[HN Gopher] Chuck E. Cheese's animatronics band bows out
___________________________________________________________________
Chuck E. Cheese's animatronics band bows out
Author : pseudolus
Score : 199 points
Date : 2024-12-03 11:18 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Anybody vaguely interested in this story would probably enjoy
| this documentary about the the direct ancestor of this band.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTmhS6hcY-A
| sitkack wrote:
| Let this be a warning in what your children get exposed to,
| they could be making a documentary in their 30s or 40s. /s
|
| These kids had an existential experience triggered by
| animatronic band. It was sweet to see how honest they were.
| Triphibian wrote:
| I hope I live to see an earnestly made Skibidi Toilet
| documentary.
| uncertainrhymes wrote:
| Also worth listening to this excellent podcast about the two
| competing pizza-animatronic chains. The history is bizarre --
| they were meant to make an 'arcade' feel less like a place for
| delinquents, and give the parents a chance to drink and watch
| the 'show'.
|
| https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2019/06/decoder-ring...
| prettyStandard wrote:
| I'm getting some real country bear jamboree vibes from that bear.
| Jgrubb wrote:
| ...which, my wife tells me, has also seen an overhaul lately.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Yeah, the updated version is basically a jukebox of modern
| pop and Disney songs with some light 'country' gilding. But,
| they did do a substantial refurb and upgrade of the
| animatronics themselves, which are working better than they
| have in a long time.
| Isamu wrote:
| Easily the worst pizza I've ever eaten anywhere, the poorest
| quality control ever. But the kids had fun.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Not sure why there would be any surprise. They aren't in the
| pizza business. They are in the waste children's time business.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Nate Bargatze has a pretty good bit on Chuck E Cheese:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHrcGFKgWGY
| seism wrote:
| As did John Oliver
| https://youtu.be/3v6y2pY1pZ0?si=0SBXDOD025rM55dB
| latentsea wrote:
| Oh boy he did not disappoint!
| dannyphantom wrote:
| I was probably around ~5(ish) years old when I went to Chuck E.
| Cheese for a birthday party; distinctly remember disliking the
| pizza (and cheese, by extension) so much that I thought I
| *hated* pizza altogether until I was ~16(ish) and started
| working at a local pizza place in town called Valeos where we'd
| get a free 16in to take home after every shift. I still use
| their sauce recipe to this day it's literally so good!
|
| At the time, I think a friends mom [jokingly] said the pizza
| was 'cardboard' and I began crying as I genuinely believed it
| was actual cardboard
| irrational wrote:
| Are you able or willing to share the sauce recipe?
| dannyphantom wrote:
| absolutely :)
|
| [we were a thin-crust only type of place; we also used a
| little handful of cornmeal as it was placed in the brick
| oven to prevent the crust from sticking - it adds a little
| extra flavor and texture to the pizza :)]
|
| In a pot, placed on medium-heat on the stove top, add:
|
| - 2tbsp EVOO
|
| - two twigs of fresh oregano, crushed or finely chopped (to
| express the oils in the plant)
|
| - 1/4 white onion, minced very finely
|
| - 1/4 yellow onion, minced very finely
|
| - 2-3 squished cloves of roasted garlic (cut the top part
| from a bulb of garlic, add some EVOO and bake @ 400 for
| ~30(ish) minutes; be sure to do it in foil or the ceramic
| baking dishes for roasting garlic!)
|
| - 1tbsp of salt mixed with black pepper and crushed red
| pepper flakes
|
| Until onions are translucent and aromatic
|
| Then add:
|
| - 1 large can of Cento-brand peeled San Marzano tomatoes
|
| Stir intermittently until sauce develops a deep red color
| and you can use it right away or keep it in the fridge!
|
| - As it cools, add in a handful (1/4 cup) of freshly
| crumbled Parmesan cheese (you could see the cheese chunks
| as we applied the sauce to the dough so they weren't large
| pieces but little(ish) crumbles)
|
| Hope you enjoy it!! :)
| ericd wrote:
| Ha awesome, stashing this for the next time I make dough.
| Already have stacks of Cento SMs, since they sell them at
| Costco and they work well with Marcella Hazan's pasta
| sauce. Thanks for typing all that out!
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I was going to guess it wasn't that good until I saw "San
| Marzano" tomatoes. In my opinion that's the single best
| decision you can make for pizza sauce. No other tomato
| comes close.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this recipe!
| shrubble wrote:
| I have saved that recipe!
|
| The Cento brand and the Nina brand (at least the ones I
| have) which are often sold at Costco are the ones to get.
|
| Note: you MUST avoid any tomatoes that are packed with
| calcium chloride, as it greatly increases the time for
| the tomatoes to fall apart and make good sauce.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| For a classic Napolitano sauce, open a 28 oz. can of your
| favorite crushed tomatoes and then mix in 2T extra virgin
| olive oil, 2 cloves garlic (minced), 1.5t kosher salt.
| That's it, you're done.
| parpfish wrote:
| i used to think that the cardboard circle underneath a frozen
| pizza turned into the crust when you cooked it.
| hinkley wrote:
| I was so excited to be invited to my first party there. The
| pizza was a huge letdown, and Pizza Hut was the best thing I
| experienced for many, many years, followed by Godfather's.
| Chuck E. Cheese wasn't even on the list. But I sure had fun on
| the video games and ski ball.
| Fwirt wrote:
| Oddly enough, Chuck E Cheese has been trying to "rebrand"
| itself since COVID. During the pandemic they actually operated
| as a shadow kitchen pizza chain and possibly as a result, the
| quality of their pizza (at least at our local restaurant) has
| substantially improved, to the point that I would rank it above
| a couple other nationwide chains. The atmosphere is very
| different from the dark, grody, funky 1980s rat pizza
| restaurant, and is now a loud party atmosphere with TV screens
| constantly blasting kiddie music videos. They've shifted their
| age demographic from "family" to "kids", and their locations
| have become much cleaner.
| Dwedit wrote:
| The name of the shadow kitchen is "Pasqually's Pizza &
| Wings". If you read the "Our Story" page on their website, it
| says that they "leverage the operational infrastructure of
| Chuck E. Cheese kitchens across the country".
|
| Pasqually is one of the animatronic characters, he is a chef.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| As a nerd of a kid who enjoyed "Lore", it amused me when
| people complaining about Pasqually's Pizza at the time,
| because I immediately recognized it as the name of the
| Pizza restaurant inside Chuck E. Cheese, that's what it was
| always called.
|
| Pasqually is not just the chef (and the drummer), he's the
| owner of the restaurant in the show. It was always his
| restaurant, Chuck is just the front man of the band.
| sylens wrote:
| Yeah I went to one last year for a friend's kid's birthday -
| the giant playground maze and ball pit is gone, the
| animatronic stage is gone, it's a big dance floor and more
| arcade games and even a tiny carousel for toddlers
| resource_waste wrote:
| Same story.
