"It's Just Not Working" - FreePlay Arcade Will Close Its Doors Later This Month

Arcade operators today are just trying to hold on to wholesome social gathering places, many of them. The vintage machines are great, but a basement or garage full of them is just incomplete. There is a social side to it. Too bad it’s a tough business sometimes.

The issue is surely the freeplay business model. City/town centres have seen huge growth in the UK for arcade and game machines - look at The Light and Hollywood Bowl as hugely profitable examples. The demand is there. Money is being made.

The issue is charging ten quid an hour. That's a pricing model that is way too generous and would have been paid in 2005! It's two decades later... you need to charge more.

@nocdaes We have several of these kinds of arcades where I live in Canada. Most charge between $10 and $20 for all you can play, not per hour. If you want to draw in more than hardcore retro people (many of whom know how to use emulators), you have to have a low barrier to entry.

What these places do to make up the difference is selling food and booze. I've talked to a few operators because I briefly toyed with the idea of opening one myself and they said the entry fees only help cover some costs, the food, booze and sometimes, merch is where the actual profit is generated. Much like with movie theatres who make nothing on the tickets, but make profit on the overpriced popcorn and pop.

If you intend to survive on just entry fees and especially if you're charging by the hour (I'm curious how he's enforcing that), you're either probably not going to survive or will have to operate in a very cheap area.

What a shame I'm not near there otherwise I would have loved to go. Bravo for trying...

@nocdaes arcade club is £18 for all day, 12 hours+, if anything £10 an hour is way too expensive

@nocdaes That's a complete and utter joke.

Arcade Club in Bury is easily the single most successful arcade in the UK, and that is £18 in and free games all day. They've been so successful with that pricing model that they have opened another two venues in Leeds and Blackpool.

So yeah, no.

@PXAbstracftion Hollywood Bowl is thriving in the UK. Yes they make money from the bowling, food, drink, party packages but they also all have arcade machines and games. They would not keep opening new locations with arcade machines in them if they weren't profitable in their own right. Every machine has a card reader and they all charge between £1 and £2 per play. Footfall is clearly a big driver, so location is crucial too - but honestly it sounds like this is the wrong business model!

@NoirConceit Its not my pricing?! I'm merely stating facts mate. Hollywood Bowl are literally cleaning up... look for yourself! Brand new locations. Everyone else is literally saying the high street is dead... yet how come these guys are doing so well? Every arcade machine in there is £2 tap your card to play once.

So Bury may be doing well in your eyes, but it sounds to me like they're leaving money on the table. I wonder how well they will be doing when everything needs replacing through wear and tear?

Think about market size. There are thousands more customers that will tap to play one or two games versus the much more niche market of paying £18 to play an entire day. People have jobs, kids, gym memberships... an entire day playing arcades is not a big market!

@nocdaes it's clearly big enough to have 3 venues. Bury regularly sells out on a weekend, you have to book ahead and it's absolutely rammed. I agree some games do get hammered but they are maintained and do get fixed, if folk point out the issues with them.

@pigpennn well it sounds like they found a great location for it there then!

@nocdaes I've literally never heard of Hollywood Bowl before today. Having just looked them up, they look *****, like the ticket arcades which make up the main roads on seaside resorts. The fact is that Arcade Club is very obviously profitable at multiple venues (unlike the place in this article, sadly), so they have no issue, other than the ones you're inventing.

Miss me with the "leaving money on the table" garbage, we see that from the idiots in modern day gaming all the time. If Arcade Club charged per play then they would become unprofitable overnight, as the appeal of the Arcade Club venues is the combination of one-price-on-the-door-free-play, the sheer amount of choice in games available, and with the range of games offered being from brand new stuff to all of the retro classics.

"an entire day playing arcades is not a big market!", said the clown who has never stepped foot inside Arcade Club.

The per-hour pricing model is not the best, it would be better to charge more per entry. Most customers aren't going to spend hours and hours playing arcade games, and would be fine with paying a higher entry fee with better perceived value, even if they wouldn't actually play more than an hour. And besides, is someone actually monitoring how long people play? Are people being kicked out after an hour?

@NoirConceit I'd happily set foot there, it's not far from me actually! Oh wait... they aren't even open today. Or tomorrow... in the school holidays...

Ermm OK?

