Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 61 posts

Re: Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

#41

Post by damon_c »

joezydeco wrote: post #25
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #14

I thought emulation would bring back the arcade, but that failed to catch on. A dying arcade I visited several years ago had a simple cabinet and a marquee that said something to the effect of "500 Games in One!" After trying it, it was pretty clear that it was running some kind of legal version of MAME. I wouldn't be surprised if the innards themselves were just a PC tower with a MAME-GUI loaded onto it. The point b…

But a) 80% of those 500 games are garbage and b) even the 20% that are enjoyable and/or "classic" are dated. You can grab the older retro-loving crowd for a little while, you won't grab the kids at all. If you were 12 which would you prefer to play for more than 10 minutes? Mario Bros (Arcade, 1983) or New Super Mario Bros (WiiU, 2012)?

Mario Bros (Arcade, 1983) had concurrent multiplayer and was more like today's Super Smash Bros. So maybe if I had two people...

Re: Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

#42

Post by twiceaday »

bobajeff wrote: post #39
twiceaday wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the problem is games today aren't designed to be played in short bursts. Phone games? > Casino's are still going strong so there is still a audience for these kinds of distractions. That's a stretch.

Phone games are hardly big budget attractions.

Why is that important and how does that relate to VR?

Re: Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

#43

Post by ObviousScience »

kistaro wrote: post #29
TrevorJ wrote: post #18

The problem is capital investment. A VR arcade will be cutting edge for what, 18 months at the most ? After that the hardware is no longer better than what you can achieve at a consumer level. That's not very long to make back your investment. I do think there is a place for a third party business when it comes to VR though in the realm of 'guided' RPG's and narratives. Imagine paying 25 bucks for you and your friend…

There's one thing a VR arcade can have that very few consumers can have, in areas where VRcades might be likely to thrive: physical space. Immersive VR requires at least some space to move around in, or set up a big omnidirectional treadmill in. As the human population grows but Earth stays the same size, personal living quarters will always be at a premium, the rent will always be too damn high, and space to set up…

Just one minor quibble: the reason we have density issues in cities is not that Earth doesn't have enough space for humans to spread out -- even if we only count the nice parts.

No, the answer is that we actually seem to enjoy living in really dense clusters and spend a premium on trying to pile more and more people in to the mess. (Well, there's some argument that wealthy people have had an undue influence on the societal process of urbanization, but that's digressing.)

Other than that, I actually think that arcades are posed to make a comeback, precisely because of the issue you highlight: the only way to have enough open space in a building (in a major city) to really walk around in requires splitting the rent or being really wealthy.

Re: Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

#44

Post by yellowapple »

twiceaday wrote: post #35
bobajeff wrote: post #34

Part of the problem is games today aren't designed to be played in short bursts. Casino's are still going strong so there is still a audience for these kinds of distractions. I think another problem could be that not very many games are geared toward sharing you experience with others. So the experience is the same whether your home or at a arcade because your secluded from everyone either way even if it's multiplaye…

> Part of the problem is games today aren't designed to be played in short bursts. Phone games? > Casino's are still going strong so there is still a audience for these kinds of distractions. That's a stretch.

I agree with you on phone games, but disagree on casinos. I happen to live near Reno, where slot machines are like arcade games in other places; you'll often find them in mundane places like grocery stores and restaurants. Nowadays, thanks to the Internet, these can interconnect, meaning that a slot machine in your neighborhood grocer will be connected to every other one in a given area, pooling their money and coordinating their payouts.

It should also be no surprise that most casinos around here have rather extensive arcades for kids to distract themselves with while their parents go waste their money on slots and poker. The article seems to leave that out (perhaps because casinos aren't commonplace throughout all of North America), which was rather striking to me, seeing as casinos are the most common places to find actually-popular arcades nowadays around these parts.

Re: Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

#46

Post by TulliusCicero »

damon_c wrote: post #41
joezydeco wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a) 80% of those 500 games are garbage and b) even the 20% that are enjoyable and/or "classic" are dated. You can grab the older retro-loving crowd for a little while, you won't grab the kids at all. If you were 12 which would you prefer to play for more than 10 minutes? Mario Bros (Arcade, 1983) or New Super Mario Bros (WiiU, 2012)?

Mario Bros (Arcade, 1983) had concurrent multiplayer and was more like today's Super Smash Bros. So maybe if I had two people...

Mario Bros really isn't that great of a game.

Re: Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

#47

Post by TulliusCicero »

voyou wrote: post #11

It would be interesting to see a comparison of today's possibilities for VR in arcades, with the VR arcade machines of the early 90s [1]. VR didn't save arcades then; are there differences in today's VR games (or in today's home computing market) that make VR arcades a better bet now? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(gaming)

Took a while for cell phone to take off too. They didn't start getting real mainstream penetration until the late 90s. Sometimes the technology just has to mature enough.

Re: Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

#48

Post by jimmaswell »

bobajeff wrote: post #39
twiceaday wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the problem is games today aren't designed to be played in short bursts. Phone games? > Casino's are still going strong so there is still a audience for these kinds of distractions. That's a stretch.

Phone games are hardly big budget attractions.

I went to a real arcade recently. There was a large Doodle Jump machine.

Re: Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

#49

Post by gertef »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #14

I thought emulation would bring back the arcade, but that failed to catch on. A dying arcade I visited several years ago had a simple cabinet and a marquee that said something to the effect of "500 Games in One!" After trying it, it was pretty clear that it was running some kind of legal version of MAME. I wouldn't be surprised if the innards themselves were just a PC tower with a MAME-GUI loaded onto it. The point b…

> some kind of legal version of MAME

> I came back six months later and it had been replaced

are you sure it was legal? Seems unlikely.

Re: Virtual Reality Will Bring Back the Arcade

#50

Post by mng2 »

rezistik wrote: post #7

I've been talking about this with my friends. I think VR creates a really cool opportunity for interactive events. My favorite two examples to think of are Star Wars dogfights and fantasy exploration. I like to think about climbing into a scale TIE Fighter or X-Wing and pulling down the helmet and bam dog fighting. Or walking into a room that includes some jungle-y/forest-y smells and humidity with the helmet. Being…

Your comment dredged up old memories about this flight sim pod place. My friend (well, his dad) took us there a few times for his birthday. It amounted to ten minutes or less inside the pod, with primitive graphics and kind of twitchy controls, but it was pretty cool as a kid. Looking back, it's probably the kind of activity you'd book for a teambuilding exercise; it likely cost big bucks.

This would've been mid to late 90s, somewhere in the Bay Area. I did a cursory google but didn't come up with anything.

Post reply on HN