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operating a amusement game parlor.


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I do often wonder , how would an amusement parlor full of dedicated cabs and pinball's do in this day and age ?

 

A financial suicide mission ?

 

or perhaps a bar or cafe with ten dedicated and ten pinballs would do well ?

 

or maybe you will be taking people down memory lane ?

 

the teenagers of today most likely have never been in a traditional pinball parlor... forget today's timezone stores with most of it being redemption games.. that does not count.

 

just maybe in ten years from now ?

 

but then again , in ten years from now most of whats left would be museum items....

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Forget traditional arcades as we remember them. They just don't work these days.

 

Barcades seem to be rising in popularity BUT (the successful ones) basically give the games away and make money on the grog and meals.

 

"2 free tokens with each beer" kind of deal.

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yeah by itself doesnt add up now.

 

say 60k for rent and outgoings. 90k for 2 staff ..

150k to break even ..165k with gst.

50 weeks a year, 40 hours a week ..

 

you would have to be taking 82 credits an hour for $1 games to keep the door open and make wages.

 

good luck with that. at $5 credits you might have a chance but it doesnt add up to a valid business unless you absolutely nail the location and double dip with a cafe etc

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Even the ones on Russell st in the city closed down and they had a constant stream of players all day every day

 

A pure arcade would be very hard to do nowadays as others have said

 

Its a nice romantic idea though,a retro arcade all decked out in old gear but not realistic

 

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Team it up with Lazer Tag and you will smash it. There is one local and it is packed every weekend and holiday.

 

My kids have been having birthday parties there for a number of years now.

 

They have about 10 pinballs, 10 dedicated shooters, air hockey, 6 dedicated drivers and a couple of skill testers.

 

I think Lazer Tag for the smaller kids and Paintball for the parents would be the best of both worlds.

 

The problem is though, a lot of you guys are like the kids we bring up.

 

Why am I going to put $10 through these machines when I can play at home on my own for free.

 

This is exactly the mentality that killed the video industry when every player had a console at home.

 

The potential revival for the pinball industry was the fact it "was' rare for people to own there own machines at home but you guys killed that I think.

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It would be like any business, more would fail than would Succeed, but its always Possible with the right person who knows what they are doing, and has the right ideas, experience, the right location and finances.

 

 

say 60k for rent and outgoings. 90k for 2 staff ..

150k to break even ..165k with gst.

 

thats a cheap business with only those costs.

 

Usually, its Rent, wage, payroll tax, super, Work cover, Gst, business tax, Council rates, Electricity, Water, waste water, Body corporate fees, Phone line rental, ISP fee's, Phone bills, Bank service fees, Eftpost fee's, bank transaction fees, book keeper accounting costs, Shop maintenance, Machine maintenance, shop equipment maintenance, Website fees, advertisement fees, Stock and so many other costs it becomes crazy.

 

 

 

Business is hard and has allot of costs that people dont even think about, but always doable, but the right person needs to run it and would be the same with arcades.

 

PS, to the OP, I had a single Pinball in my burger shop set @ $1 it would make average $150 a week. I always wanted more but I didnt have the room, I always considered buying the shop next door, knocking down the wall and expanding into a bigger shop and becoming a barcade. Me and my missus by that time had owned the place for 4 years and The work load was crazy, it was 60+ hours a week work for us, the place was a good earner but left us no time to do anything other than business so we sold it.

Food industry is extra extra hard. Every now and again I get a stupid idea of buying back my old business and going full blown barcade with liqueur License but then I remember the hours and kick that out of my mind really fast lol. I know in my case it would have been a success because I knew my business, the arcade machines would have been more of a draw card than a main part of income, because the main Business would have been food.

 

barcade Would be a safer bet, but allot of work as food is involved, but the food side is what you can always fall back on when retro gaming goes out of fashion

Edited by jason1
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Why am I going to put $10 through these machines when I can play at home on my own for free.

 

This is exactly the mentality that killed the video industry when every player had a console at home.

 

 

+ this

 

also i reckon its the game logic as well. A vendored game has a business logic driving it to turn over plays with around, what, 2 minutes a session for the noob. thats not much of an incentive to learn the game and get good, especially when every try costs money that adds up. thats like a tax on practice.

 

I would like to see a game ruleset for a pukka pinball (not the virtual lcd screen monstrosities) that took into account current computing capabilities and allow for the sorts of tricks that console/pc games use such as graded difficulties, AI timeouts, range finding fudges, elastic areas of effect etc. that could allow a new player to be handheld a bit while the seasoned pro can get suitably punished :)

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also i reckon its the game logic as well. A vendored game has a business logic driving it to turn over plays with around, what, 2 minutes a session for the noob. thats not much of an incentive to learn the game and get good, especially when every try costs money that adds up. thats like a tax on practice.