@nocdaes It was open yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. And also the day before that too. And it will be open again on Thursday.

Weird that.

@NoirConceit well they must be rolling in cash to close two days in the holidays, so you must be right!

He's charging per hour?
That sounds like something that would create a lot more work to monitor. How would you track that?

@nocdaes @NoirConceit Fellas, fellas! Let’s hug it out and call it a day.

Gimme that OutRun 2 cab.

@PXAbstracftion And if you don't want to sell food/booze you need redemption games. Those are what made most of the income when I worked at an arcade.

What a shame. I do question, however, if an out-of the-way industrial estate, in an out-of-the-way place (Portland), in the largely seasonal (and hence sleepy) part of a fairly sleepy county (Dorset) is really the right location for such a venture.

@nocdaes No we definitely don't need inflation more today thank you.

@Martin_H I would hazard a guess that this was the affordable place for the owner to make a go of it if you're not rolling in start-up capital. It's always going to be a balance between footfall in a major town (much higher rent) or a cheap location (hardly any passing footfall).

Ultimately we seem to have a fair few people here (not yourself) bashing the owner who has given it a good go with presumably the minimum risk affordable to him, it's very easy to fling business advice at people when you're not the one taking the risk in the first place.

Most freeplay arcades are "barcades" so the cover is just a cherry on top of beverage and food sales.

Running it as a straight up free play arcade is a bold move. Looks like its not paying off.

Sad to see this, but I can't help but feel that the location is a factor. No one goes to Portland to play video games, its the wrong crowd. Bournemouth and Poole combined is the 9th biggest urban area in the UK and it's just down the road with a higher turnover of tourists. I hope the guy can make some changes to make this work.

@Tasuki people are a lot less sociable even versus just 5 years ago. Covid changed a heck of a lot!

I love that he gave it a go but it's incredibly hard for any arcade to stay open. One of my favorites in Aberdeen (South Dakota not Scotland) shutters for the summer months because they don't have enough people coming in. I can't blame them as the cost of electricity let alone rent would eat you alive. I patronize them every chance I get though as they have a working Baby Pac-Man and that's so rare to see!

I think that the arcade should be secondary. You need another option like a cafe or small taco stand type deal to get regulars to come for lunch or something. I wonder how bowling alleys do it? Do people really have more time for bowling than arcades?

Many problems why it failed:

• All arcade machines are set to freeplay when they should had follow the old model of one coin per play
• Too many old games, these are games that customers could just easily download online to play on MAME. Get some Tekken 8, Street Fighter 6, Super Mario Kart Arcade GP3, etc., to get customers excited.
• No other form of entertainment (crane, pinball, gatcha, poker, wrestling, dancing, singing, pool, etc.) or offerings (pizza, bar, restaurant, barber, etc.) other than playing the arcades.

Arcades like so many great things are a thing of the past. Atleast for the next 10-20ish years, until the internet has finally hit bottom and became nothing more than a ad bloated money sucking vacuum where it cost money for everything and the console games have became so locked down and expensive that players become fed up with the ads, restrictions, and cost that they rediscover these classics and take interest in them again.
Those that have managed to hold on to these working machines in man caves and basements will be sitting on very valuable items and small fortunes as so many of the original arcade games have been destroyed and no longer exist.
Just look at how much a working original Nintendo or atari with working games sells for currently.

People get bored of arcades. Everyone that I've known that collects machines or that builds emulation setups stop playing. It's more about the setup and maintaining a collection than the games themselves. I've got a basement full of modded Arcade1ups that look awesome but collect dust. But what I do play, is a growing collection of pinball. When I go to Past Times arcade, which has 500+ pinball machines and something close to that in arcades, the arcade side is pretty empty. Pinball is where it's at if you want to run an arcade. The retro arcade machines are set dressing to either a really good bar or pinball parlor. Pinball is growing again, and new machines are always coming out. You can only play tmnt so many times.

I feel like the real smoking gun for these is not having Scud Race. Throw an R360 in there too and I'd be there every day!

