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Photo courtesy of AvoidingThePuddle.comWhen I locked the doors at 1106 East Broadway in Columbia, Missouri, on May 13, 2007, Gunther's Games ceased to exist. It was simply another casualty in what had become a long line of arcade closures in much of Missouri, but it was home to the several fighting game players of that college town. I had learned to play Guilty Gear there, and improved at Super Street Fighter II Turbo. We had a small, dedicated community, but it was not enough to make up for the lack of customers that had once filled the shotgun-style arcade. The only reassurance left after the demise of Gunther's was that there was nothing left for us to lose anymore.

This was until I moved to California in 2009 and arcade death, it seems, would join me on the West Coast. Denjin Arcade, Arcade Infinity, Family Fun Arcade and even the relatively young Southtown Arcade in San Francisco have all closed since that time, and now Super Arcade teeters on the verge of collapse as well. None of the stories of these arcades are identical, each having its own successes and failures over the years, but they are all victims of the same underlying factors.

By now everyone who plays fighting games knows the basic story of the collapse of the arcade industry in the 1990s, and for those who have not it's a pretty short story. The Cliffs Notes version is that foot traffic in arcades decreased as game cost increased and operators no longer could make ends meet. It's a sad story of modern economics catching up to an industry that never future-proofed itself, but since then many fighting gamers have tried to rejuvenate the industry through opening arcades or even helping out surviving local havens. Some, like Ryan "Fubarduck" Harvey's Arcade UFO in Austin, Texas, still survive but many such as the aforementioned Southtown Arcade in northern California have become victims of the very community they tried to support.

The sad truth is that fighting gamers are no better than any other average arcade customer, and believing that they can and will support an arcade is not only incorrect but inviting economic hardships. When I moved to Long Beach in 2009, I was shocked that games at almost every arcade were only a quarter to play, and even the new games like Street Fighter IV were at most 50-cents. It was an amazing thing to have so much value passed on to the players here in Southern California, but as time went on I realized the only reason the games were so cheap is that people would bitch, moan and simply not go to the arcade if they cost more. And it was killing the arcades.

Denjin, Arcade Infinity and Family Fun Arcade were all losing money when they went out of business, regardless of any extenuating factors that affected their closures. This is because they all tried to support a community of people who could not comprehend that a game costing thousands of dollars cannot be supported by quarters. In the 30 years since Donkey Kong cost a quarter every price in America has been affected by inflation, except apparently arcade games. It does not take a business major to realize that is simply an untenable situation, given that it would then take 20,000 games of Street Fighter to pay for a machine that cost $5,000. And the cost of games is only rising each and every month.

Take Round 1 Bowling and Amusement, which opened in Los Angeles County in 2010. Just to be able to operate games such as Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and DJ Max Technika the business has had to invest in dedicated Internet service for the titles, which must always be online, as well as the infrastructure to provide that service while not looking like a trashy establishment. This is on top of the fact that these games already cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase. Many players have scoffed at the higher prices to play games at R1, with Tekken for example costing one dollar to play, but it is these prices that have allowed the arcade to continue to purchase all the newest games. This has included games that cater to niche communities, such as Dance Dance Revolution X3 for rhythm gamers and Chaos Code and The King of Fighters XIII: Climax for fighting game players. But still players do not want to pay.

It's very easy for many players to point to the current economic situation in the United States and their own money concerns when arguing about the price of arcade games, but then perhaps they should remove themselves from the conversation. While a business is always thankful for every customer it can get, the five dollars a small group of fighting gamers are each going to spend in a one-week period cannot be the deciding factor of game prices. If a player becomes unwilling to go to the arcade simply because a 25-cent game of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike became a 50-cent game, it's unlikely he was going to be making much of an economic impact in the first place.

Whether players choose to patronize an arcade is always an option left up to them. Sometimes a person cannot justify spending the money to play arcade games, and that is completely understandable. It is definitely frustrating when a game costs so much that it's hard to improve because you run out of money so quick. But what's not understandable is trying to hold arcade operators hostage because players don't want to pay a reasonable modern sum to play games and then lamenting the loss of each and every arcade as it dies a slow death. There are definitely many outside forces that have hurt and crippled arcades across America, but perhaps it's time the players started including themselves in those problems.

Cognitive Dissonance is an editorial series by IPLAYWINNER editor Paul "SuperFX" Dziuba. Views from this piece are not representative of IPLAYWINNER as a whole.