Kyle Orland’s Workblog

The comic book and videogame industries are pretty similar. Both rely on niche support from big-spending, highly dedicated fans. Both are slowly expanding in the mainstream market. Both have been revolutionized by the internet and are struggling to find a business model that includes digital downloads.

Yet while independently owned specialty shops dominate the brick-and-mortar comic book business, the videogame retail space has increasingly become synonymous with one name: GameStop. The slow conglomeration of mini-chains like Babbage’s, Software Etc. and FuncoLand came to its monolithic conclusion in 2005 when GameStop’s merger with EBGames gave them a full 25 percent of the videogame market (a share that’s surely increased with the chain’s nonstop expansion in the years since). The remainder is almost entirely taken up by big box retailers that sell videogames alongside unrelated products like electronics and home supplies. For most consumers, the small, mom-and-pop game shop is a thing of the past, if it was ever a thing at all.

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"Haha, I have more friends than you."

The schoolyard taunt in my instant messenger box was pretty easy to dismiss. For one, it was coming from my 12-year-old cousin, who is always trying to find some petty way to get under my skin. For another, the taunt was based not on a deep, insightful discussion of our social lives, but from a quick perusal of our competing MySpace pages.

I was a latecomer to the MySpace craze, signing up primarily to view the profiles of a few close friends and family members. My cousin, on the other hand, had quickly made MySpace the center of her middle school social life. A quick conversation confirmed that her impressive-sounding list of 180-plus friends was comprised mostly of classmates she barely knew, random strangers that spammed her with friend requests and a few "friends" that were actually her friends in real life.

But all these mitigating factors didn’t really help me shake the annoying feeling I got when comparing her massive friend count to the paltry dozen or so friends on my list. It was an unmistakable feeling at the pit of my stomach that would be familiar to any gamer with even a hint of ego - a feeling that combines the shame of failure and the shame of caring so much about something so trivial.
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I felt like I was losing. At MySpace, of all things.

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The American arcade industry is dying.

Sure, there are still some signs of life in the huge, multifaceted family entertainment centers like Dave & Busters, and your local mini-golf course or bowling alley might have a few antiquated games, but the conventional wisdom today maintains that the real action in American gaming can be found inside the home.

But what if I told you there was an arcade revolution going on right under your nose? What if I told you manufacturers were putting out svelte, flatscreen machines with dozens of games, flashing LED exteriors and 3-D graphics? What if I told you the top manufacturer of these machines currently has 250,000 units on the market, rivaling the imprint of mega-selling classics like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong in their heyday, and brings in over a billion dollars a year?

What if I told you there was probably one in your neighborhood?

The arcade isn’t dying. You just have to change your idea of what an arcade is.

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When was the last time you were really distraught about seeing a game over screen?

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And so it goes every few years with console videogames. It’s not enough to buy a system and enjoy the games available; we want the system we buy to win. More than that, we want our chosen system to dominate the market, utterly and completely, like the Atari 2600 and NES did way back when.

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Which is why it’s surprising to see T-shirt clad 20-somethings rubbing elbows with polo-shirt wearing grandparents in a 5,000-person strong National Symphony audience at the Vienna, Va. Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. They’re here to see Play: A Video Game Symphony, a concert that eschews the common symphonic fare of Bach, Mahler and Strauss for pieces by the likes Square’s Uematsu, Nintendo’s Kondo and Konami’s Gregson-Williams. While parts of the audience have never played a game and other parts have never heard a live symphony, they’ve all gathered together to experience another world without fully leaving the comfort of the one they know.

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I’ve always been intrigued by games of chance, but I was never under any illusions about winning money in a casino. With the probability skewed so heavily toward the house, I knew I was essentially paying for the privilege to play games of chance.

But WorldWinner.com would have you believe it’s different. Unlike casino games, where you have to be lucky to win (for the most part), WorldWinner stresses that "the outcome of each competition is determined by the player’s skill." I don’t have the chops to make a six-figure salary at a poker table, but after years of the other form of gaming, I was sure I could beat just about anyone in the right game.

Everyone is the world’s foremost expert on something. This one fact is the cornerstone of much of the internet. How else do you explain elaborate web pages devoted to everything from shoelace tying to Slurpees? If you’re reading this, though, chances are your expertise falls in the realm of some sort of obscure videogame that only earns you derision when you bring it up in polite company. Not to worry; the internet is there to indulge your obsession and let you actively share it with the world.

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Every gamer is a serious gamer and every game is a serious game.

That’s the impression that the developers, publishers, middleware coders and various other interested parties seemed to be conveying at the two-day Serious Games Summit in Arlington, VA. The message seemed to be that serious games (which generally have a larger educational or social goal) and entertainment games (which generally have the goal of selling as many copies as possible) often share the same underlying principles, and the cross-pollination between the two spheres is improving them both.

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But what about the kind of knowledge that transcends the tactical - the kind of knowledge that lets you truly understand your enemy’s motivations and background, his hopes and fears? As far as most games are concerned, such knowledge is unimportant. The enemy exists only as a part of the environment - a set of pre-programmed rules to be figured out and bested. It’s enough to know that Piston Honda wants to send you a "TKO from Tokyo" or that Cats thinks you have "no chance to survive make your time." We want to know the enemy, just not, y’know, personally.

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