No the issue isn't the idea the business model, i don't think it's even the pricing. It's not just F2P arcades that don't survive. Great independent restaurants do well for 3 years then they all close up even when they are thriving. Small interesting interesting coffee shops don't survive. Small interesting snack food don't survive. Stationary and arts stores don't survive. In the UK, and this IS A UK problem (EU has far more variety.) the costs between business rates AND RENTS is too high. In the UK it's all about property value, and large portfolios have massively over invested. There is a bubble that noone wants to burst, which means it needs to keep inflating. But offices and high street are just not worth that much. Near me even the busiest medium size minimarket chain closed up because of rents apparently. The quality of life in UK is frankly dismall because of lack of variety. If your not into chain Italian, Nero Coffee, or Greggs, Indian curry your plumb out of luck. You won't find 'artisan' anything. Patisseries, Donuts, Creperies, small Lebanese, real bakeries (greggs doesnt bake sht) hobby/enthusiast shops like Table top gaming shops, comics, arcades, even gaming cafes. Even fish and chips now fails unless it's part of a huge chain selling mushy over frozen fish. Think about it? What is there near you that is 'unusual' or 'niche'? Nothing. I can bet on it. That is only normal in the UK.
These things can't survive if they aren't MASSIVE volume chains with the power to negotiate half decent rents, and they struggle too. There is nothing in the UK. If you go to America it's totally different. Japan totally different. France, italy Greece, totally different. They all have Amazon too. Costs are too high here. There needs to be s commercial property crash, which needs to then stick. There need to be tax adjustments for small businesses, paid for by large businesses. UK basic standard if living in 'variety' is dismal. If you rave about greggs and nandos, shame on you frankly. It's garbage and you don't even know it because that's all there is. You've probably never tasted a real cornish pastie. You like sausage rolls instead because the Cornish pasties you 'can' get are just awful.

Arcade Club is £15 all day and has a much more interesting selection. (At least the one near me). There are none free play Arcade’s in the city centre but I haven’t been interested. (Although they might be better maintained).

@NinChocolate Our entire lives have been squeezed so others can get rich. A cross between Black Mirror, Cyberpunk , and Ready Player One is what awaits us all....

@La5734 My town got a new high street and shopping centre (entirely owned offshore of course). Our only local games shop tried to renew their lease but were actually denied by the landlord.

They don't even want the indies around. All the indies exist around the perimeter in property not owned by the corp. All they want is beige chains. And now they are desperately seeking a buyer.

Just another case of sociopathic, sycophantic parasites that leech communities and pass the blame when their idiotic ideas fail.

I operated a LAN center with various consoles, PC's, and arcades from 2010 to 2022.

We had everything from DDR to pool tables to NES/Dreamcast/Gamecube and PS5, Multiple arcades, extra seating and tables.

The only way I made it profitable was by diversifying revenue streams that were independent of one another. Electronic repairs, private event hosting, weekly all night events every Friday and Saturday, concessions, retro video game sales.

I was on the front page of reddit and imgur several times that alone was worth approximately $10k in sponsorships from brands like Steelseries, BAWLS, Domino's, and others.
I never paid for ads, I rewarded customers for bringing in new people.

We sold high end retro games. It was normal for collectors to spend $3k-$5k in one visit.

My point is small business is hard. It's even harder if you put most of your eggs in one basket. I see the local places open now and they slowly add in services and things to sell to try to stay open. It's hard but that is true of all small businesses. Entertainment venues are not difficult places to operate. If you get your bookings right you are no longer depending on walk in traffic. You offer repair services for the type of equipment you are already responsible for maintaining your own.

There were months were I never opened to the public during peak booking hours on the weekend. Sometimes we didn't have open hours Friday-Sunday.

I am happy to answer any questions in regards to making this model work. How I did it, how I have seen others do it, and how I have seen other fail to. It is not a difficult model and there are plenty of places that do it very well. I saw several come and go in my city while I was in operation.

@Llia

Any small business should try to diversify the goods and services they offer. Especially gamer or entertainment venue related businesses. There are plenty of options and plenty of profitable ways to go about it.

Sigh and here I am about to hit 17 years operating an arcade in a mall in Utah, and it's tough to get 1% of the media attention that this guy who couldn't even make it work after six months has received, all because people pay attention to negative news instead of the good.

It's simple to see why he failed - poor game selection (only 18 games?); nothing else to draw attention like pinball or basketball or food/drink; possibly a poor location; an unwillingness to operate newer content or to change the biz model when it didn't work.