Vertical Reality is the signature attraction of Sega GameWorks, a 80,000-square-foot high-tech playland and industrial nightclub that opens in Seattle on March 15. It’s the first of more than 100 sites that GameWorks hopes to open by 2002–Las Vegas and Los Angeles get sites later this year– each costing about $15 million. That’s a lot of SmartCards, but there’s more than funny money behind GameWorks: Dream-Works, Universal Studios and Japan’s Sega Enterprises are the three partners. “This is going to be spectacular either way, as a success or failure,” says Dan Lavin, a games-industry analyst at Dataquest. GameWorks’s business prospects are by no means golden, the corporate pedigree notwithstanding. No matter how thrilling the rides, no matter how juiced the technology, the arcade business has been in the doldrums for five years. That’s because the $8 billion arcade business has moved to the home and the Mystifying CD-ROM. The same improvements behind arcade games have also amped up personal computers to the point where they’re pretty entertaining. And there’s no waiting in line behind some smartass 12-year-old who knows all the tricks.
Each GameWorks location will have the marquee toys like Vertical Reality, as well as the more standard fast-cars and killing-machine simulators. You’ve never been able to blow holes in bad guys in quite so much detail. And there’s tamer virtual-reality fare that lets you “experience” skiing, with clever video and hydraulic manipulation. But the Seattle site, a few blocks from the Pike Place Market, is as much attitude as hardware. Noise and light, rock videos and DJs, exposed ductwork and wiring-this warehouse chic is supposed to make the place hip. For a place of the future, it has an eerie “1984” feel to it. There seem to be more video cameras around than at a Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy sighting.
GameWorks aims to be more than a mega-wired amusement center. Seattle’s has a microbrewery, pizzeria, Starbucks and Internet lounge. Guests will be able to browse the Web (sorry, all sex sites are frowned upon) or browse the room (sending e-mail to that hunk in the corner). Sort of the ideal date for the Gen-X propeller head. Michael Montgomery, president of GameWorks, likes to call the arcades “gathering places.” For whom, though? The games industry has never figured out how to attract many women. Will they want to hang out with the guys at GameWorks? Says one Seattle attendant: “It has to be a very special date: somebody very young.”
The Spielberg name gives GameWorks cachet. And the Seattle opening week will be a bona fide celebrity event, telecast live on MTV and attended by the likes of David Geffen and Spielberg himself. But the new company has competition. In New York Skyline Entertainment this month is opening XS in Times Square, a combination of virtual-reality games, simulators and cybercafe. It is Manhattan’s first futuristic arcade, thoughtfully located across the street from the Disney Store and the world’s highest-grossing Gap. The XS slogan; WHERE TOO MUCH IS NOT ENOUGH, which probably refers as much to the profit margins as the entertainment ethos. Skyline plans to open XS outlets in Chicago and Sydney later this year. In Chicago and other cities, the well-established “Dave & Busters” has successfully catered to adults for 15 years: no one under 21 is allowed in without a grown-up. In San Diego the paramilitary-style Virtual World, part of a national chain, indulges naval specialists who apparently don’t get enough at work zapping villains; BattleTech, a combat game that lets you control a 30-foot robotic tank, is a big hit. Take that, Emperor Zorg! Virtual World has 20 locations worldwide. GameWorks’s biggest competition may eventually come from Disney, Sony and Viacom, which are planning various high-tech interactive ventures.
GameWorks hopes each customer will fork over $20 a visit; XS is banking on double that. Even in a great nation where a night at the movies or ballpark now costs double-digits, that’s a lot of times playing CyberRaptor (a convenient tie-in to Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” franchise) or Catch & Release (yes, virtual fishing). The Arcadians are betting these new toys will lure anybody out of the house. After all, even Bill Gates is coming to the big party in Seattle next week. It’s a good bet that even his new cyberpalace won’t have Vertical Reality in the basement. Maybe Bill will like it so much he’ll become a regular at GameWorks. Or just buy it.
Simulators, sensory games, virtual reality-but one thing is constant: don’t go on a full stomach.
Vertical Reality Up, down, up, down, up, dowwwwn! Kill GameWorks the cyborg, drop 25 feet. And if you lose… Flight Simulator Strap yourself in the capsule, aim, fire. XS, New York One thing: this baby turns upside down. BattleTech Ready for combat? Get in your tank and Virtual World destroy the enemy. Wholesome fun. Night Raptor Navigate in darkness, using only sound. GameWorks Avoid dinosaurs. Is that… Laura Dern? Virtual Pac Man Like the arcade game, but you roam the Dave & Busters maze “virtually” in your visor. Weird.
