Space Invaders returning to arcades..

From: O. Sharp <ohh_at_drizzle.com>
Date: Sat Dec 6 19:18:46 2003

I actually did some coin-op design and hardware consultation in my
youth, as an independent contractor, and the economics there have some
different aspects from your so-called "normal" computing world. :)

Even in the "boom" of video arcade games, around 1981-1984 or so, a
production run of a mere 10,000 machines was considered a noteworthy
success story. Most machines were lucky to see a sales mark of around
2,000 units. With that in mind, the manufacturers had to price their
units in such a way that they could recoup the costs of design, artwork,
retooling, marketing and overhead with a relatively small number of
sales.

There was also a "novelty factor" - when a new game was released, even
if it caught on and was successful and popular, the manufacturers still
had a window of only about six months (at longest) when the game would
still be popular enough to sell in great numbers. This meant that the
number of units a maufacturer could crank out in a short period of time
was an important factor in their odds of success or failure - even if
you had a wildly popular game, if you could only manufacture ten per week
you'd never be able to recoup your investment before the sales window
closed and some _other_ game became the hot new trend. :) So
manufacturers, in order to survive, not only had to have facilities
for building a game, they had to have enough facilities to build a
_lot_ of units of the game in a short time. The overhead of keeping a
large manufacturing capacity meant, yes, you had to charge more per
unit to keep your business viable.

There were some constraints on manufacturing as well which bear
consideration. It's been noted that you'd be likely (in fact, you'd be
_certain_) to have some irate gorilla pounding the hell out of the
machine at some point, so joysticks, controls, and so forth had to be
built _extremely_ heavy-duty. (To the poster who suggested using cheap
joysticks and simply replacing them, the problems that would develop
from that would be A) that you'd have to make those repairs all the
time; B) that the machine, when broken, generates no income but does
take up valuable space while you're waiting for the repair guy to come
by on his next trip; C) those repairmen charge a lot, too, and you'd be
sitting there with your machines generating no income to pay them; and
D) you don't sell a lot of machines when they have a reputation for
being broken a significant portion of the time.) But other manufacturing
constraints were noteworthy as well. For example, the systems had to be
accessible for easy repairs while _at the same time_ they had to be
completely inaccessible to hackers (yes, coin-op hackers do exist) and
also thieves who want the machine's earnings (and, yes, I've examined
machines which have been broken into for the loot). It's also worth
noting the liability issues [1] for big heavy machines put out in public
for children to play with and climb on and yank by the joysticks and...

Well, you get the idea. :)

So $3,000 for a coin-op "Space Invaders", even without some of the
marketing costraints above, doesn't surprise me all that much.
Hell, adjusting for inflation from the time of its original
manufacture, it's actually not a bad price. :)

   [1] - And it seems to me that we Amurrkins, at least, have actually
   become _more_ litigation-driven than we were in the '80s. I'm
   wondering if a "Space-Invaders-wrist" class-action suit will be
   inevitably coming along about a year from now. :/ [2]

   [2] - Which begs the question: do you think the new "Space Invaders"
   cabinets will be festooned with warning labels? "CAUTION: May cause
   epilepsy. People with susceptibility to carpal-tunnel syndrome should
   avoid playing this game. Product may lead to addiction. Manufacturer
   is not responsible for player's loss of income. Behavior of alien
   beings in this game is not intended to stereotype, represent or
   disparage actual alien entities. No alien life-forms were harmed in
   the manufacture of this product..."

                   -O.-
Received on Sat Dec 06 2003 - 19:18:46 GMT