Surviving GameWorks

I have been to the Planet Hollywood of video arcades.

And it ate my lunch. Or at least my lunch money.

"Arcade - that's a bad word in our business," Says Charlie Diauto, general manager of what he prefers to call "the ultimate in a new breed of nightclub."

Diauto presides over the 175 employees who work the 32,000-square-foot GameWorks Grapevine, the recently opened arcade-(ooooh, there's that word again)-plus-so-much-more that's one of the anchor tenants of the also recently opened outlet megamall called Grapevine Mills.

Located north of Dallas, just 15 minutes from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in fact, GameWorks Grapevine is the fourth GameWorks - the others are in Seattle, Las Vegas, and Ontario, California, east of Los Angeles.

A fifth GameWorks is opening this week in Tempe, Arizona. The Grapevine GameWorks site has been open less than a month, but already Diauto says the place is on track to see more than 50,000 people a month come through its doors.

And why are they coming? Perhaps they're coming for some espresso at the GameWorks Barista bar or some juice at the Rejuvenation Station or a bite to eat (salads, sandwiches, pizza, and gourmet sausages) at the GameWorks restaurant. Or maybe they've come for a cool, refreshing drink and to shoot a game of pool or two at GameWorks' Loft bar (located on the complex's second level, just next to the restaurant). Maybe it's the snappy patter or tunes spun by "play jockey" Mel Brennan, who oversees the action from a second-floor booth. Maybe they've come for a corporate function, as some 50 folks from GTE did this Tuesday past.

A good bet, though, is that they're coming to play games.

Maybe it's Sega's Indy 500 game, where one of the center's "crew members" calls the races ("Car number four is in the lead, but number eight is coming on strong.") and car-side cameras capture racers' intent faces on video for all spectators to see. (That game costs US$4 a pop.) Or perhaps it's one of the center's new shooter games - House of the Dead or Jurassic Park: The Lost World ($1.50 a game) or the competitive skateboard simulator Top Skater (also $1.50). Maybe it's even a classic arcade game like Frogger or Robotron or Donkey Kong (50 cents a game there).

Of course, some days, there's a little extra reason to come. On Tuesday, they came - at least some of them, the youngest ones - to see Hanson, purveyors of sugary MMMMBop pop goodness, who came to the mall and performed a short concert, then retired to GameWorks for some TV morning-show interviews and some video game fun.

As a promotion for the mall, it certainly worked. The doors to Grapevine Mills opened at 5am, and the stampede of young girls into the mall at that instant was so great that the windows of GameWorks rattled. The band's preteen fans were scooping up anything that even vaguely hinted of Hanson - the silly string they sprayed around during their video interview, even water glasses they drank from. Which makes the Indy 500 car they signed at GameWorks a pretty valuable commodity - at least until the next teen idols come along.

Folks were flowing into GameWorks all afternoon long - from the leftovers of the Hanson crowd to a businesswoman who flipped through papers as she sipped on a coffee to a couple of young guys speaking Japanese who retired to the Loft to shoot some pool.

"We want this to be a place where adults and their children can come and enjoy themselves," said Susan Steinberg, who is the public relations manager for GameWorks Grapevine. "Just last week we had this guy in here with his 4- or 5-year-old son. And I saw the boy tugging on his dad's sleeve and I overheard the boy say, 'But Daaaad, I want to play.' And I like to see that we've got something to appeal to both generations."

Ian Duffell, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group, which owns Ontario Mills (site of the third GameWorks location) said, in a recent Time magazine article, "To win in (the mall) business, you must offer vibrancy and value to fight the pervasive boredom of shopping." (The Virgin Megastore at Grapevine Mills is just a few storefronts down from GameWorks.)

And the powers behind GameWorks seem to have beating boredom down to a science. And they should. They've been perfecting entertaining folks for years. Sega is providing the video game expertise (and exclusive rights to some of the latest Sega games). Universal Studios is providing the theme park attraction expertise it has developed through the years of tours at its studios. (New GameWorks attractions are created at Universal Studios' Soundstage 35.) And DreamWorks is providing a touch of that Spielbergian magic.

Charlie Diauto says, "The concept of GameWorks grew out of a dinner conversation between Steven Spielberg and Skip Paul (a former executive with Atari and MCA, Paul is now GameWorks' chairman and CEO). Spielberg is an avid game player, and he said to Paul, 'You know, over the years, games have grown up. And the people who play them have grown up. But the environment never really has.' That conversation sparked the idea."

It's not really a new idea, of course. The Dave & Buster's restaurant chain has long featured video and virtual reality games as part of its mix. Sports bars feature many of the same sports games that GameWorks does. Malibu Speed Zone and places like it feature go-cart racing, video games, and other attractions. But GameWorks takes the concept and raises the bar a few notches.

Spielberg has contributed a few other ideas to the GameWorks concept. There's Vertical Reality ($3 a game), where players (four at a time) climb aboard chairs that rise up to 26 feet in the air. As you eliminate bad guys on each of the game's four levels, you rise up a notch. Or are knocked back down as you are shot.

Another attraction GameWorks is touting is the Game Arc, a system for playing multiplayer computer games on a wide-screen, arcade-like format. In Grapevine, they've got Descent and Redneck Rampage hooked up to the system. GTE is providing the place with its intra- and Internet capability, so soon, Operations Manager Sean Burton says, he hopes to see players from GameWorks around the country engage in some big-screen Quake deathmatches.

GameWorks Grapevine is decked out in some sort of retro factory feel: ducts and cables and meters everywhere, Norman Rockwell/old-fashioned Coca-Cola/Communist Party-ish signs that hang on the walls and sport slogans like "Don't be a production slacker. Be attractive while you're active." and "Refresh yourself ... and then beat the hell out of them."

Whatever you call it - a concentrated effort to provide "vibrancy and value to fight the pervasive boredom of shopping" or just the next-generation video arcade - GameWorks does work. You can pump $20 into a smart card and get $27.50 worth of game time. And that money goes fast...

As far as my missing lunch money goes? Ahhh, I can always eat lunch tomorrow.