Ignite your passion for gaming...and...drinking?

Gaming is an expansive hobby among both children and adults, yet at least in the United States, there has historically not been a lot of places for adults interested in gaming and other forms of geek culture to congregate and socialize. In the past there were arcades but with gaming shifting to home gaming consoles and personal computers, the need and desire to go out to play dwindled. In some developing countries, internet cafes had large rises to popularity with limited internet access and computers at home, with their popularity often persisting even after homes were brought online. 

”Speed Show: Drifting Internet Café,“ created and directed by Sun Xiaoxing, 2016. Photo credits: Zhou Nengneng

While internet cafes have seen fewer successes in the United States, gaming bars have found a few hits of success just like the arcade bars before and alongside them. The split focus allows for a community of adults to form who may not necessarily feel as comfortable in other social drinking venues or who just prefer to game and want to get together with friends. Beyond that, the drinks can be used as an alternative form of income rather than hourly charges which customers may not be as willing to pay if they already have the games at home. There’s also unique opportunities for combining the characteristics of bars and games and simply working to bring together a community.

Ignite Gaming Lounge

There has been a successful gaming lounge in Chicago for over 10 years, Ignite Gaming Lounge, which offers many types of games alongside basic snacks. It brought together the local gaming community, gathering many loyal fans, hosting events, and providing a place for gamers to connect. It has done well enough to open up a second, much larger, location in Skokie, IL, which added proper food and a full bar to their menu. This second location also has dedicated rooms for larger events, helping to further grow the local LAN and other meetup community. 

There are a lot of challenges to opening and running a gaming bar or lounge, but with the right amount of work, the rewards of doing so can quickly be seen. In the PAX East 2014 Panel, “The Rise of the Geek Bar”, the panelists shared their experiences with drinks and the interesting connections that can be made, with the possibilities being endless. The Ignite Gaming Lounge’s Skokie menu is the perfect example of this, not only being composed of low-poly pixel art depictions, but having cocktails like “Nuka Cola Quantum”, “Metroid Margarita”, “Ignite Potions”, and more. They have also expanded this to food items like the “Triple Kill” and “Mushroom Kingdom” pizzas or the “Buffalo Chocobo” sandwich. Everyone can appreciate creative drinks and food, but when it connects to a subculture you’re interested in, especially if it’s not commonplace, it can be quite exciting to see. As the panelists discussed, some customers would always come and try every drink when the menu changed. It also seems these creative concoctions may help broaden the scope of the bar to even larger audiences as one Google review for the Skokie location mentioned, “friends liked the gimmicky alcoholic drinks they served and had a great time”, helping to indicate the combination is key to the location’s success.

Excerpt from Ignite Gaming Lounge's drink menu 

The panelists also mentioned the enthusiasm they found patrons having when opening or with every event and how they all had ideas to share. The feedback on Ignite Gaming Lounge has been consistent with this, with people super excited when they see the venues, wanting to try everything out. This showcases the desire for these communities to form. The Attendee on Youtube created a video about their experience at Ignite Gaming Lounge in Skokie and offered insights into gaming lounges, explaining how they appreciate the local meetups and connections these types of venues enable. It seems this deep sense of a “geek” community has proved successful, with a panelist in the panel mentioning how he has never had a fight break or a controller stolen. 

Example event hosted at Ignite Gaming Lounge

In the end, it may be easy to leave games in the living room or office and just not partake in bar or club culture, but it would be great to not have to miss out on both. Gaming bars and lounges like Ignite Gaming Lounge and those owned by the panelists can help bridge these two previously separate worlds, providing new exciting and accepting spaces for not only gamers and geeks, but others as well. The excitement is there, as seen by Google reviews like “i really love ignite the vibe is just so chill” and “It's the best place to hang and geek out about your favorite whatever”. Just like the panelists said, start with your passion and what you feel comfortable with, “do that thing” and you will find other people that enjoy that thing as well. In this case, it’s a bunch of gamers and geeks also looking for a place to fit in.

Bloch, Matt, “PAX East 2014 Panel - The Rise of the Geek Bar” YouTube Video, 1:04:10, April 18, 2014, https://youtu.be/RDTjWGaaUfg

Alcohol and Video Games: A Cocktail of Potential

 The popular social settings have changed for every era in time, and all have tried to cater to universal audiences. Over the years, places such as diners, discotheques, jazz clubs, and raves have been the hot places to go to and socialize, especially at night when the younger demographic is raring to explore and have a good time. When it comes to popular spaces for geek culture, however, choices have remained overall limited. Back in the era of arcade cabinets, when Galaga and Miss Pac-Man dominated the market, the most exciting places for gamers and geeks to hang out with other like-minded individuals were in arcades, which luckily were all the rage at the time, so gamers had many choices of where they could go and play and meet new people. However, since then, even with the decline of arcade games, arcades still remained one of the only large public spaces where anyone could go in and play video games with friends or strangers. The introduction of home consoles also contributed to this in a big way, to the point where the best way to play games with friends was to get a multiplayer console and simply invite people over. After that, online compatibility was introduced, and gamers no longer had to be in the same room to play games with each other. Although an admittedly incredible feat which revolutionized multiplayer gaming and interaction, this did make for even more stagnation when it came to developing large public spaces for gamers. Going from arcades to split-screen co-op to online co-op made it so the only remaining spaces were either specifically organized gaming events, such as conventions or tournaments, or arcade sections of bowling alleys usually containing only Dance Dance Revolution or Pac-Man.