|
| I enjoyed their multi-flavored pop thing as an adult. I got
| Caffeine free + some flavored cola thing. I know many
| places have it, but it was nice.
|
| Pizza was good/fine.
|
| The unlimited gaming thing was nice too.
|
| 15 years ago I'd be like: Gross Chuck-e-cheese.
|
| Today Id be like: Eh... its fine... maybe I'll meet some
| parent there.
| px43 wrote:
| I went again recently (less than a year ago) for the first
| time since the 90s and the animatronics stage was still
| fully functional. Apparently very few locations are left
| with working stages, and I was impressed that my local
| stage had continued operating. They also serve alcohol now
| or something.
|
| It felt a bit more open, one giant room, but I might just
| be remembering more walls because I'm taller now than I was
| when I was 10. Definitely no ball pit though.
| jedberg wrote:
| Have you been in the last few years? We thought the same, but
| they've gotten a lot better since COVID. Still overpriced, but
| at least edible (at least if you get the stuffed crust).
| jandrese wrote:
| The funny thing is I remember the pizza being pretty lousy when
| I was a kid, but when one of my kids had a friend's birthday
| party there I tried a slice and it was surprisingly decent. The
| crust was done right, and while the toppings were probably
| cheap they did at least add some Italian seasoning to it to
| punch it up.
|
| It was better than a couple of the local pizza chains that have
| catered some of the other birthday parties we have attended.
| nvahalik wrote:
| TIL that Nolan Bushnell, of Atari, started Chuck E. Cheese!
| shagie wrote:
| Chuck E. Cheese's, Silicon Valley Startup (2013) 122 points by
| duck on Jan 22, 2017 - 14 comments
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453427
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/chuck...
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20170125082102/https://www.theatl...
|
| There's a lot of neat stuff back in
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Chuck+E
| lordfrito wrote:
| It might have been Nolan's idea, but the first Chuck E. Cheese
| was actually created, operated, and owned by Atari. Nolan
| wanted Atari to have a place to operate and profit from the
| arcade machines they built. But the engineering work, marketing
| etc. was all done by Atari employees.
|
| When Warner Communications bought Atari from Nolan, they really
| didn't want the restaurant. So Nolan bought it from them, took
| it private, and expanded it.
| otterley wrote:
| And creator of the Pet Rock!
| pjot wrote:
| For weeks after my grandmother brought me to a Chuck E. Cheese
| for the first (only) time, I had recurring nightmares fueled by
| this band.
| 9x39 wrote:
| No kidding. I peeked behind a literal curtain to see the 'band'
| cold, dead, and in various states of disrepair on a dark stage
| at a Chuck E Cheese when I was maybe 8 y/o. I still remember
| being horrified by the mechanical eyes of a particular
| animatron without any of the 'fur' on the face.
|
| Never wanted to go back for my birthday, let's say.
| bisby wrote:
| https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/local/2024/05/28/illinois-ch...
|
| Apparently 5 stores nationwide are being allowed to keep the
| animatronics.
| cgriswald wrote:
| For the curious, they are: Los Angeles, CA; Nanuet, NY;
| Springfield, IL; Pineville, NC; and Hicksville, NY.
| debugnik wrote:
| I would have expected animatronics to become more popular after
| Five Nights at Freddy's, not less. But I've never seen a store
| with animatronics in my country, so I don't really know how kids
| feel about them.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Idk, parents took kids to Chuck E. Cheese for the (at the time
| seemingly) wholesome appeal. Having an extremely popular and
| visible IP point out how creepy animatronic animals are is not
| gonna make parents want to take their kids to Chuck E. Cheese
| more. Nobody wants to take their kids to an "edgy food and
| entertainment place", that's not a thing. I think this is a
| great textbook example of "There is such a thing as bad
| publicity."
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Dave and Buster's is an edgy arcade+alcohol place that plenty
| of people brings kids to. I took some friends who were 19 and
| 20 and we were turned away at the door.
| parpfish wrote:
| now's their chance to make dave and buster animatronics.
| i'm thinking they could be a statler/waldorff style
| hecklers making fun of the patrons.
| mrsilencedogood wrote:
| "Nobody wants to take their kids to an "edgy food and
| entertainment place","
|
| This is 100% wrong though, my 5 year old is in kindergarten
| and they LOVED FNAF. Like, seriously a lot.
|
| I've done my fair share of Chuck E Cheese birthday parties -
| the place near me already doesn't have animatronics etc and
| is virtually unrecognizable by people who knew it in the 90s.
| It's literally just a single big room with 5 very long tables
| to host 3-5 birthday parties concurrently, taking up about
| 40% of the space. Then there's a smallish trampoline area
| (which requires paying an additional $10 or $15 or somesuch
| amount) comprising 10% or so, then the other 50% is just
| arcade machines laid out in a grid that take a card scan
| instead of coins, and pay out non-tangible credits instead of
| physical tickets.
|
| So I assume that's the future here - take a low-rent semi-
| large space off a side-street of a main road, fill it with
| low-operating-cost stuff, and let it collect revenue. Pretty
| sensible business, and also utterly soulless and has
| absolutely no cultural or sticking power.
|
| I really cannot believe FNAF hasn't done some kind of play
| here - you could absolutely charge 2-4x the price of Chuck E
| Cheese's parties for a FNAF-themed "what-a-6-year-old-calls-
| scary" birthday party / event space and no kid would ever go
| to Chuck E Cheese ever again.
|
| I'm guessing it's because Chuck E Cheese is busy being
| mediocre and barely existing, and why do physical stuff when
| you can make millions off selling plushies and funkos.
|
| So I really think this is just a case of capitalism being too
| lazy and profit-motivated to bother with providing something
| people - kids - would definitely want.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I was a showbiz kid (same thing but different 'band').
|
| For me I really didnt care much one way or the other about the
| animatronics. You would snarf down your pizza watch the dumb
| show and go back to the game room. Now some of my friends were
| smitten by the things. They wanted front row and would try to
| get the merch.
|
| They were mildly interesting and gave the place a uniqueness
| over the dozens of other places with video games and pizza.
| More importantly your parents would be in on it and would take
| you out to a 'safe' arcade.
|
| When the places where all over the place. It was a tiered
| system. The showbiz/chuckie places were for kids under 12.
| Usually much cleaner and less of the older kids bullying the
| younger ones off the machines. The arcades were for the over 10
| group and were much less supervised. The people running them
| would actively discourage older kids from coming in by
| themselves in groups of 4 or more. If you went in and dropped a
| couple of quarters and kept to yourself they would ignore you.
