Why arcades really died in the West (and why it's your fault) [Arcade Culture]
The official explanation for why arcades are dead in the West is that the consoles killed them. This is what most people will tell you.
But if this is the only reason, then why are arcades in Japan still alive, and in certain genres (fighting, shooting, rhythm) even thriving and leading the way? Consoles mauled arcades in Japan too, but they didn't quite manage to kill them dead. Why is that?
Some of the more knowledgeable people will have an answer to this. Arcades are still alive in Japan, they will say, because of the way cities are laid out, with game centers to be found in every sizeable neighborhood, next to coin laundries, subway stations, etc. Students and salarymen have developed a habit of going to the arcades before and after school or work, and during breaks, and they are the ones who sustain them. In the US, in contrast, arcades are usually in malls in the middle of nowhere, forcing people to go out of their way to reach them.
Now this explanation certainly accounts for the larger part of the US, but it doesn't account for European cities, which have more in common with the tight layout of Japanese cities than with the downtown/suburbia model of many American ones.
So let me provide the last piece to this puzzle.
Arcades survived in Japan because far more players there came to understand the essence of arcade gaming, while realizing that those newfangled full-motion-video wankfests that started appearing during the 32-bit era could never provide them with the rush that only an unforgiving arcade game can. So even though many were seduced by the cheaper, easier, better-looking console games, many others were not, and they are the ones we have to thank for the survival of the arcade form.
In the West, however, the one-credit rule never really took hold, and as a result the vast majority of players never managed to get good at anything -- many of them in fact being so ignorant as to regard 1CCing as impossible. Going back to my childhood, I remember that in the arcades I frequented there were always a couple of guys who were said to have 1CCed this or that game, but I rarely ever saw such a feat in person, and pretty much everyone around credit-fed games when they could afford to.
Credit-feeding was never looked down upon in the West, and therefore the vast majority of players never got a chance to become skilled in any particular genre. So when the consoles overtook the arcades in the technical specs, and when, for the first time, home games started looking better than arcade ones, the masses became seduced by the high resolutions and pretty colors and CG cutscenes, and there was nothing that they missed from the arcade days -- indeed, they were happy to be finally rid of all those "shallow quarter-munchers". They never knew the buzz one gets from ruthless high-level competition (as in all kinds of versus games), or from that of high-level performance requiring intense concentration (as in shooters, side-scrollers, puzzle games, beat 'em ups, etc.), and so they never missed it.
Why did this ethic take such a strong hold in Japan, to the point where credit-feeding is now considered unthinkable, and not in the West, where credit-feeding is considered normal and everyone who objects is labeled elitist?
Doubtless the answer has something to do with cultural differences, and doubtless part of it is that the Japanese have produced 99% of arcade games worth mentioning, so I guess it's only natural that they understand these games better than we do.
neets.net
