Slashdot Mirror
Chuck E. Cheese 2.0
theodp writes "Newsweek reports the inventor of Pong and founder of Chuck E. Cheese is getting back into the restaurant game. Adults welcome. At age 62, perpetual kid Nolan Bushnell wants to get gamers out of the house. This week, he will announce a new venture, the uWink Media Bistro restaurantchain. With screens at every table and bar stool, each piping videogames, media content and interactive menus, Bushnell's convinced a young-adult crowd will use the shared-gaming experience as a chance to compete, relax and mingle."
.. now with a coating of melted cheese
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
I am living in Japan now and there's a family restaurant down the street that has terminals at every table where you can play games or read news and such. There's plenty of others like it too...
So I can go to a place to pay to play videogames at a table in a restaurant where everyone else is sitting in their own group or by themselves *also* staring at the table? Dude, I'll stay home and login somewhere and play a game, thanks.
People are highly overrated. Especially random strangers in a place that serves food.
Besides, most of what Chuck E. Cheese offered was something other than videogames. Actual physical things you could interact with.
CEC has always seemed like a gimmick. The food is bad, the service is worse, and the crap they called "fun & games" was so old and covered with years of detritus that getting into the ball room was like inviting a bacterial infection.
I guess making sure everyone only plays games in their own booths will help keep the germs at bay and localized into each customers' booth. However, I still question the longevity of a chain that refuses to cater to people who have tastebuds and wear shirts.
..Oh, you have to admit.. it'd be fun to show off your Morrowind character to the chicks in the coffee shop.
Is he going to dig up all of those old game cartridges from the Arizona desert to start the business?
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Food+games=sticky consoles.
Thanks but no thanks. I have enough trouble making my family wash their hands after eating before hopping on the conole/computer. I don't want to have to contend with something a hundred strangers used while eating.
Will I get to use all my leftover Chuck E. Cheese tokens? What about my tickets from Skeeball? Can I trade those in for prizes still? This packrat mentality may have paid off after all.
--Residential Interior Design
Toss it on the pile with the email, PDAs, text messengers, 2-way pagers, cell phones, and other gadgetry.
Probably not the most popular opinion to have on /., but I find the quality of communication, especially in-person communication, sadly lacking these days.
No one of consequence
The more I think about it the more I realize that the US is the wrong market .... Korea Japan Taiwan and China would however eat this idea up. .....
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Will they bring back the Chuck E. Cheese band? It just hasn't been the same is Jasper T. Jowls left over "creative differences".
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
He spent 10 minutes chatting to us about Pong, the first arcade games and the early days of Atari. He was a thoroughly nice guy and we felt honoured that he'd stopped by.
Good luck to him.
It's a place where people can come together, separated by age, background and station but bound in common by attention deficit disorder?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Gamers and food in one place... Can you image the smell?
Women will flee the county, houses downwind will lose value, skunks will congregate...
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
its called Dave and Busters?
seriously: good food. good beer. tons of games? a place where you can walk around with a red stripe in hand. and play like LA machineguns and all the other assorted Chuck E Cheese games like the mole thing etc?
how is this any different from DaB? Diff age group maybe... DaB is over 21 after like 9pm - and its kind of expensive. But still, this is the best implementation of a "gaming restaurant" even if its more arcade than chuck e cheese type of games.
Plus, the place is kinda classy, like id take buisiness clients there and girls on dates. (provided of course.. i had clients to entertain or girls to take on dates, or vice versa)
i just dont see how this could oneup dave and busters. which stole my heart the first time i went. -nrs
As an non-USian, What the *bleep* is Chuck E. Cheese ??
I remember reading an interview with Ralph Baer in an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly several years ago. In it Baer asserted that he had created the game and patented it before Bushnell, and that Bushnell copied his concept.