|
| I was invited back years later to a CC with a family. The pizza
| was utter rubish, SB had better pizza. Many of the games were
| outdated or broken. The place felt worn out and tired and very
| focused on the ball pit (which any free playground can provide
| a similar experiance). Not pleasant at all for anyone involved.
| Pretty sure the animatronics was broken then too.
|
| The five nights thing would be more for the 12+ crowd. CC is
| squarely aimed at lower aged kids and parents who want 'a
| break'. They might know about it and have played the game but
| it would not factor much on if they want to go.
| fullshark wrote:
| I think they are expensive to build, maintain, and ultimately
| kids are dazzled by video screens now. The economics just
| aren't there.
| fullshark wrote:
| I'll take this opportunity to plug the YouTube videos of
| animatronics super fan Jenny Nicholson. Her videos on the Star
| Wars hotel: https://youtu.be/T0CpOYZZZW4?si=8bzPpb_9kPaTsTto and
| the theme park Evermore:
| https://youtu.be/L9OhTB5eBqQ?si=utwaOeBFRpOQMStx are peak YouTube
| content.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Jenny Nicholson is one of the best YouTubers, incredibly
| thorough research, and one of the funniest people on the
| platform. I just wish she posted more.
| simonw wrote:
| Her Star Wars hotel video was effectively just her talking to
| a camera for four hours (2 hours at 2x speed), occasionally
| sharing a photo or clip, and somehow it was genuinely
| compelling viewing. Really impressive.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > (2 hours at 2x speed)
|
| This is such a strange note. It's far too obvious to be
| meant as a genuine hint, but a snide remark would not fit
| your otherwise positive comment.
|
| Genuine question, why did you put this in?
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Maybe he just included it because that's how fast he
| watched it? Doesn't have to have a purpose beyond
| informational.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| She does talk a bit slower than average, but I tend to
| YouTube at 1.5-1.75x, so 2x wasn't much more.
| aoanevdus wrote:
| Some people watch/listen to everything in sped up mode.
| It may not be intended as a slight against the content.
| simonw wrote:
| Because it's important context. I didn't spend to give
| the incorrect impression that I found the content so
| compelling that I spent 4 hours watching it when I
| actually watched it for 2 hours.
|
| I also like to remind people that you don't have to spend
| 4 hours of your time to watch a 4 hour video.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| I enjoyed her Star Wars hotel review enough that I watched a
| ton of her other videos. The thing that bugged me about her
| channel, and the reason I unsubscribed, is because I couldn't
| see any evidence that she ever really liked anything. She
| never had a positive review of a thing. Every video was
| taking something apart and criticizing it. I think her take
| down of the SW hotel was probably just, but it's exhausting
| hearing from someone who only finds flaws in things.
| moron4hire wrote:
| This is an issue I noticed about her, too. It's an
| archetype of person I've noticed in others, especially back
| in the small town I grew up in: they get enjoyment out of
| _not enjoying_ things.
|
| For the uninitiated, that sounds like a paradox. But
| really, it's a need to be able to complain about something.
| The more the person has to complain about, the better.
| Something that was actually good would not allow the
| opportunity for them to provide their (superior) input on
| how it was done wrong.
|
| The key give away is the fact that she keeps going back to
| Disney. If I had experienced half of the slights and snafus
| she claims [1] to have experienced, I'd never go back to
| the place.
|
| At the end of the day, I figured I had much better things
| to do with my time than watch someone complain about theme
| parks, even assuming the complaints were realistic. I like
| taking my kids to theme parks on occasion, but I have no
| desire to become so frequent of a customer that I ever need
| some kind of "inside scoop".
|
| [1] eeeeh, I don't necessarily disbelieve her. A lot of
| what she says rings true for my own opinion of Disney. But
| at the same time, her attitude is nearly identical to that
| of folks I grew up with, speech patterns that I've come to
| recognize as over aggrandized consumerist "suffering." It
| feels like she's leaving a whole lot of context out,
| context that might reveal the her trials and tribulations
| were of her own making.
| bowsamic wrote:
| The Star Wars video was a bit strange to me. On one hand,
| it did absolutely suck, but there also were many times in
| the video where she obviously specifically chose
| expectations on purpose knowing that the park would not
| live up to them, and then acted like she was just totally
| surprised that it happened. I found it even more
| egregious for her Evermore park video, where she seemed
| genuinely shocked to not have an absolutely perfect
| roleplaying experience there.
|
| It's all a bit strange because all of her unrealistic
| expectations are perfectly woven into the realistic ones
| in a way that makes it very difficult to distinguish what
| is reasonable about her expectations. Somehow she manages
| to make it so that something that will genuinely suck for
| everyone, like standing in line for hours or her app
| being totally broken, gets mixed up with much more
| obviously subjective things like the actors not really
| matching her energy.
| yifanl wrote:
| I don't recall anywhere in her video where she didn't
| bring up expectations without also bringing up an example
| of when the Disney company had already implemented the
| idea.
| bowsamic wrote:
| That doesn't really relate to what I say. Just because a
| company did something once before or even promised
| something doesn't make it realistic to expect it
| jorams wrote:
| It's been a few months since I saw the video, but from
| what I remember all of her expectations should have been
| realistic when taking into account the price of the
| experience. This was an _extremely_ expensive experience,
| and she was comparing it to things done way better at way
| lower price points.
| bowsamic wrote:
| It's not realistic to expect the experience to be that
| good even if the price is insane, though, because it was
| obvious Disney wouldn't be able to deliver on that
| krisoft wrote:
| > because it was obvious Disney wouldn't be able to
| deliver on that
|
| Then they should not claim it in their marketing
| materials that they will deliver it. What happened with
| the good old "underpromise and over deliver"? Besides she
| is not demanding her money back. She is making a review
| where she is informing the public that an experience did
| not live up to the marketing of it and is not worth the
| price.
|
| In fact i believe that is the unstated conclusion of her
| video. Disney should have crunched the numbers and should
| have realised that the experience they are advertising
| cannot be delivered.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Chronic complainers get validation from expressing
| negativity because it garners more attention.
| rafabulsing wrote:
| This video (which might be my favourite from her) on a
| particular church annual theater productions is positive.
| Still poking fun at it and taking it apart, as she's wont
| to do. But I do believe she genuinely enjoys how kish and
| over the top it is.
|
| https://youtu.be/ZK4gM7RC1M0?si=Je-NhLKBATelhcYq
| halostatue wrote:
| I think you meant `kitsch` (it's a hard word to spell,
| and I misspelled it once while posting this).
| mnky9800n wrote:
| i find that in videos of her being critical of something
| she describes something she likes and then explains why she
| likes it and then describes why the thing she is
| criticizing isnt that.
| actuallyalys wrote:
| She also does mention things she did like about the thing
| she's criticizing. For example, she liked the themed food
| at the Star Wars hotel, as I recall.
