Two months ago the most contact I’d had with the gaming industry was dropping 2p coins into coin pushers at seaside arcades. The arcade was merely a refuge from the rain, the British summer weather once again interrupting a day at the beach.
In May though, I was plunged into the world of coin-op, online and casino gaming when I started working as an intern in the editorial department at InterGame. You may have noticed my name cropping up on articles on the website or I may have been at the other end of the emails demanding high-resolution pictures of your product. I’ve been brought face to face with an industry I had barely noticed before, only to find there’s a lot more to it than just being a distraction on a rainy day.
Not that we don’t need rainy-day distractions in the UK, and I’ve got nothing but fond memories of sitting in Postman Pat-themed kiddie rides, but my work on InterGame has shown how popular arcades are internationally, even where the weather is more favourable. I first arrived in the offices with the InterGame Middle East Special hot off the press, and discovered the size and popularity of FECs abroad. Far from the UK’s negative reputation of arcades, fit only for tired and run down seaside resorts, the Middle East offers brighter lights, clearer sounds and newer themes, which sees them thriving in the modern world.
I suppose it shouldn’t really be a shock that games have changed so much over the years, once you understand how far the market reaches internationally; a varied audience demands varied products after all. Yet for someone who finds the thrill of the coin teetering on the edge of the coin pusher more than compelling enough to have me dropping 2p after 2p into the slot, some of the products I’ve written about seem bizarrely complicated. In a world where nearly every household has its own personal games console, it can only be good business sense that games that require you leave the home need extra levels of allure.
So while I’ll always have my memories of rainy seaside arcades, my head is now full of notions of the 21st century gaming business. David Snook blogged recently about his mourning for the arcades of the 1970s and agree, it’s different, even since the 1990s. I’m going to take the young-and-fresh stance however, to counter David’s self-proclaimed “wrinkly” opinion. It has changed but it’s just as well it has, or there wouldn’t be much of an industry for this magazine to write about, and I wouldn’t have been able to get such a useful internship!
