With Sega’s new Daytona Championship USA on the market and available to play in arcades this Summer, there is a good chance that you have come across a unit or two. Sega has been giving their flagship arcade IP plenty of attention, even launching a “Daytona Championship USA – Where To Race” location finder album on Facebook.
Right as I logged in to Youtube this morning, Sega had just barely uploaded a new effort that is targetted towards operators of Daytona Championship USA machines. The voice over in the video states that it is a part of the “Daytona How-To series” while the title is the Operator Settings Tutorial. This is not something that the player is going to be able to access but I know that plenty of gamers have been curious as to how locations would set the game up. I also have heard reports that the game is a little challenging to setup when it comes to the network link (not entirely sure why that is), which is why some players might have come across a pair of units that are not connected.
Anyways, here’s the video – if you are an operator with the game, it should be of interest. I’ve never seen a company produce a video tutorial quite like this, showing the base options, options for kids to locations that focus on gamers. If you are just a fan, then this does give you a chance to see how extensive the options are in the game and know what to look for; once Sega posts the next video of the Tournament Mode setup, I’ll add it to this post; would also be nice for them to do this for players to teach things like drifting…
provider: youtube
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TuFBgl7ZXU&t=0s
src: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/6TuFBgl7ZXU?feature=oembed
src mod: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/6TuFBgl7ZXU
src gen: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/6TuFBgl7ZXU?start=0
Comments? Since I worked as a professional tech support trainer (taught people how to fix computers) and I’ve been a salesperson for arcade equipment distributors, I really can appreciate what this is doing. One major complaint I have against modern manufacturers is that they do little to train their distributors on product features(rare exceptions include the Big Buck HD sales manual which was 55 pages long; that was great). Most of the time, they make nearly worthless flyers that provide an incomplete picture of all game features, expect you to get all answers at a trade show and just leave it at that. Any questions you had to try and get a hold of someone on the phone but that is not exactly optimal, especially when a product is complicated (the hours I spent trying to learn about vending machines when they wanted to explain everything over the phone instead of sending details in writing…what a nightmare). It’s not terribly helpful in selling product or making sure that it is optimally configured once the game arrives since not all locations are the same. Support like this is needed from all game creators. I have thought about doing videos like these with the games that I have but it is certainly nice to see a manufacturer take steps to show things like this off.
I like that this tutorial exists for operators, but I wish there was some way for developers to separate advertising to operators and advertising to players a little better. It’s sort of like how Raw Thrills’ Facebook page will have posts like “Look at these massive earnings!” but also have stuff that emphasizes the gameplay for player-centric marketing.
The only way to do that really is to advertise through distributors but manufacturers in general do a piss poor job at providing distributors resources to do such a thing (such as product training and flyers – flyers are quickly becoming extinct but for a long time they’ve been worthless, only showing a picture of the game and zero to little info about the product itself). That or distributors themselves are too lazy or don’t want to spend the marketing budget needed to reach out to ops about such things.
Yeah, the only reason I bring it up is because I think it could cause confusion for players. As a player myself, it’s kinda like, “Whoa, look at all these ways my total game time could be shortened.” Personally, I don’t have a problem with it, but I think it could an issue for some players who don’t follow this kind of stuff. I’m sure it’s difficult for developers to strike a balance, because operators ARE their customers first and foremost, but then there’s always the fact that players need to know the game exists. And you’re definitely right about the flyers thing. I ordered some flyers from Raw Thrills for the fun of it, and they’re not quite the same as the flyers I have for games from the 90’s. (Raw Thrills doesn’t even keep print flyers in stock. I got them from Betson Midwest.)