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| I've subscribed to her channel for a long time, and my
| impression has been that she loves these kinds of things
| (otherwise why keep exploring the space?), but she finds it
| interesting and potentially productive to talk about the
| flaws, as a way to strive for better. It's like she's
| acting as an editor to an author--sure, editors are
| technically criticizing, but they do so intending to
| improve the original.
| burningChrome wrote:
| I had the same reaction. I got hooked on Bright Sun FIlms
| and several of their other channels like Bright Sun Travels
| which do similar reviews, but always seem to give positive
| and negative feedback and are honest about resorts being a
| good deal or not. The majority of Bright Sun Films cover
| abandoned places which go into great detail about a
| resort's history and why a resort or property failed and
| what led to its downfall.
|
| All of their stuff is incredibly well researched and have
| always seemed to me to be pretty objective; which is why I
| have avoided Nicholson's reviews - you already know its not
| going to be very objective.
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| Today you learned his name is "Charles Entertainment Cheese."
| bozhark wrote:
| "Sharl" needs to focus on his driving
| technothrasher wrote:
| If you're talking about Sharl l'eclair, he drove just fine
| yesterday.
| Uehreka wrote:
| I'd heard this fact before, it was honestly kind of obnoxious
| how the writer kept wanting to remind us how much they also
| know this fact.
| rglover wrote:
| "My government name is Charles Entertainment Cheese, but people
| on the street call me Chuck E. Cheese."
| reginald78 wrote:
| Wild me I just realized I have always been reading the name as
| Chunk E. Cheese.
| astura wrote:
| No I didn't, it's already a widely known fact and it was even
| mentioned on Jeopardy! A week or two ago.
|
| Edit: here's the Jeopardy! clip, everyone got the question
| right: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IJ6Ra54q3wA
| knowsuchagency wrote:
| They're now working on Optimus
| api wrote:
| The unfortunately defunct podcast The Nonsense Bazaar has a
| hilarious and wonderful episode on the Chuck E Cheese saga:
|
| https://thenonsensebazaar.com/listen/131-chuck-e-cheese/
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Surprised that no one mentioned that Chucky E Cheese also ran
| from floppy disks.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/01/chuck...
| xrd wrote:
| I went with my kids to a Chuck E Cheese party a few years back.
|
| It was the perfect encapsulation of modern American capitalism.
|
| As my kids milled about, suddenly the employees started chanting
| "Chuck E! Chuck E!" And, encouraging the kids to pump their arms
| in the air.
|
| My kids did this as I stood there and the horror crept over me.
|
| Then, Chuck E came out. My kids were putty in his hands at that
| point. He could have said "Now, turn to your dad and murder him.
| Don't think, just do it." And, they would have done that.
|
| Then, they ate extraordinarily crappy pizza. I did too. It was a
| coping mechanism for me, I'm not sure why my kids ate it.
|
| After that, they went into the arcade and were encouraged to
| "earn" tickets. Those tickets could be converted into cheap
| plastic toys that cost $0.10 to make in China. Earning 100
| tickets would cost several dollars on a debit card. And, the
| conversion rate was 10000 tickets for that cheap plastic shit. It
| wasn't a good exchange rate. But, man, my kids were sucked in.
|
| It was a gorgeous example of American capitalism. I have to tip
| my hat to Chuck E. He's a maestro.
| echelon wrote:
| It's fun. They sell fun, and kids aren't going to view this
| though a philosophically deconstructive lens.
|
| Memories like these will last kids their lifetime. I certainly
| remember going when I was their age.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Lighten up dude, sheesh.
| drivers99 wrote:
| One could say the same back. It's just Gen X dark humor,
| being sarcastic about whatever is popular. (I'm Gen X too
| btw.)
| bombcar wrote:
| Imagine buying the per play games and not just getting the
| minutes.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I feel like they can easily make the stuff you get from these
| things at least marginally worth it and still make a ton of
| money. It'd at least make the adults feel a bit better, but
| somehow it always seems to be the first thing they try to save
| on.
|
| Then again, I find that I'm often the only one that has issues
| exchanging $20 for fifteen minutes of fun and a $0.1 toy.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| You can never make enough money. Most local governments don't
| care that kiddy games are unregulated and you have no shot at
| winning the grand prize. Hence, "It was the perfect
| encapsulation of modern American capitalism."
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Were you standoffish and angry enough that you managed to
| prevent the kids from having a fun party? It sounds like good
| harmless fun- dancing, games, pizza, and toys/prizes. The only
| negative to me is that the loudness and dancing can be
| overwhelming for some kids.
| bbarnett wrote:
| A call out to Bruce the Moose.
| neom wrote:
| Bankrupt - Chuck E Cheese's is a great 30ish min doc I highly
| recommend, actually everything put out Bright Sun youtube is
| super good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbI3zOm2BkE
| analog31 wrote:
| I wonder how many punk bands will bid on the robots.
| wpietri wrote:
| You might appreciate this repurposing of some Chuck E Cheese
| robots: https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/how-logan-arcade-got-
| its-mis...
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Good riddance. I was always so creeped out by the band as a kid.
| Just hustle it up so I can get back to Skee-Ball and Smokin'
| Token, sheesh!
| staplung wrote:
| Following Dolli Dimples nightmare decent into booze and drugs and
| Jasper T. Jowls repeated arrests for excessive drooling, the
| wheels really came off. Pasqually ended up in an psych ward after
| an acute psychotic break, Crusty the Cat contracted rabies under
| mysterious circumstances, and Chuck himself has never been seen
| after his crypto pump and dump scheme.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Call Peter Jackson! "Meet the Feebles" needs a sequel.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Next up on VH1, 'Munch's Make Believe Band: Where Are They
| Now?'
| rectang wrote:
| From a 1977 video embedded in the article:
|
| > _Dolli Dimples, the singing hippopotamus, is powered by a
| computer system capable of handling 450 instructions per second._
| enos_feedler wrote:
| "At the time, Atari was selling its arcade games for US $1,500 to
| $2,000 each, but the real money was in the $50,000 in coins that
| a game would take in over its lifetime"
|
| Has business changed since then? Surely Nvidia isn't selling GPUs
| with such a low fixed up front price only for the hyperscalers to
| turn around and rent them out for all the profits. Am i missing
| something?
| dgfitz wrote:
| Selling shovels?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| If you mean the arcade business, absolutely, operators have
| gone through several boom and bust cycles and the business is
| basically unrecognizable from what it was in the 80s and 90s.
| To bring this back to your analogy, imagine if Nvidia decided
| they were going to charge a $10/hr license fee on the driver
| software for datacenter-licensed GPUs. This business model is
| called revenue share licensing[0] and all the Japanese rhythm
| and fighting games (i.e. the ones that are _actually games_ )
| moved to revshare over the last decade and change.