This does not even bring into consideration the tabletop RPG community, who have unfortunately been confined to private sessions in their own homes or the basements of their local game shop.

    In recent years, however, a new space has been created that attempts to combine the social pastimes of the general public and the gaming community: gaming bars. One of the most popular social lubricants for decades has been alcohol, and regardless of your stance on that, it is impossible to deny that much of the success of raves, clubs, and obviously bars is the combination of a fun social atmosphere and drinking. With the ever rising popularity of bars, especially with the current generation, some sought out to create bars with heavy gaming focus and elements, to give a newfound sense of community for this generation of gamers and geeks while keeping the mass appeal of a late-night bar.

This is not to say that video games have not existed in bars before. In 1971, an arcade game was installed in a bar near Stanford University, and Goldie’s Bar in 1981 had a test cabinet of Donkey Kong that ended up working majorly to its advantage after the massive success of the game. However, those were just bars with one or two arcade cabinets installed in the corner, where a patron could walk on over and play a game in relative solitude from the rest of the crowd. These new gaming bars fully embrace the theme of gaming, with it being not just the focus, but the main appeal. One gaming bar, 42 Lounge in Milwaukee, went even further by not just including several popular games like Street Fighter and Smash Bros, but also holding events for other facets of geek culture, like tabletop gaming, e-sports, and nights centered around shows and movies like Doctor Who, Harry Potter, or Star Wars.

Most of the owners of these arcade bars were inspired by all the things I mentioned above: creating a social space for a gaming audience but making it accessible to a wider demographic. One owner in particular mentioned the stereotypes surrounding gaming culture and nerdy spaces, and how adding the appeal of a bar to them would help to normalize them in today’s society and make them mainstays in social culture.

Regarding the stereotypes, they do absolutely have a point. Before, since arcades were obviously meant to serve a single purpose—house arcade games—only gamers (mostly boys) were expected to be populating them. Gaming culture as a whole being considered a breeding ground for lonely male misogynists by the general public has understandably damaged the general outlook on gaming spaces, and it is obviously not a completely misguided point of view considering the toxicity pervasive in the culture. However, these new gaming bars work to create a more accepting space for gamers and non-gamers alike, focusing more on the more socially comfortable environment that a bar provides for many and letting people explore their interests with like-minded people they are likely to get along with. One owner described it as a “showcase of how far the gaming community has come, where stereotypical and non-stereotypical gamers could coexist with each other and have a good time bonding over shared interests.”

Unsurprisingly, reception for most of these gaming bars has been overwhelmingly positive. Adult gamers seem to be very satisfied with having a new, hot social location where they can hang out on a Friday night, drink, and meet new people, while also being able to partake in an activity that is more comfortable for them. Most gaming bar owners were surprised by the popularity of their bars, especially with most of their advertising being done through word of mouth in the beginning. All patrons, regardless of if they chose to game or not, were welcomed as long as they were somehow contributing to the revenue of the bar through drinks or beverages.

It seems as though the gaming bar has in many ways accomplished what it set out to do, create a common safe space for gamers and non-gamers to interact and explore new interests. More and more of these bars are opening up in cities, with more entrepreneurs wanting to explore their own vision of an adult gaming space for the masses.

Works Cited

Bloch, Matt, “PAX East 2014 Panel - The Rise of the Geek Bar,” YouTube Video, 1:04:10, April 18, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDTjWGaaUfg.

Bass, Penelope. “The Evolution of Arcade Bars.” Imbibe Magazine, August 26, 2020. https://imbibemagazine.com/arcade-bars/.

Followers from one streaming platform don’t always mix well with another

In August 2019, a little over two years ago, streamers Ninja and Shroud signed an exclusive contract with the Microsoft-owned streaming platform Mixer. Their contracts were rumored to be $30 million and $10 million respectively (Patel 2020). On July 22nd, 2020, about a year later, Mixer shut down services. Insiders claimed that the two pushed for and received a full payout for their contracts, though I could not find a credible source for this claim. What I can verify is that these contracted streamers were able to move on to other platforms with relative ease and began negotiations for new exclusive-contracts.

This happy ending does not extend to everyone who was a streamer on Mixer. Leckakay, who now streams on Twitch, was in the middle of streaming on Mixer when she received the news that Mixer was shutting down (D’Anastasio 2020). In fact, the majority of Mixer partners, streamers, and viewers found out at the same time. It was in the form of a tweet sent out on June 22nd, 2020 by Mixer’s official account. They gave streamers a one month warning that they either had to move to their new partner, Facebook Gaming, or figure something else out.

(An picture of a red stand-mixer)

Streaming in Character

               The article The Affective Labor and Performance of Live Streaming on Twitch.tv looks at some of what streaming entails, from how streamers interact with their audience, to the basic idea of doing something that, in theory, is simply intended as entertainment for work and labor.

“The mere presence of their marginalized bodies disrupts the norm”: The Twitch Hate Raids and Discursive Resistance from Black Streamers