The Wikipedia entry covers pretty much everything said in that interview:
"In 1966, Ralph Baer, then working for Sanders Associates, made a design for running simple computer games over a television set. His ideas were patented, and he created a game resembling Pong proper, except with slightly more complex controls. In 1970, Baer demonstrated his video game system to corporate heads at Magnavox, who became convinced that such a device would help sell more Magnavox television sets. Magnavox and Sanders Associates joined forces, with Baer and his patents at the epicenter, to develop a stand-alone unit called the Odyssey 1TL200 to be sold to consumers for use in the home."
"... Two weeks later, Magnavox learned of Pong, and notified Atari that they already had a patent on the concept. The two companies went to court. Magnavox was able to produce witnesses who had seen Nolan playing the Odyssey's ping-pong game, and they had a guestbook from the event which Nolan had signed. The judge found in favor of Magnavox, and Atari had to pay $700,000 for use of the patents."
As I recall, Baer also invented a boatload of other things, but didn't make much off of them because the patents were owned by the company he worked for at the time. (Memory is fuzzy on the details)
OMG someone has finally invented the PC Bang.
At last, PC Bangs exist. Previously they were confined to the world of fantasy.
(why yes... I _do_ have nothing better to do than be sarcastic today...)
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I remember seeing these guys at vending trade shows when I was in the jukebox biz. They were hawking touchscreen games back in 2000 or so (running Linux, praise be), but never seemed to get indeustry traction. Their website was finally reduced to a one-pager promising something New! and Improved! Real Soon Now for, oh, two years?
....
Hmm, I think they're on to something
Step 1: Write new biz plan.
Step 2: Raise lots of investor cash.
Step 3: Spend it.
Step 4: Lay low until new VC comes along.
Step 5: goto step 1
No "????" step, but no "Profit!" step either.
They spent huge money on trade show booths, that's for sure. But then again, who didn't?
No it's not stolen, just one of "if I have the VC money I'd do something about it" thing. But I'm not coming from the gaming/surfing/friendstering angle, even though every table would have an interactive LCD touch screen that can conceively do those things on the side. My evil master plan is to tie the interactive menu and the kitchen with the server that can, in real time, change the prices of the food. Why? Because a kitchen makes more money when several like orders are cooked simultaneously (certain conditions apply, of course). Also being an order tracking system a party can more or less be served at the same time. And other dreams of improving service quality w/ IT which I won't elaborate here.
Even got a name thought up. The Beta Platters
Having eaten in enough restaurants since this idea came about (1997) I then realized that nothing is more important than taste & location in determining a restaurant's success, and staff experience in its profitability. Maybe this might work with Denny's...
It's an arcade for kids, with generically bad pizza and a ball bin for toddlers to get lost in while Mommy relives playing PacMan.
Wasn't this already done in the early eighties with a fast-food chain where kids could eat pizzas and play videogames?
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
You might not have realized it, but i think that you've found the ??? step.
1. Do stuff
2. Goto 1 (???)
3. Profit!
It's disappointing to see anti-geek trolls proliferating here on Slashdot. Worse, to see suck sentiments getting modded up.
If you have to put on a facade to impress your date, then maybe you ought not take the girl to Chuck E. Cheese. If covering up who you are is more important than being who you are, it's probably a good idea to take her to a fancy restaurant where you two can pretend to enjoy yourselves.
As for me, if a girl can't handle that I live at my parent's home and enjoy eating pizza while playing the PS2, then that's her loss. I am not going to lower my standards to become embroiled in a fake relationship where we don't really know each other because we put on a fake smile and try to pretend to be more debonnaire than we really are.
I want a girl who is going to enjoy getting her fingers with Cheetos dust with me. My standards are high, and I'm not willing to compromise my sense of self just to impress someone else.
In the first version, I barfed all over the floor when I was a kid. I hope he doesn't hold a grudge about it still.
Life is not for the lazy.