 

yer I guess thats why redemption machines are so popular, because they have the incentive because all the player is thinking of is the tickets

 

I guess with barcades Booze is the other incentive lol

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yer I guess thats why redemption machines are so popular, because they have the incentive because all the player is thinking of is the tickets

 

I'm thinking a pinball redemption where all that is required is for the player to hit the ball with the flippers to the top of the playfield and into scoring holes or other features that take the ball.

 

One flip per ball with the balls being fed directly onto one of the flippers at a time.

 

Unlimited balls, the game is time based.

 

While this would seem rather lame to the seasoned pinball player, this would be a way to get all the young to appreciate the lure of pinball, that being the flipper and how to aim with a flipper.

 

The reward is tickets for set scores.

 

I have looked at many different redemption machines trying to understand what the lure actually is.

 

The idea of most games is usually based on one goal, certainly never multiple objectives but always the attraction is the tickets.

 

I believe the trick is to combine the simplicity and ticket rewards of the redemption machine with the flipper and have faith the flipper will take that player onto the conventional pinball over time.

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I played a game of AC/DC at the Dreamworld arcade a while back. The game desperately needed a clean and had a killer lean to the left, but the most interesting thing was that it had a ticket dispenser attached to it. As I played the game, it spat out tickets based on me doing things. I hit a specific target and some tickets would spit out. When I got multiball I got a pretty big line of tickets. I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

 

Managed to snag enough tickets to get some crappy piece of plastic for my toddler. So he was pleased.

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You would have to factor in all of the repairs/breakdowns on the various machines. You need good security as you get the odd idiot that likes to leave their ID tag carved into the head box, then there's the tire kickers that work on defaulting the games as if they were set on free play, after all the stress of the operating hours you`d be lucky to still have a partner and a business by the end.

Having said that the flip side is depending on the area and demands it may do well, they do get popular especially on term breaks and school holidays.

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The Timezone in Surfers Paradise does pretty well as a "dedicated arcade" but it's also absolutely enormous and has games, pinballs, redemption games, laser tag, dodgem cars and it's in an area that is ridiculously well serviced for anything else you might want. They also get new games that people want, they recently got 2 Walking Dead machines and their current pinball lineup (at least the last time I was there) had a Batman '66, Ghostbusters, America's Most Haunted, KISS, Walking Dead and a few others.

 

Not too many places these days can afford to own much less maintain an 8 player Daytona Deluxe, 4 player Virtua Racer Deluxe, Outrun 2 Deluxe, Initial D, Cruzin Blast along with 100s of other games as well as having the facilities to keep people entertained with anything else they might want to do which keeps them there for an extended period.

 

 

....in saying that, it's nice to be reasonably close to it ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...
games as a drawcard for food and drink .. exactly.

 

if it was just games and a coke machine would you go back so quick?

 

Definitely! I don't really drink, and I didn't care for their food much :D

 

They have a fantastic line up of machines. Check out their high score table, there are a few names from here. I say they seem to have found a balance because if you just want old school arcade machines (not necessarily vintage, just not redemption) and pinball, you need to combine it with food etc nowadays. You can't just be a games nerd. From what I can tell, there are two or three guys in partnership. One is indeed a games nerd (or pinball at least) and one is a chef or summink. One of them is a member here so he may share his thoughts in this thread if he spots it (",)

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but there is something that should be worth mentioning...many of the classics and various games yes they may all be emulated on mame , but sometimes its just not the same , i will use space invaders as an example.. the mirror / monitor effect , the white ball stick , the nice deep thumping sound...there is a magic when you are playing the real thing on an arcade that no computer can ever truly emulate.

missile command is another , and disc of tron....

 

you know , it would be extremely difficult to comprehend the world today if mame never existed.

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Lot of big arcades in Japan but traditional cabs tend to be tucked away somewhere on top of multiple floors of crane games, pseudo gambling, sticker photo booths, music simulation games, games that interface with trading cards and various other levels of the inexplicable madness that make the country so fun. Never seen a normal pinball game in an arcade there, which is kind of weird since pachinko, which is pinball-ish, is one of the most popular national pastimes.

I did hear about a dedicated pinball parlour in Osaka I'm going to check out next month, can't see it making much money so I need to get there before it disappears.

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Brisbane is spolied for arcade choices these days. We already have Netherworld as well as a couple of small/medium sized pinball places. There is also 1up if you want a massive selection of 90s arcade tittes.

 

Now I hear that there is a new place opening up at Woolloongabba called Pincadia. It's another barcade and the pin lineup from their Facebook looks pretty bloody good.

 

https://www.facebook.com/pincadia/

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