(Photo credit: James Glover II, Ventura County Star)
For those who say that arcades have died off because they can’t match competing online with people you don’t see or have never met, I don’t think they have participated in a big 
arcade competition before. Granted it helps if an arcade tries competitions (and I think that arcades have suffered for not doing competitions) but for those that do and for those people who participate in these battles, it’s obvious that competing live is far better than online and what better way to do this than with arcade titles made just for competing.
A big arcade competition has taken place at the Dejin Arcade in the Simi Valley in California, the first California Regionals Arcade Fighting Game Tournament or we’ll call it the CRAFGT for now. The event featured several fan favorites, from Super Street Fighter II Turbo (the original and the new HD version), Street Fighter 3, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, Capcom Vs SNK 2, and even BlazBlue and Street FIghter IV. At the even they held the “Battle For California”, a competition between NoCal and SoCal players competed for the “bragging rights of California”. That was a great idea and this all brought out the players, not just from all over California but from other states as well, with one player coming from as far as NY to compete.
For more info check out the article below
[Gamers fill Simi arcade to do battle – Ventura County Star] [Discuss on the Forum]
Of course competition attract people. We organized racing games competitions in a funfair arcade offering prizes like DVD players, T-shirts, entertainment shops coupons, … It attracted enough competitors to fulfil the prizes value and accompanying girlfriends spent money playing pushers and cranes bringing more income than on a normal day. We wanted to do that in a traditional arcade but we couldn’t because the law required a maximum prize value of around 7 €!!! The location owner didn’t want to risk an inspection. This later place closed down some months later because of lack of attendance despite having the latest titles.
Fighting games have many followers but many of the die-hard are already members of small clubs organizing tourneys on the console versions and never visit arcades. What’s needed is a centralized system which manage local, national and then worldwide class arcade competitions. Local and national compos being organized through local associations or operators. Result being gathered on one central internet website.
We have to look at this far from just say “oh they are just die-hard [hard core] fans”!
We have seen that the consoles are finding it difficult to gather ‘communities’ to their network. They can get groups and either disprite player groups, but they find mirroring a 100+ event on their sites as impossible (and in some cases illegal [see State law on competition over phone lines].
I am very interesting in the number of successful amusement tournaments that have taken place – much off of the back of imported SFIV machines… you know those machines that no US players wanted!
I imported head to head SFIV machines for our arcade in California. The total cost to us was just about 22,000. It arrived on November 7th, to date it has earned a total of 12,500. We try to host monthly tourneys for all of our fighting games and SFIV has definitely brought more competitors to our other games. Capcom really dropped the ball by not bringing this game over. My only hope is that an update is released to the arcades when the consoles version is released.
Nice dantron, those earnings are really good for the short time you’ve had those and I hope that they are able to pay themselves off for you soon. You are quite correct on Capcom dropping the ball on this one. I have heard several rumors that the arcade version will get an update to eventually include all of the characters that the console version will see but time will only tell there.