The Seattle outposts of NikeTown and Planet Hollywood stand adjacent to each other on Sixth Street, as glass, concrete, and steel monuments to consumption of sports and celebrity. Last month, their newest neighbor moved in: GameWorks, a similar glass, concrete, and steel monument to an entirely new kind of consumption. With the launch of the second GameWorks location coming later this month, Spielberg and friends are continuing their quest to turn video games from a teen pastime into a consumer event for adults around the world.
"We're positioning it as a social environment and a hangout ... not a typical arcade," says Melissa Schumar, VP of communications for GameWorks. "We want it to be a place that appeals to people across the board."
GameWorks, the "Interactive Theme Park" from Universal Studios, Sega, and DreamWorks SKG, is no typical acne-and-braces arcade. Its 15 March launch was celebrated with an MTV-covered party and celebrity appearances from Arsenio Hall and Gillian Anderson. The 30,000 square feet are filled with exclusive Steven Spielberg games, the bar serves microbrews and yuppie pizza, TVs blare music videos, and a shop hawks GameWorks branded gear in aluminum boxes.
In an attempt to fulfill the gaming whimsy of every living human being, GameWorks is offering everything from SuperBike to Pacman. In drivers-seat games alone, speedsters can choose between tanks, jet skis, motorcycles, skis, airplanes, or eight varieties of race cars. An upstairs cyberlounge is designed to appeal to an older crowd, as is a wood-panelled "vintage game" area complete with Frogger, and a pub with pool and airhockey. The games don't accept money; users have to buy official GameWorks debit cards (the machines accept bills ranging from US$1-$100, and don't make change).
During one evening visit last week, GameWorks was empty, except for the packed "Loading Dock" room, which emphasizes multi-player and racing games.
"A thousand people are in here constantly on normal nights, with a line outside," said one bored staffer. "It's dead here tonight." With no one in need of assistance, the idle staff were everywhere: standing over a couple in business suits as the woman squealed at the helm of a Sega race-car game, MCing the eight-person Indy 500 race, chit-chatting in the cyberlounge.
But Schumar affirms that quiet nights are an anomaly - on weekdays Seattle is drawing 5,000 people a day, and on weekends up to 25,000. According to exit polls, the average visitor is 26 years old, stays for an hour-and-a-half, and spends $15 to $20. The revenue and patronage numbers so far, have been "beyond expectation," Schumar says. In fact, GameWorks is extending the hours to bring in a late-night crowd.
Five more GameWorks venues will open by the end of 1997, beginning with a 47,000-square-foot Las Vegas extravaganza coming at the end of April. Some 100 venues should be open by the beginning of the new millennium. Each will carry the "tone" of its host city - in Las Vegas, that means a full bar instead of a microbrewery, the world's largest climbing wall, and more neon and less wood.
Back in Seattle, one twenty-something girl in a leopard-print shirt stood and ate her $2.95 french fries as she watched a boy crash and burn on a virtual ski course. Forty-five seconds later, the race was over, and the boy plugged another $1.25 worth into the meter.
Says Schumar, laughing, "We're doing well."
