As visitors walk down House of TARG’s long staircase, they’re greeted by beeps and boops, and the flashing lights of brightly coloured pinball machines and video games in use by players young and old.
In an era when gaming is dominated by at-home online entertainment and on home consoles, arcades such as House of TARG offer an in-person experience that customers find important judging by the number of customers. Call it the arcade allure.
For TARG owner Mark McHale’s, his deep passion for arcades began in childhood.
“Arcades were a pivotal part of growing up,” he told Capital Current. “It was such a strong part of our social structure, where we would go on the weekends and hang out with friends.”
McHale says an arcade’s atmosphere is something a video game can’t replicate and he says he wants to pass on that feeling to those who didn’t experience arcades during their peak.
“When you walk in and there’s flashing lights and there’s the sounds of the arcade, there’s an atmosphere, there’s a vibe, there’s a feeling that’s really special,” said McHale. “It’s interesting to see that the new generation has the same wide-eyed, open-jawed [reaction to arcades]. They love it just as much as we did.”
House of TARG is an arcade, pinball and music venue that has been a staple of Old Ottawa South for more than a decade. It hosts weekly all-you-can-play arcade days, concerts and monthly pinball tournaments. TARG and other Ottawa arcades such as Funhaven and Ottawa Pinball Arcade operate in a digital world. With the video gaming industry projected to be worth $455 billion US this year, the landscape is rapidly changing, presenting new challenges for these venues.
Adam Pratt, the editor-in-chief of the Arcade Heroes blog, says that the heavy output of the video game industry can mean arcades are ignored.
“There’s so many video games out there […] they have thousands and thousands of games that get released, and so that’s where it’s easy for just a few games released every year in the arcade business to get overlooked,” said Pratt, who also owns Arcade Galactic in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Pratt says arcade game developers are looking for ways to engage consumers in ways that video games cannot.
“[Racing games] draw you in because you don’t get a stick shifter on a game pad. Sure, you can go up with your thumb, but it’s not the same feeling as having that, plus foot petals, plus having a steering wheel that actually vibrates and pushes back at you,” Pratt says. “And so those aspects are one of those kind of baked-in ideas as to what makes a successful arcade game.”
Evan Posner, a student at Concordia University, recently visited House of TARG, and says that while he games mostly on his XBOX, he enjoys being in the arcade setting.
“I think people are just tired of sitting in their rooms and playing XBOX. This is a way where people can get out and be social. And it’s different than being social on a microphone and sitting in your room. It feels different playing on a physical machine,” Posner says.
As for the future of arcade gaming in Ottawa, McHale is optimistic, stating that with the community he’s seen supporting House of TARG, he doesn’t foresee any slowing down.
“[House of TARG] has been become such a part of the community. And that blows our mind because we just set out to do something that we loved and to bring something back that hadn’t existed for a while.”