|
| Naturally, American operators[1] hate this, both because it
| makes the network a single point of failure and because they
| can't hold onto old versions of games during lean times. When
| DDR came back to US arcades, Dave & Busters (back when Round1
| was a lot smaller than it is today) specifically demanded a
| perpetually licensed version of the game, which made upgrade
| kits a pain in the ass. A lot of Japanese arcade games don't
| actually get official US releases because of this, or they're
| just Round1 exclusives[2], despite the fact that there's a
| fairly big and dedicated American player base for rhythm
| games[3].
|
| The irony is, revshare licensing would fix one of the _other_
| biggest fears American operators have about running rhythm
| games: ASCAP. When Guitar Hero got an arcade port, the
| collection societies started going after arcade operators that
| had bought the machines. I suppose the entire perpetual
| licensing business model that arcade machines used to use is
| not actually legally coherent[4], at least for games with
| licensed music in them. But having actual per-credit licensing
| attached to the machines would be an easy way to tell
| collection societies to fuck off, because they already got paid
| when you paid your revshare to the arcade manufacturer, and
| they can 't sue you if you paid for your license.
|
| There's two other big metas in American arcades:
|
| - Redemption arcades, or the "child-friendly casino". Chuck E.
| Cheese was a pioneer in this particular kind of arcade brain
| rot and most American operators just run these kinds of games
| exclusively. Actually, Japan does this way worse than America
| does; pretty much every arcade in Japan will have an insanely
| large section of crane games, gamble-able horse racing
| simulators, or _literal slot machines_. It 's just that Japan
| also isn't horribly underserved like the US market is.
|
| - Retro arcades, which run older perpetually licensed games,
| typically on a "pay for entry" basis. Problem is keeping all
| these old games in order; they don't make new parts for old
| games. You basically have to be an electronics restoration
| expert to run a retro arcade well; I suppose this is why 8-Bit
| Guy got into the business with Time Rift Arcade.
|
| [0] The arcade cabs are always-online; they will fail to start
| if they cannot connect to their central server. Alongside
| buying the cab, you also have to buy a VPN box for the
| manufacturer's online service and pay a monthly fee, per cab,
| for access to that service. The online service then tracks each
| credit played on the machine and charges you some fraction of a
| dollar per credit.
|
| [1] There's two exceptions: Hawaiian arcade operators (which
| have a steady stream of Japanese tourists) and Round1 (which is
| a Japanese arcade chain with US operations)
|
| [2] Round1 has an exclusive rhythm game called Music Diver
| which they operate in both their US and Japanese locations. In
| the US, Music Diver's right up front and gets a lot of casuals
| playing. In Japan, it's hidden in the back and there's no one
| playing.
|
| [3] EU/UK is somehow even worse, even though they have the
| urban infrastructure for arcades and we _don 't_. Best they
| have is DDR A20 PLUS with eAmuse stripped out - reheated
| leftovers from the Dave & Busters / Round1 deal that fell
| through two years ago.
|
| [4] It's one thing for ActiVision to license a bunch of rock
| music and stick it in an arcade machine, but buying the cab
| doesn't exactly give you a license to publicly perform the game
| and the music attached to it. Sort of like how game streaming
| is technically illegal, even though everyone does it, and the
| game industry wants you to do it.
| Shank wrote:
| > But having actual per-credit licensing attached to the
| machines would be an easy way to tell collection societies to
| fuck off, because they already got paid when you paid your
| revshare to the arcade manufacturer, and they can't sue you
| if you paid for your license.
|
| This is precisely why revenue share exists as a model. There
| are a lot of US operators who are still cold to the idea, but
| it isn't out of the question that operators would pay for
| updated, modern games. Rhythm games especially are difficult
| due to cross-border licensing issues.
|
| The times are changing though: There has been an ongoing
| maimai DX location test in the US (in California, Round1 PHM
| and in Texas, at Dave 'n Busters), and there was recently the
| successful completion of the location test for Taiko no
| Tatsujin, with a full scale launch starting in November.
| There are pains, but these games are slowly coming over.
|
| I assume you already know this stuff, but I think the average
| person would read your take as fairly cynical. The fact that
| SEGA Fave and Bandai Namco are even remotely considering
| operating online, networked rhythm games in the US is
| something to be thankful for. maimai's location test was
| online, with a large catalog of songs, on the international
| ALL.net service. Compared to the maimai PiNK loctest, which
| was offline with paltry songs, it's way, way more likely to
| be a long-term initiative.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I don't just know about the maimai DX location test, I
| actually flew out to the Puente Hills Mall[0] just to play
| it.
|
| One other thing I left out (because I thought it was too
| inside-baseball) is that the way Japanese companies
| structure their overseas operations also harms the US
| rhythm game market. For example, the only reason why we got
| a maimai DX location test was that SEGA had completely
| upended their US arcade division. It used to be licensed
| out to a completely different company with _zero_ interest
| in rhythm games. Presumably with the same assumption that
| they wouldn 't sell well or that arcade operators wouldn't
| sign a revshare agreement. The best we could get was a
| bunch of offline'd Chunithm Paradise Lost machine with all
| the licenses stripped out[1].
|
| Likewise, US players are also very cynical because of how
| poorly served we are for our given market size. When
| Taiko's US launch was announced a lot of people were
| worried that the cab quality would be shit because they
| were being assembled in the US (presumably for shipping or
| tariff reasons). The rhythm game community has a long
| memory; we remember what Raw Thrills did to DDR in the name
| of cost-cutting. The Taiko cabs that R1 USA got so far seem
| to be good, fortunately, but it's not irrational to worry
| about these sorts of things.
|
| I can absolutely see some independent operators outside of
| Round1 picking up Taiko (or maimai if SEGA FAVE decides to
| grant our wishes). But I would still be rather shocked if,
| say, Dave & Busters[3] wound up running either game, given
| that they basically pulled out of rhythm games.
|
| [0] Which is comically dead. Outside of the Round1 and the
| AMC basically half the shops are closed and the other half
| are going out of business. If PHM wasn't Round1's hero
| store the mall probably would have shut down by now.
|
| [1] Hope you like Jingle Bells
|
| [2] After Raw Thrills fucked DDR so hard it left the
| states, the reintroduction of DDR to the US (Hawaii
| exclusive) involved a special deal with Konami, Round1, and
| Dave & Busters. Because D&B was involved, they insisted on
| perpetual licensing, even though Konami had moved to
| revshare in every other region. Which meant having to buy
| upgrade kits.
|
| [3] Or, hell, Chuck E. Cheese; even though Taiko would slot
| in _perfectly_ with their target demo.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > or _literal slot machines_
|
| While I agree with the description of "kid-friendly casino",
| the big thing distinguishing "literal slot machines" to me is
| that they pay out in tokens. Any machine at Chuck E. Cheese
| would pay out in tickets.* That means you go in with X
| tokens, come out with Y tickets, and can't feed the tickets
| back into the machine. Instead, you get a plastic ring with a
| spider on it.