As much as I respect Mr. Bushnell for having been in the zone back in the 70's he's nowhere near the mark right now and much like he's been "one off" in the past he's wrong this time too. It doesn't take much to see that the niche is very busy already. Even if he opens up a resturaunt with a 30' tall rotating mechanical "Tux" the penguin smiling and waving at people passing by on the freeway it's not going to interest people the way it would have even 20 years ago.
:-)
It would be much better to see Mr. Bushnell spend his energies working on something truly novel instead of this sad one-trick pony-ism he seems so invested in...resturants and computer games...bah.
Now if he was working on a virtual glory-hole, complete with crash-test dilos and glip (glory-hole over IP) protocols in conjuction with RealDoll? Well damnit that could see us to the next level in interaction, regardless of the venue.
Or how about cell phones with a "clit-cup" sending device or tele-dick-tooth-pick sending device?
We need our technology more organic, orgasmic, and less watering-hole dynamic. We should have been flitting about as avatars on the net by now, enties created for interaction without the burdens of the meat while retaining all the joys. Compare that to having to brave busy California traffic and enough taxation and political-correctness that operating anything is almost prohibitive.
It may take money to make money, but P.T. Barnum still rules.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
I agree. Going out is a social occasion and therefore you want to be able to talk to your companions, not be immersed in a game of Space Invaders or the like. If you want to play computer games with them, invite them to your house to play on your PS2 or have a LAN Party!
I saw a talk by Nolan Bushnell at a games event about 6 years ago. He was talking about exactly this idea. I think that back then, he wanted to setup an infrastructure and license the system to existing restaurants. At the time, it seemed far too ambitious because internet access at anything above dialup was so expensive (to business users as well as home users), and I remember thinking that it was too far-fetched. He's certainly got perseverance; I would have given up on it years ago. So its good to see that he's back and going it alone with a new restaurant chain. I say good luck to him!
What is it? I've heard of Chucky Egg, but not Chuck E Cheese.
Get your own free personal location tracker
I have read pretty much everyones response and no one seems to like this.As far as I can tell,everyone either thinks this will be too much like "CEC" (witch I thought was fun as #@$% as a kid!),that it'll be inferior,or that it wont bring people together the way he plans. But I wonder how many actually read what he plans? From everything I heard in the article,he seems to want this to be for an older crowd (so dont worry about it being to much like "CEC"),he seems to be focusing on bringing people together (so no isolationism,and might i add...he did a good job bringing people [at least kids] together with "CEC" ),and I cant imagine it's going to be like bars around the world with JUST those boring touch screen game systems (so maybe...just MAYBEEE he'll actually have some modern systems!). As for the sanitary issue,THAT one I can understand,and can only hope he has either thought about that allready,or will before he opens this new restaurant. I would allso like to point out the fact that "CEC",the place most of you seem so ^#$%bent on hating,is a: still up and running,and B:has spawned other companies to creat there own "CEC"-like business'. So I for one,can not WAIT to see what happens,and I will be hoping and praying that this idea EXPLODES into the mainstream! One last note here. I apologise if this post sounds inflamitory. That was not my intention at the start.
"Did they look like psychos to you,do psychos EXPLODE when sunlite hits them!?"-"Seth Gecko" (George Clooney)
I totally agree. In the US, arcades died because most places were full of the same types of games you can play at home for free. Those and the ticket type games like skeetball. And most people don't enjoy those at all. The only reason people will leave home to pay for games is if it gets you something you can't get at home. Competition or a chance to show off your skills are two reasons that you just don't see much of anymore. That's why DDR type games remain popular. Want to make a good arcade? Put in lots of fighting games, DDR, and big moving machines. Networked driving games where each car moves would be another good idea. The point is to offer something you can't get at home and to bring people together. Next step is to maintain all those games!!! I long for the days of going to the local arcade and wupping some ass in street fighter. And if such a place still existed I'd be there in a minute.
Gaming centers have been around for years. Check out www.igames.org for a list of all the centers in the US. As a matter of fact I have owned one for a year. I don't have food with mine but there are many centers that have been around for 5 years or more that are a combination of a cafe and game center.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
You're the birthday, You're the birthday, You're the birthday man or women.
