Whom do Arcade bars actually serve?
Arcade bars offer a gallery of vintage arcade game cabinets to play alongside eclectic craft beer selections. These bars tap into the nostalgia of demographics who grew up with these cabinets as their first experience with video games and want that experience alongside a discerning drink selection.
The first bars to start the trend were Ground Kontrol in Portland, OR and Barcade in Brooklyn.Since these flagship bars’ founding in 2003 and 2005, arcade bars now appear in flyover cities such as Dayton, Minneapolis and Kansas City. A few chains have appeared, such as Barcadia, with three locations in New Orleans and Texas, and Kung Fu Saloon in Austin and Dallas.
Compared to major entertainment chains like Dave & Buster’s. These bars offer a selection of craft beer with the vintage cachet of older coin-operated video cabinets such as Donkey Kong, Street Fighter, Space Invaders, and Konami’s The Simpsons beat-em-up arcade game. In April, Bloomberg had profiled the arcade bar scene and highlighted the economic bubble around vintage arcade cabinets.
This economic trend not without its silver linings. Visiting a few bars in flyover country, I noticed a few were located in more affluent neighborhoods, with valet parking and surrounding traffic consisting of sporty speeders and mobile fortress Toyota FJ Cruisers and Mercedes Benz G-Wagons. Music included newish indie pop tracks from Florence and The Machine and Santigold (Oddly enough, not the track Video Games by Lana del Ray). The bar food is a pricey afterthought, par for course with bar food elsewhere. Service was as delayed and unresponsive as the controls on some unmaintained cabinets. You may get free drink when the bartender disappears without taking cash for your $5 drink special. When you try to do the right thing and pay for your drink, another bartender in the counter says “It’s too early for you, friendo” and brushes you off.
The bill you saved goes to the change machine, some quarters of which are lost to delayed inputs, stuck pinballs, and rigid feedback. This casino-like arrangement felt as much by design as by neglect and chance.
Some spaces simply can’t accommodate more than two or three machines. Bars in a narrow row space don’t accommodate the mix of game cabinets and people so well.
Many latecomers to this decade-long barcade economy want to stick square pegs in round holes. Many arcade bars across the country seem to want to cash in on the nostalgia factor to the exclusion of service and dedication to its theme.
Exclusion appears in more sinister ways, too. In February, the city of Dallas fined its Kung Fu Saloon for denying an African-American patron entry into the Dallas location on inconsistent, and likely discriminatory, dress code grounds. In January, a bouncer at the Austin location was charged with aggravated assault against a patron in November. In August, Black Lives Matter protesters accused an arcade bar owner in Tacoma, Washington of yelling racial slurs while attempting to disrupt their protest with a megaphone. The owner defends himself by saying and that he was just redirecting traffic around the protest. He answers that he said the n-word as a question in response to someone using it against him. Nonetheless, these cases attract suspicion that arcade bars in commercial districts are gatekeeping unwanted demographics in favor of white upper-class patrons. The location of these bars in affluent, gentrified neighborhoods also adds to the suspicion that these bars serve an exclusive demographic.
The service and game experience among the late adopters feels like an afterthought. trying to cash in on the generational interest in vintage arcade games and craft beer. Most video game bars seem to want to rest on their laurels and make their money before the trend outstays its welcome.
There is hope, though. the Chicago arcade bar scene is keen on spurring innovation and growth by hosting indie game jams and tournaments for homebrewed games with the 80s and 90s retro aesthetic. Logan Arcade host the arcade-like team strategy game Killer Queen. Emporium Arcade Bar hosts the Six Pack indie game jam, an event where participants create a game on a limited time frame, a hackathon for games. The originals arcade bars Ground Kontrol and Barcade also host gaming events.
The same avant-garde cachet that indie gaming has also offers ample marketing opportunities towards the more affluent and discerning craft-beer and old school games clientele.
By fostering an indie scene, these arcade bars have the potential to gather new audiences and appeal to the hip indie cachet of craft beer and vintage arcade cabinets. Over the past decade, demographics in gaming have diverged widely from the “gamer” stereotype. Gaming is no longer the domain of suburban males ages 18–30.
When looking for a quality arcade bar to spend your bills and quarters, look for the ones that host game-related events and don’t exclude the curious. They’re the ones most likely to care about the future of gaming.
