Creator Con 2016: An Interview With Popup Arcade’s Kreston Shirley.
Popup Arcade (click here for info):
Any veteran gamer worth their high score(s) and bragging rights has lent thought to the glory days of gaming with friends. As a gaming enthusiast, I felt I was the only person who actually missed the local couch co op in gaming history. But from visiting Popup Arcade’s booth at Creator Con 2016 I happened to not be the only one. Witnessing them in action, my dreams for a return to that cooperative environment, turned into reality.
–Popup Arcade brings together people who (still) enjoy playing video games locally on one screen. Featuring local multiplayer games ranging from racing, to first person shooters like Call of Duty, E-sports, and classic titles like Street Fighter V (although I’m a Tekken player…just fyi).
Popup Arcade’s mission is to provide a cooperative community and service for different events in the DC Metro area to have a local gaming aspect attached, giving new life to the modern arcade.
Focusing on the environment of public video game arcades from retro to current; Popup brings back childhood memories to any millennials that grew up in the era of gameplay features like the multitap, optional bots in multiplayer matches (and not just black ops), and one of my personal favorites; beating the main campaign with your best friend via split-screen. These are just a few of the forgotten treasures from glory days of true cooperative gameplay. Admit it you still remember the many, many Halo parties you’ve attended with forty of your best friends all stashed in one cramped house or basement, endless supplies of mountain dew provided from one of your friends’ unlucky parents, pizza, pubescent body odor, more pizza, and the ceremonial ding dong ditching…ok maybe not that last one!
That environment of playing with your friends, in the same room, on the same or multiple systems, is the great divide in today’s gaming culture. The industry has slowly moved towards an isolationist mindset when it comes to social gaming.
This new generation of consoles and games place a great deal of red tape upon gamers who just want to play with a friend on a single screen. Transferring physical aspects of gaming in a socially digital separatism with substitutions like connecting through mobile apps, single use codes, or features like share play as seen via the PS4. All seems to be a classic example of treating the symptoms and not the cause: Experiencing a game with your friends together in one place.
The player behind the controllers at Popup Arcade is Kreston Shirley.
Kreston Shirley. Owner at Popup Arcade.
Having a really great conversation on the nostalgia of playing games with friends, I got a chance to chat with Kreston about how Popup Arcade is an alternative movement in the face of Solo online gaming. Additionally Kreston provides some unique insight on Popup Arcade, the history and future of gaming, and where popup plans to take things. There’s still some hope on the horizon for others like myself who want to see a return to the physical aspects of gaming.
Kreston also works full-time as Web Developer for the Federal Government in the USAID. His mobile arcade is an effective alternative to providing that nostalgic gameplay environment in an industry set on substitute isolation for higher profits.
How do you see Popup Arcade influencing /bringing a shift back to that cooperative split screen environment with games?
“Mainly reminding people it is still fun to play games with people around you. We’re providing the outlet for the millennial core/casual demographic who still enjoy the experience of playing games together and also having fun! There’s no arcade anymore, so Popup is trying to fill that void…there is demand out there for it.”
Tell me about your gaming parties you started in college while at Florida AMU?
“The idea started in college, where I saw people mostly playing games like NBA 2K or Madden …which to me are some of the most boring games. I knew there had to be other gamers who enjoyed playing Halo, I just had to find them. From that I decided to start a Halo club in my dorm by passing around flyers on campus to other core gamers that I met. We eventually set up LAN parties in various dorm rooms, which later evolved into the FAMU video game club on campus. Establishing our main staple of game nights every Friday night at the Rattlers Den on campus, from 8pm to whenever it closed. Which I did for the remainder of college.
I really wanted to continue doing gaming events in DC area. So I started connecting with different venues to organize different gaming events, collected more and more equipment and from there started making it more official.”
What sort of events do you focus on?
“We’ve done a wide variety of events, some don’t have to be involved with video games specifically, but the demographic I network with is millennials. Collaborating with events like Technoir, the whole event was connecting young black entrepreneurs in the DC tech scene. We’ve done interactive art shows, at the Blind Whino, an event space/art studio, where artists would paint different pieces related to video games then people would be able to play those games throughout the venue. And tech events…most are in the art/tech scenes. Our goal is to branch out to more diverse events in pop culture.”
What’s some of your favorite games?
“My top five are: The Halo series, Street Fighter, Mario Kart 64, Bayonetta, and Starfox 64.”
Where do you see the future of gaming headed, do you feel VR is too soon or the right choice, will it give people the ability to interact like in times past?
“VR is going to be a huge aspect of gaming going forward, I can see Popup tailoring events around VR. Or the Internet of Things. Where having your everyday devices talk to each other. For example having a smart fridge or lights, turning your whole living room into a creative space that you can talk to or interact with in an app. I think gaming is gonna interact with a lot of those sorts of devices in the future. I think these are the two frontiers that gaming is headed towards.”
How and why do you think this isolationist trend started?
“I think it was mainly a financial incentive for people to buy more consoles. Xbox Live provided a new frontier for gamers to connect around the world, and through that Microsoft and Sony saw opportunity to push more consoles. Where in the past one friend might have had a SNES system or another friend had a Playstation to play. Also a technological incentive being able to play globally. I think as a byproduct the isolationism just sort of happened. A big key factor in that is EA when a lot of their IP’s like NFS, Burnout, games like Battlefield, stopped supporting local multiplayer.”
What do you think is a solution? Do you think Indie games are one?
“Yeah I think indie game developers and games like Counterfall and Rocket League, center around the couch multiplayer aspect. Indie games are still a new frontier and the developers behind them really value the local multiplayer aspect because a lot of them grew up in that era. I believe the next wave of triple A games will support local multiplayer, considering the huge backlash after Halo 5 with them not supporting local multiplayer anymore. The indie game scene is really putting pressure on the industry.”
Games like The Division, Destiny, Tom Clancy’s Wildlands, and Far Cry. Do you feel these are viable alternatives that may help shift the trend?
“Yeah I think they definitely supplement for sure, but at the end of the day it’s still not the same as sitting down with a friend doing a coop mission together…it makes a lot of sense for those types of games. It’s definitely it’s own genre, but there’s no equal to it. There’s nothing emphasizing local multiplayer anymore in MMO games, it’s not balanced.”
Following the success of Creator Con 2016 Kreston shared Popup gathered a lot of positive feedback from parents and students alike. With many parents really wanting to see an opportunity for Popup Arcade to do summer workshops!
Thinking of hosting a retro gaming birthday party, or setup a local street fighter or sports tournament? Contact Kreston@PopupArcadeDC.com for your next event! They have the all the equipment along with providing a family friendly environment
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