|
| But you do get something; with a slot machine, you're
| guaranteed to end up with nothing.
|
| * Actually, I think there was some kind of shelves-and-
| pushers machine where the goal was to somehow trigger the
| mechanism to shove a bunch of tokens off a shelf. This was
| not popular.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| In port huron michigan at the birchwood mall that shelf was
| full of quarters!!
|
| There was an article in the JR cookbook / anarchist
| cookbook about how to win these games I i remember
| correctly. Could never pull it off as a 10 yo that neened
| my parents to drive me there
| vikingerik wrote:
| And the retro arcades are really bars for their business
| model. The profit is all in the $9 beers and $16 nachos, not
| the admission charge or coin drops. The games are just the
| crowd draw like live music or trivia or whatever.
|
| Redemption games get families loading up $50 per kid at the
| card machine (and then $50 more after the kids blow it in
| twenty minutes); retrocades aren't pulling that from anybody.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Im going to bring this back to my cloud computing analogy.
| I'm trying to figure out the future of the business model
| wrt GPUs. Its possible that GPUs and machine learning APIs
| could act as the "crowd draw" meanwhile they make all the
| profit on overpriced commodity x86 vcpu and storage buckets
| (the beer and nachos)
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Don't forget the bar + arcade. There's usually overlap with
| other types of arcades, but it's more like the arcade is a
| draw to sell beer instead of pizza.
|
| The "pay for entry" model is also a way to get around
| offering pirated games or other games that normally would be
| not legal to accept quarters for.
| mrandish wrote:
| I guess it's nostalgic for some but even as a kid back when the
| chain first rolled out I recognized right away that the
| animatronics were low rent versions of earlier Disney
| animatronics that were much better (albeit, significantly more
| complex and thus more expensive).
|
| I guess if you're a toddler it's still a big, colorful, moving
| stuffed animal that talks, which might seem fascinating. But for
| an older kid it wasn't entertaining or engaging while the Disney
| animatronics still were.
|
| Reflecting now on why one worked on me and the other didn't, I
| think the lack of variable speed motion had a lot to do with it
| because ease-in/out can add so much life and expression.
| ginkgotree wrote:
| My question is: Where can I buy the animatronic band members
| after they are decommissioned?
| andirk wrote:
| Since the name is/was Chuck E. Cheese's (possessive), should this
| article title be: "Chuck E. Cheese's's animatronics band bows
| out"?
| hoseja wrote:
| Instead of leaning into the FNAF craze?
| latentsea wrote:
| FNAF feels like something you want to view from far away
| through a screen and not actually live it. Having played FNAF I
| think the real thing would be less appealing than more.
| frognumber wrote:
| Personally, I think this is a dead-end business decision. I've
| seen this gamebook play out over and over. It rarely ends well.
|
| The problem is that in 2024, kids can play video games and watch
| stupid videos in the comfort of their own home. Perhaps screens
| beat animatronics, ball pits, and whatnot, but there's no
| competitive advantage over superior alternatives in the new
| space.
|
| Examples:
|
| - Book stores. Cut costs to compete with online sellers. Move
| more and more digitally. Have no upside over pure online stores.
| Keel over.
|
| - Radio Shack. Stop selling electronics components, and start
| targeting to the bigger market of cell phones. Have no
| competitive advantage over Best Buy or cell phones stores. Keel
| over.
|
| In those situations, it's better to either:
|
| * Shift business models (e.g. Radio Shack could become a very
| competitive makerspace, host kid afterschool programs, maker
| camps, and refocused on Raspberry PI, 3d printers, Micro:bits and
| similar).
|
| * Shrink the business to follow a declining market without taking
| on debt (Radio Shack couldn't support the number of stores it
| had, but it could very much have supported 1/5 of the stores)
|
| Both of those approaches usually require starting to adapt before
| the sky starts falling.
| BoxFour wrote:
| > The problem is that in 2024, kids can play video games and
| watch stupid videos in the comfort of their own home
|
| I always thought of Chuck E. Cheese as being aimed at hosting
| larger children's gatherings, freeing parents from concerns
| about space or catering. The video games would just be an
| extension of things they already want to do, but the draw is no
| cleanup/planning.
|
| Considering how curated children's activities have become (no
| more "free range" children), and how expensive housing is (more
| renters, less likely to host a big bash), it could actually
| address a growing need.
|
| Whether it's more attractive than booking a dedicated kids
| venue and just ordering pizza is open to debate.
| jazz9k wrote:
| I take my kids there a few times a year. They are both under 10
| and love it.
|
| The price also isn't too bad: $20 for unlimited plays on any
| game for an hour.
| alberth wrote:
| > The problem is that in 2024, kids can play video games and
| watch stupid videos in the comfort of their own home
|
| With that thinking, why do restaurants exist when you could
| just eat from the comfort of your own home (or going to a
| sports game in-person, etc).
|
| What's being sold is the experience and/or convenience.
|
| In the case of Chuck E Cheese, it's a bit of both. Parents get
| to buy an experience for their kids, and if it's for a birthday
| party - they are buying the convenience of not having to
| host/cook/cleanup a party.
| donatj wrote:
| Cooking food on par with a restaurant can take literal hours.
|
| Turning on a TV/Home console takes seconds. The convenience
| factor is not there.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I think that the more important factor is that home console
| games are genuinely a better play experience than what's in
| arcades nowadays. The graphics are better, the game quality
| is better, etc.
|
| Minecraft Dungeons vs. Minecraft Dungeons Arcade is an
| interesting case study. Introducing arcade mechanics
| designed to prompt kids to put more money into the machine
| legitimately makes the game less fun. Every few minutes
| you're interrupted and taken out of the game and back into
| meatspace so that you can put another couple dollars in the
| slot. And some of the more interesting elements of the game
| had to be removed because there's no saving your progress
| in the arcade. _And_ you and your friends are crammed in
| around the cabinet, either constantly bumping each other
| with your elbows or playing in a mildly uncomfortable
| position to try and keep your elbows in. At home you can
| spread out on the couch or floor.
|
| Back in the 80s and early 90s I put up with a poorer
| gameplay experience because arcade machines still had
| noticeably better graphics. (Dragon's Lair might be the
| poster child for this phenomenon.) But that just isn't the
| case anymore.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| >Back in the 80s and early 90s I put up with a poorer
| gameplay experience because arcade machines still had
| noticeably better graphics. (Dragon's Lair might be the
| poster child for this phenomenon.) But that just isn't
| the case anymore.