.\.\att Clare
Nolan Bushnell was a hack, but this seriously looks like a really damn good idea.
Now only to hope that the games on it won't suck.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Chuck E. Cheese?
You mean SHOWBIZ PIZZA.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
How about netcafe's?
They've been around for years.
We have on in our small town, where you sit at the computer playing games. And at the press of a button you can bring up a menu, order food, it's auto added to your bill, and the food is brung out to you.
"Chuck E. Cheese founder creates concept for 'arcade', 20 years late"
twitter.com/gravitronic
... then they threw the concrete in a sack and tossed the sack in a river and hurled the river into space.
--
RumorsDaily
I'd want a conference room (because we'll be yelling at each other, replaces VoIP) with 8 terminals pre-loaded with City of Heroes (8 being the max team size). It would save having to get TeamSpeak/Yahoo chat running as well as the game.
I'd bring my own keyboard and trackball, I wouldn't want to learn the subtle differences in a game situation.
Especially if your Morrowind character happens to look like a giant penis. You could use some fresh pickup lines like:
;)
"Hey baby, check out my Lvl 65 Phallus Mage. He's always got his armor on."
You'd risk looking like a geektastic manwhore, but hey...
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Yeah, right. What we have here is a 51-pound coin-op terminal with a 56Kb network connection and a few cell-phone level games.
With an optional interface to a stuffed-animal crane machine.
What I remember about Showbiz and Chuck E. Cheeses was the video games. I remember playing Mach3 quite a bit there. Now they are all simple distractions to give out tickets.
Simple way for someone to make money (well...nothing is simple with licensing involved) would be to open up a place that had good food (ie. decent Pizza - somethinc C.E.C is missing) and put in some retro arcade games. The 30-40 market would gobble it up (both the food and the pac-man pellets). Just don't make it more than a quarter to play and you'd be raking money in hand-over-fist.
No need for mortal kombat or the latest soul caliber clone - just some good old fashioned 8 bit games.
Right now would be a perfect time to break out the sit-down star wars game.
OK, the internet age has affected your brain. Ebola is a virus. eBola is a virtual wad of grass in a virtual ruminant's mouth.
my latest journal entry
hell, he can have it. so long as SOMEone resurrects (face2face) social gaming.
I prefer Showbiz Pizza Place, you insensitive clod.
Wait.... This is the poll, right?
Chuck E. Cheese's.. where a geek can be a geek!
Screw that, why doesn't he make a bona fide arcade for adults. These days it's damn near impossible to find an arcade that isn't dedicated to kids games that involve collecting tickets to redeem for various bits of crap. The most adult orientated video arcades I've found are at movie theatres, but they're horrendously expensive. Plus, have some other games other than fighting games, and light gun games. I like Tekken and Time Crisis as well as anyone else, but I miss games like Alien vs. Predator or X-Men or Golden Axe.
Chuck E Cheese used to have a location in Concord, CA. It had probably 200 video games in the place, and a 3 story "cheese hole" that kids could climb through. It was great.. they had all the latest games and they kept the old school games around.
Teenagers ruined it. Loser kids with no money and no intention of playing the games would just gather there and 'hang out' and disturb gamers/etc. It got to where there were enough of them that business declined a bit, and then the "family friendly" movement (blah) came around in the mid 90's and the place was remodelled to be more "family friendly" - that usually meant only a few video games, and more lighting and an interior design that wouldn't let your little children out of your sight. (This particular location had 2 stories and was dimly lit)
Modern video games usually *suck* though. I just went to Dave & Busters in Milpitas, CA and they really haven't added any new games. Some of the games have been there since the place opened. I get bored really fast with "House of the Living Dead" games and the car race games. Unfortunately, D&B has *lots* of those. I guess I could play the Ski-Doo game or "American Trucker" - oh, wait. That's just another driving/race game.
