of the main factors that will make an arcade a success is how it’s run. I think UFO does it perfectly. All their machines run great and all the people there were just awesome. When I first went there, I had no idea who owned it, it really didn’t matter to me. It was just a cool place, I walked in and all of the machines were filled and everyone was having a good time. It was a really great feeling.
That’s the feeling we want to give to those who live up here.