|
| Yeah, I mean even with games that had perfectly
| equivalent gameplay with debatably better controls like
| Street Fighter 2 arcade vs home, you still got 90% of the
| experience with the home version. Nowadays the best
| reasons to play at arcades are prohibitively expensive
| hardware-specific games like DDR, other more advanced
| Japanese rhythm games like BeatMania, racing games, and
| mecha piloting simulators.
|
| The only other thing that _could_ work well in an arcade
| model nowadays would be a high end VR setup, but ideally
| you 'd have your own sealed booth for that with an
| omnidirectional treadmill. They were starting to take off
| before COVID shut most of them down for good. Here's
| hoping VRcades do eventually become more of a thing
| again.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Well when you host a kids party at your home you now have
| to bring food and clean up. And chuck e cheese can handle a
| lot more screaming children than your home ever could.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Bookstores do have upside over pure online stores though, they
| can lay out their shop with interesting books and the like,
| personalised recommendations from staff, organise events,
| rebrand as a coffee shop, etc etc etc. Sure, pure book shops
| that sell books are at a disadvantage, but in my country
| there's still plenty of local book shops that at least for now
| keep their head above water.
|
| Radio Shack could've had a field day when the Raspberry Pi and
| co came around and made electronics and programming a hobby for
| the masses, especially if they rebranded into a hacker space of
| sorts and organised events and classes and the like. Whether
| that would've saved them is another matter though, as the
| Raspberry revolution also came with very cheap and affordable
| electronics, which only works if sold en masse.
| frognumber wrote:
| That's exactly my point. Many of those bookstores survived.
|
| The ones that died were the ones who tried to lower prices to
| compete with online, had commercial books selling shelf space
| (rather than curated selections), and minimum-wage employees
| who didn't know what they were selling.
|
| I don't mind paying for good books, and what I'll pay for is
| having a person who has read a lot of books and can recommend
| what I'll enjoy.
| jzig wrote:
| I've noticed the similar pattern and always wondered how Micro
| Center seems to manage to do OK.
| voidfunc wrote:
| They're not over expanded and are generally fun to visit.
| They basically have the right number of stores to interest
| ratio in an area and they're competitive on pricing.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| >Radio Shack. Stop selling electronics components, and start
| targeting to the bigger market of cell phones. Have no
| competitive advantage over Best Buy or cell phones stores. Keel
| over.
|
| I was a radio shack employee as a teen in the 90s, right before
| the pivot to cellphones started. I joined the Army and got the
| hell out of there right before the 1998 catalog came out, the
| one with the Sprint PCS partnership on the cover. I helped
| install and stock the Sprint furniture and signage.
|
| At my store and every single store I was aware of, if they had
| not pivoted to cellphones they would have gone out of business
| in 2000.
|
| By 1998 people no longer purchased computers at electronics
| stores. They either bought them from Gateway, out of PC
| Magazine or Computer Shopper, or from Walmart.
|
| By 1998 people no longer bought CB radios from electronics
| stores. They no longer saw Optimus or Realistic scanners/AV
| receivers as desirable products. Throughout the 80s and early
| 90s the Japanese brands snuffed out the cheap Radio Shack
| brands.
|
| By 1998 people hadn't purchased electronic components in
| volumes high enough to turn a profit (needed to pay wages,
| rent, and buy inventory) in 10-20 years.
|
| Even in the late 90s, components were a vestigial organ, a
| money pit, a revenue black hole.
|
| "But I used to buy capacito.." You were the exception.
|
| You were the atypical customer.
|
| You literally lost Radio Shack money and hastened the
| transformation every time you walked past the CD players and
| plasma spheres towards the back of the store where the
| components lived.
| frognumber wrote:
| > At my store and every single store I was aware of, if they
| had not pivoted to cellphones they would have gone out of
| business in 2000.
|
| Let's shorten this: "if they had not pivoted, they would have
| gone out of business in 2000." A pivot was needed, and a long
| time earlier. They key question is which pivot.
|
| Identifying a big market, with a lot of competition and no
| competitive advantage, was better than nothing, but worse
| than identifying a market with some competitive advantage.
|
| > You literally lost Radio Shack money and hastened the
| transformation every time you walked past the CD players and
| plasma spheres towards the back of the store where the
| components lived.
|
| True.
|
| To make money, they would have needed to monetize me for a
| lot more than the price of a component. Have a quick look to
| see what Russian School of Math charges for afterschool math
| classes, what summer STEM camps cost, or tuition at a
| university. More critically, look at the derivative -- which
| prices are going up and which are going down.
|
| If you earn 50 cents selling me a resistor, I'm losing them
| money.
|
| If you earn $1000 teaching my kid something about
| electronics. All of a sudden you need far fewer of me, and
| you broaden the appeal to anyone educated with money and a
| child.
|
| They had everything in place to do that, right down to
| wonderful educators like Forrest Mims.
|
| And if they had done that well, there would have been many
| more of me around now too.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| >Have a quick look to see what Russian School of Math
| charges for afterschool math classes, what summer STEM
| camps cost, or tuition at a university.
|
| None of those are geographically distributed physical
| locations that need to be staffed and operated constantly.
| They're monolithic institutions, pop-up restaurants of
| learning, or virtual.
|
| I would have used Kumon as an example except the comparison
| breaks down when you realize parents pay Kumon a lot of
| money to increase their children's test scores, and very
| few schools test for hobby electronics.
|
| Pivoting to your plan would have achieved the same result:
| the death of Radio Shack.
|
| Preserving a brand for the sake of preserving a brand
| doesn't make sense.
|
| Customers don't exist for after-school hobby electronics
| classes for teens at over 8,000 locations across the US. So
| you pivot anyways (to a sector you have no practical or
| institutional knowledge in, which doesn't exist already),
| close down 7,000 stores (to roughly match the number of
| Kumon locations), get rid of all of your inventory because
| you don't have the scale at 1,000 small locations to make
| competing with big-box or online make any sense and then--
| bam!
|
| Radio Shack's dead anyways.
| naasking wrote:
| > Customers don't exist for after-school hobby
| electronics classes for teens at over 8,000 locations
| across the US.
|
| I'm not sure that's obvious, at least if you don't
| completely restrict yourself only to specific kinds of
| electronics, eg. have computer assembly, troubleshooting,
| phone and other device repair classes/workshops, etc. The
| most successful pivots create a market where there
| previously was none.
| frognumber wrote:
| > None of those are geographically distributed physical
| locations that need to be staffed and operated
| constantly. They're monolithic institutions, pop-up
| restaurants of learning, or virtual.
|
| I think you're misunderstanding how these operate. Almost
| all of these are staffed and operated for at least the
| same number of hours as a typical Radio Shack location.
|
| > to a sector you have no practical or institutional
| knowledge in, which doesn't exist already
|
| No, Radio Shack had more institutional knowledge here
| than just about anyone else. They made electronics kits,
| wonderful books, etc. A better example is AoPS opening up
| physical tutoring center (which they did, and which has
| been very successful).