Gameworx in Seattle would at least rotate games a little more often, and seeing "Redneck Rampage" on a big screen was classic.
Cecil, you're spot on. I don't understand how so many can be so negative about this. It's a linux based restaurant! A flexible platform in the public space. They'll be able to try new games and see what happens. the good ones will float to the top and the bad ones go to the bit bucket. This is so far from the expensive build out of Dave and Buster's.
I love the flexibility of this thing. The fact that the system is running linux and centralizes all the operations of the restaurant says they'll be able to change up the content as easily as a new download. Dave and Buster's, Chuck E. Cheese, etc all have big expensive games that get old and go out of date. The platform Bushnell is rolling out looks like it will have the flexibility to experiment with new games and tools at a very low cost. psyched to see it!
There's aleady an adult arcade, it's called Dave and Buster's. Tons of games, and each one has a switch that turns on a light that summons a Beer Wench (er PC- Alcohol Attendant?) to you. Games and readily available alcohol- a good combination. If Nolan can improve on it, so much the better!
Same old song and dance, only this time with a server (ooh, ahh) involved.
As an entrepreneur I have nothing but respect for Mr. Bushnell. As a parent, I thank him! And I still play Pong on my Gameboy Color.
Being a hack myself, I can't respond to that.
However, I see nothing really revolutionary here. Not enough details to say for sure, but I've scoured uWink's site.
Looks like the same old crap you find everywhere... Someone at Nintendo must be feeling a great disturbance in the force right now.
Look, Nolan, you REALLY want to start a revolution?
1. Rentable robot fighting machines in a live closed-circuit TV arena
2. Webcammed remote control cars (or boats, whatever) with IR-fighting capabilities, again, you can watch the show from the bar or your table
3. Scenario-based LaserQuest style gaming, complete with an edited DVD souvenir video sent to you...
This is just a taste of what I've been playing around with for about 5 years.
Why not?
did you win a free ipod? build a case for it here
What is funnier than the basic article is the wide range of baseless pessimism.
Let's see, adults playing video games, everyone has their own monitor, with liquor and food served right on top of them, must have beautiful women who also want to play the games, maybe a band playing in the background, too.
Not in the U.S.? It'll never work? The public won't buy into it?
It's called Las Vegas.
There were two restaurant chains in my area. One catered to families, Rivertowne, and the other to Adults, Gadgets. Rivertowne served beer with the pizza for the adults, and the arcade and game tables were mostly non-juvenile and non-redemption. Gadgets served full bar, didn't allow anyone under 21 to stay without a parent in the main club, had a separate arcade (open late for those over 18), and absolutely no redemption games. Adults don't like redemption games much. The downfall of both, I believe, was the repetitive animatronic show. That's definitely a kiddie thing. Gadgets had Warner Brothers characters as their show.
What makes an adult establishment work these days is sports broadcasts, full bar, espresso, and a decent menu. Adding UWink is a good idea (most bars have something similar), but it doesn't encourage an entire group to play a game. They're so small, it restricts wide-open play to a group of eight or so. It might work if done correctly, so I'm not going to discount Mr. Bushnell's efforts. I just wish there was at least one UWink site in my area to at least compare.
Reading about it on the net isn't the same as experiencing it. (Run screaming..... ) I've been there with friends who were doing birthday parties for their kids - if you've got 8-10-year-olds, it's probably not a bad place to go, or at least no worse than other things intended for that age market. (Run screaming..... ) It's sort of like Disneyland, only mercifully smaller. The pizza wasn't _bad_, though in New Jersey it's impossible for a chain pizza place to compete with the quality of a random small restaurant run by actual Italians instead of animatronic imitations - I don't remember it being worse than Pizza Hut.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Back then it had the reputation of being a place where VCs and computer people would go to lunch or dinner, somewhat the way Buck's in Woodside was during the 90s. It's partly about the food, partly about the crowd.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks