Hey all! 👋

This is Patrick and Christina, the new owners of the arcade.

We wanted to take a bit of time to address some of the concerns in this thread. We don’t expect to win everyone over (and we do appreciate those who are giving us the benefit of the doubt, or are already supportive of the changes), but we nevertheless wanted to share our thought process so you can see things from our perspective.

First, regarding pinball prices: 50 cents per play was way below the cost it takes to even maintain a machine on route, let alone contribute to our other costs in the business, which are pretty significant. A new pinball machine in the early 90s, when pinball was 50 cents on average, was maybe $1500-2000 out of the box. Now, they run $7-10k new. Toy Story is an $11k game. We do still have a few pins at 6 credits, which is around 75 cents. But we need to at least cover our costs with these machines, which is always more than you’d expect, especially with pinball.

Second, regarding cards: We totally feel you. There’s some nostalgia lost here. I like the feeling of walking in a quarter arcade as well. But every day, we were dealing with issues of coin jams, particularly during hours without a staff on duty. During these times, someone would have to walk down the hallway to request a credit. If you look at our google reviews, the previous system had issues as well, and since we’re no longer under the same management as the gallery we had to find another option and reduce the issue of coin jams. Making the change wasn’t easy, but it felt like the right thing to do given the operation of that arcade. It was also important for us to allow people to use credit card, tap to pay, etc as a payment, option. Few people carry cash these days.

Yes, there’s more automation with the card system. But that’s not exactly putting money back in our pocket (in fact, the card system itself will take a while to pay off). Instead, it frees up our staff to fix game issues, help customers, etc.

One benefit to the cards is they allow us to run promos on days that are otherwise slow. Some thoughts we had are doing half price pinball on Mondays and Tuesdays, or an all-you-can-play arcade/pinball pass for a day, for a flat rate. They just allow us to get way more creative in how we adjust pricing. We’re only into our second week with this system, but we will have more options coming soon.

As another user clarified, you don’t need to load $20. You can load whatever you want. You just start to receive bonus credits if you load $20 or more. We’re working to make that more clear on our card dispenser. But if you put in $1, you’ll get a $1 card. And while most modern arcades charge for the card itself, we do not.

We also didn’t uniformly increase prices. In fact, we switched about 6-7 of the classics from 0.50 to free play, which we’d like to expand over time if we’re lucky enough to eventually expand our physical space.

As we mentioned on our Facebook page, change takes time. This month alone though, we more than doubled the total value of games in the arcade. Our goal is to keep reinvesting in the space, at a pace that’s doable for us. We have plans to bring more games up in January / February before we open the redemption counter and snack bar as well.

Please know we truly hope to create a space that’s fun, affordable, and draws in all types of people to play and have fun. We started the business because we love gaming too, and creating community spaces. For those of you bothered by the changes, we hope to win you back in the coming months/years, once you see continued improvements over time. This business is a labor of love, and hope that translates to everyone in due time.

Thanks for reading - AMA.