|
| > close down 7,000 stores (to roughly match the number of
| Kumon locations), get rid of all of your inventory
|
| If you do this, you're managing the pivot like an idiot.
| Here is how you pivot:
|
| 1) Start a summer camp at one location. Iterate on the
| program until it's efficient and turnkey.
|
| 2) Start a small number of afterschool programs in a
| similar fashion
|
| 3) See what it takes to be successful. Perhaps grant some
| kind of certificate for those, and ideally, frame it so
| it can go on a college application, or if you're really
| ambitious, so amount of college credit. I can name a
| dozen other places this could go, but critically, it
| takes a bit of financial elbowroom to have time to
| explore and pivot like this.
|
| Once this is going, expand reach to more and more stores.
| And do this in 1990, so you have time and elbowroom,
| rather than in 2000.
|
| For big institutions, pivots almost never work wholesale.
|
| > close down 7,000 stores
|
| Scaling down was probably necessary at some point, but
| bankruptcy was not.
|
| Scaling down can be followed by scaling back up.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I'm firmly in the "creepy as hell" camp. I only was compelled to
| attend such a horror-show once or twice, and left early each
| time.
| shemnon42 wrote:
| It's not about the stag show anymore, it's about the midway games
| that spew out tickets. A literal children's casino.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| As a programmer who refuses to use AI support in development, I
| feel like an animatronics character being phased out. :(
|
| The world used to love me...
| triyambakam wrote:
| Why do you refuse?
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| I thoroughly enjoyed this article. I had _no_ idea that Nolan
| Bushnell / Atari was behind the original Chuck E. Cheese, but in
| retrospect it makes so much sense. What an amazing playfulness
| and somewhat crazy thing for them to do-- i don't think having
| the kind of success Atari had was an accident when you read about
| visionary, long-term stuff like that (even if the venture itself
| didn't technically work out _that_ well for Atari / Bushnell
| _this_ time...).
| bunderbunder wrote:
| At least in my area, Chuck E Cheese is experiencing stiff
| competition from places like ClimbZone, a kid-oriented climbing
| gym and ropes course, and Altitude, a trampoline park for kids.
| They all have the arcade, albeit in somewhat scaled back form.
| Their food offerings are vestigial.
|
| I've been to kids' birthday parties at all of these. Chuck E
| Cheese is the only one that doesn't have our kids asking to go
| back again on the ride home. They have a good time while they're
| there, but they don't perceive much "replay value".
|
| In light of that, this seems like a good move on Chuck E Cheese's
| part. They arguably can't completely get rid of the show
| component for brand identity reasons, but converting it to
| screens probably reduces their cost structure enormously. And it
| could free up some floor space, which would let them shift the
| focus toward physical play. That is something that has a lot more
| novelty value for kids nowadays than it did when I was growing
| up. I think probably because the availability situation has flip-
| flopped: they live in an ocean of high quality passive
| entertainment, but opportunities to jump and run with a crowd of
| other kids are becoming increasingly hard to come by.
|
| I still suspect it's too little too late though? Chuck E Cheese
| locations are physically too small to accommodate a really good
| indoor play space. They're typically in strip mall locations that
| don't offer the kind of floor and overhead space needed to
| install indoor play equipment that's up to modern standards for
| novelty.
| afavour wrote:
| I can second this. Here in Brooklyn there was some big woop
| made about the local Chuck E Cheese getting a trampoline floor,
| seemingly a direct reaction to the arrival of these giant
| trampoline parks. We went to take a look and it was pretty sad,
| a tiny little area that had a time limit for each kid to manage
| demand.
|
| But like you say, they're stuck. There's a great (I mean,
| relatively speaking) trampoline park in the city but it's out
| in an industrial area where they could easily find a space the
| size of a football field. The Chuck E Cheese is in a shopping
| mall and clearly has no extra space to use.
| conductr wrote:
| The couple we frequent have had digital screen "bands" at
| least the last 5 years and the kids mostly just ignore it.
| They usually have someone wear a mascot uniform and come
| dance during the main event, but most kids could care less.
| They're over in the arcade area. The addition of the
| trampoline area just occurred recently and the whole time we
| were their they had a teammate chasing kids off of it because
| most of them didn't have the necessary grippy socks. Initial
| observations on my end was that it's going to cost them more
| to manage it than it will bring in in revenue.
|
| We go there sometimes alone because my son is obsessed with a
| particular arcade they have and it's like a special treat to
| take him, outside of birthday parties the place seems dead.
| Also, I never see anyone actually eat there. I think birthday
| parties is their entire business at this point. It's even a
| joke amongst our parent groups that if you are late to plan
| something, just do Chuck E Cheese because it's easy and
| pretty much always available. The kids enjoy it either way
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| The odd part to me is that back when I was a kid Chuck E Cheese
| _did_ have a play area section, with at least a tube climbing
| thing, ball pit, etc. When I took my daughter there a few years
| ago though it was nothing but arcade games, and I think it was
| the same one my parents used to take me too.
|
| IMO this is an extra bad move for them because it means they're
| directly competing with all the arcade places near me and those
| are much better maintained (and/or have various other
| attractions).
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Competing with dedicated arcades _and also competing with
| home video games_. Like, the only arcade cabinets that are
| remotely of interest to me as an adult are the ones with a
| novel input mechanism-- DDR, light gun games, and driving
| sims.
|
| Everything else feels kind of pointless when I can play the
| same thing at home with way better graphics and no predatory
| progression nonsense.
|
| A big climber and ballpit is 100x more novel to today's kids
| than a knockoff kart game or sidescrolling beat-em-up.
| antifa wrote:
| My Chuck E Cheese didn't have that, which is probably why I
| always preferred discovery zone (my NES at home was better
| than most arcades anyways).
| astura wrote:
| Good, they terrified me as a child. Really uncanny valley
| territory.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I mean, yeah, the animatronics are weird in today's age, but
| honestly, the whole premise is what does the chain's image in.
|
| Is it really anything other than chaos and sleaze distilled? You
| can have stoned 19-year-olds cavorting in the supply closet,
| drunken parents slugging it out at a birthday party, a man
| sneezing on a pizza he just baked, _and_ a crying child
| defecating in the ball pit _simultaneously_. All against a
| hypnotic background of flashing lights and arcade sounds.
|
| This is a grotesquery, torn from the pages of Huxley. One can
| only imagine the Romans had a similar palace of decadence for
| children shortly before their collapse.
|
| No sane society would allow this to exist, let alone as a
| profitable enterprise. I know anglophone North America isn't
| sane, but isn't this a little too far, even for us?
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| I remember when I went as a little kid the animatronics scared me
| so much I shit myself and I haven't been back since
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-09 23:01 UTC)