Rise and Fall of Coin-Op Videogames - VAPS Follows

mclemore

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I posted today about some site updates, including a soft launch of parts/for sale wanted additions to VAPS:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?p=1494754#post1494754


One of the interesting things I did was to plot the number of unique coin-op videogame entries by years on a graph and then plot a line for how many of these games were owned by at least one VAPS member.

It shows the rise and fall of the coin-op Videogame industry. I was actually a tad surprised about how consistent the graph is in regards to how many of the games are owned by our members in relation to games released over time.

It's also interesting the release of new game titles didn't drop much with the crash of the early-mid 1980s, though starting dropping like a rock once the dot-com/NASDAQ bubble broke in 2000/2001.

We've traditionally been missing some of the most recent releases in the database, which may pull down the graph a tiny bit, though we've added a lot of the missing entries the last year.

freq.png
 
That's actually quite freaky how those 2 lines parallel each other. It's like we knew. Except for 1978. That's when the 'video boom' really began. What happened there? The graph shows a pretty sharp drop, followed by a meteoric rise.
 
What would be interesting is a plot of Units Sold for the years. While there might have been more unique titles, the Qty may have been drastically lower after the crash.

Obviously that would be a difficult task to do since those numbers are not easy to come by.
 
A whole lot more games were made in the glory days, and a lot more people played them and want to collect them now I don't find this graph surprising at all.
 
The graph gets a tad more interesting when 'VAPS Member Games' is broken up by whole games/cabinets vs. board sets:

freq2.png


And there is the question as to number of units actually produced during these years. While classic titles appeal to collectors more than modern ones often due, the following class does clearly reflect the boom beginning at the end of the 1970s, followed by the crash in 1983:

freq3.png


I've added a tad more commentary on this page: http://www.arcade-museum.com/members/statistics/videogame-title-frequency.php


In other news, no surprises hear, but we have VAPS members from 70 countries, with good coverage around the world except in the Middle East, Africa, and Central America:

vaps-map.png


Ok...so someone has been playing around with graphing today...
 
Question.... how long has VAPS been in existence and how do you have VAPS data from the 70's and 80's?
 
I know of at least one player/owner/hobbyist/CRT-specialist in Paupa New Guinea.

Question.... how long has VAPS been in existence and how do you have VAPS data from the 70's and 80's?

I think that it is titles made in those years.


The graph gets a tad more interesting when 'VAPS Member Games' is broken up by whole games/cabinets vs. board sets:

freq2.png

You can definitely pick out the JAMMA era.
 
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That's an awesome set of graphs there.

I think it's pretty sweet that there are people even in Africa, India and a lot of other countries collecting games... At least that are registered...

wonder if there are any straw huts with games in them? mud floors?
 
Those Graphs are really interesting.
And it can be seen from the graph that the midd 80's to early 90's was an awesome time in the arcade even though most members on this board and others in the arcade scene keep moaning about the golden age (late 70's to early 80's) but the graph shows there was NO golden age that short!! You all grew up and lost interest but arcade games were still being produced and alive and kicking, A Street Fighter C.E will not apeal to Star wars die hards but remember that they equaly succesfull, i think the SF II C.E was even more succesfull.

I never registered my boards/pcb's and my games to Vaps, to be honest I have no clue on what Vaps is and hoe it works.
Cabs I have 4, two are dedicated and boards I think like 15
 
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Yeah that is interesting. I've always been fascinated by charts and graphs too. So I did some number crunching as well:

freqz.png
 
Someone get a damn game to Greenland!

I think we actually used to have a Greenland entry. We definitely had several from Antartica but they got deleted for inactivity years ago. They were valid though...I checked the IP addresses at the time.

Question.... how long has VAPS been in existence and how do you have VAPS data from the 70's and 80's?

I change the text on the graph to include "date of manufacturer" and re-ran the script so it should be more clear now.

...

I never registered my boards/pcb's and my games to Vaps, to be honest I have no clue on what Vaps is and hoe it works.
Cabs I have 4, two are dedicated and boards I think like 15

www.arcade-museum.com/vaps/ awaits you...

Yeah that is interesting. I've always been fascinated by charts and graphs too. So I did some number crunching as well:

It's amazing how much I loved Zaxxon when it came out and how hard a time I have getting into it now...
 
Ok, lets see a chart with it by Manufacturer.

For example: Number of Unique games made per Year by Atari vs Williams vs Taito, etc..

Would be interesting to see who was still going strong and who dropped off...
 
Ok, lets see a chart with it by Manufacturer.

For example: Number of Unique games made per Year by Atari vs Williams vs Taito, etc..

Would be interesting to see who was still going strong and who dropped off...

I'm probably not going to get around to do that, although site search here could give anyone the data they needed.

But it did get me thinking on things dealing with manufacturers.

Here is the # of manufacturers in business each year:

videogame-manufacturers-yearly.png


And here are how many releases an average manufacturer released in any given year, provided they released at one. During the 1979-1982 boom the average actually went down as new manufacturers came out with releases faster than existing manufacturers expanded development. With the crash of 1983, smaller companies faded away and the average started climbing.

videogame-average-yearly.png
 
My understanding is, as far as actual production numbers (total number of machines manufactured by year, and number of known arcade locations by year), had a sharp decline around the time of the industry crash of 1983. Sure, the number of unique titles stayed solid, but the number produced of each machine dwindled, and I'm sure the number of actual arcade locations declined as well.

This brings up a couple of questions.. Does the VAPS database keep track of production information? Also, maybe VAPS could create a database of known arcades from years past to current?

Anyway, I found very interesting reading here about the production numbers, and it seems to coincide with the VAPS Member Total Game Ownership by year.

http://www.brentradio.com/ProductionNumbers.htm
 
I feel like my privacy has been invaded? Who gave you the right to play God?!?

Oh, what's this? a end-user privacy agreement? ... I don't remember reading this... oh, now that's interesting... hmm...

Alright then. Carry on.
 
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