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LBX Collective
The LBX Show #41 - Dog Days of Summer, Association News, Google Ad tips, and more!
Sponsored by Intercard!
On this week's episode of The LBX Show we share new industry association partnerships and market developments during the traditional summer slowdown of the dog days of August. Kevin Williams, Adam Pratt, and Chuck DeMonte join host Brandon Wiley to explore the latest FEC innovations and marketing strategies.
• Fun Across America releases episodes on Albatross, the world's largest indoor mini-golf course, as well as America's largest candy store
• IATP partners with ROLLER as preferred point-of-sale provider for members
• IAAPA announces collaborations with Licensing International and Study Academy USA for educational platforms
• Intercard forms partnerships with GateMaster Technologies and GoTab for integrated arcade operations
• TimeZone continues expansion with new locations in Indonesia and New Zealand
• Mexican cinema chain CineMex upgrading facilities with "cinetainment" components
• Fair Games opens second carnival-themed competitive socializing venue in London
• Kiddleton (owned by Genda) begins converting former NEN arcade locations
• VR entertainment sector sees expansion with Zero Latency, Sandbox VR, and Front Grid installations
• Resident Evil 2 Deadshot arcade game undergoes location testing in UK
• Fast and Furious Arcade being ported to home consoles despite still being in production
• Search campaigns deliver highest ROI for FEC Google Ads compared to other campaign types
All right, well, welcome everybody to the LVX show for August 17th 2025. I'm your host, Brandon Wiley, and we have a great show lined up for you. Today. We're back to sort of our normal everyday segments here or every week segment. So we're going to kick things off with a fairly robust news. You should know there's a number of things to talk about here, and then we're going to roll into the summer slowdown with Open and Shut with Kevin Williams. Basically, it's a number of things to talk about here, and then we're going to roll into the summer slowdown with open and shut with kevin williams. Uh, basically a slumber. So summer slowdown version, there's just a few or less openings and closings than you would expect, but that's typically around the august time frame. We'll talk a little bit about that. And then we're going to hear from adam pratt. Yeah, he's back this week and he's going to share about resident evil 2's new deadshot arcade, as well as in Fast and Furious's arcade edition on Arcade Corner. And then we're going to close out with Chuck DeMonte. He's going to talk about running the right kind of Google ads on Promo Pro Tips.
Speaker 2:But first thing we've got is some news. You should know All right. So first up on News you Should Know is Fun Across America. These are good friends of mine and good friends of the LBX Collective and the LBX Show as well, and they've got a couple of new episodes out. We don't talk about this every time, but they just did some back-to-back episodes here and these are some fun ones.
Speaker 2:So the first one is actually about Albatross, so that's titled. I Tried New Jersey's Insane New Mini Golf Course. This is Albatross. We talked about Albatross on this show before. We've also talked a little bit about it on SoundOff. They've been coming for a long time and they are now the largest indoor mini golf course in the world and Albatross is insane. It is a massive facility we talked about. You can go and listen to some of my coverage. I'm not going to go into. You know my thoughts on Albatross and what they've built, but their mini golf course is incredible and they've done a great job. It's about a 25 minute watch on Fun Across America's YouTube channel and so definitely go and check that out. And then they also did two weeks ago. They also did two weeks ago they did a candy store. It's the Inside America's largest candy store, so definitely want to go check that one out as well. It's another about 20-minute watch, 20-minute plus watch there, and so you can always just go check them out on.
Speaker 2:Funacrossamericacom is their website. So again, funacrossamericacom or you just Google on YouTube, fun Across America. Check out all their videos. Tons of great content. They do a great job going around really showcasing not just what is going on there, but also they do a little bit of interviews, sometimes with the GMs or some of the people that are there, and they also dig into some of the food too. So when we do our reveals or our behind our doors, we don't typically get into the food aspect of it. We really just more look at the operations and do a tour of the facility. They really get into it, and so it's a great thing. So definitely want to go check out Fun Across America, all right, so there's a number of different things coming out about the associations.
Speaker 2:Apparently, associations started to fill in some of the dead gaps in news this summer, and so the first one is IATP. So the International Adventure and Trampoline Park Association has announced a new partnership with Roller. So this is a new collaboration that they've done, basically naming Roller as the preferred point of sale provider for all IATP members. Obviously there are other points of sale out there that work with trampoline parks and adventure parks and family entertainment centers as well, but specifically IATP has selected Roller as their official point of sale provider and so basically if you go along with Roller, if you adopt Roller's point of sale, you'll get an exclusive heavily discounted rate during your first year of IAT membership. So you have to obviously be an IATP member, but then you get a heavily discounted rate on your Roller point of sale installation during that first year of your time together between the two. And then you also gain access to if you are an IATB member and this is assuming you have a trampoline park or an adventure park and you could be an IATB member. But if you do, then you have access to annual webinars as well, led by the Roller team. They're focusing on enhancing the guest experience, along with just different featured spotlights in their newsletter. So definitely again, would highly you know if you if you are and you you know are ITP member, you go onto ITP's website, iatporg, and just check it out, or it's I think it's IndoorTrampolineParkorg, just make sure that you know it's going on there.
Speaker 2:I'm also going to be a speaker at their upcoming on a panel at one of their upcoming, at their upcoming expo here in just a few weeks in September in Maricopa, arizona, at Auction Casino and Resort, and so, again, if you're going to be attending that, it's going to be a great panel, great content going on there, so looking forward to seeing all of you there. All right, iapa has been busy as well, so they announced a partnership relationship with Licensing International. So IAPA has again made this announcement with Licensing International, so IAPA has again made this announcement with Licensing International. They're one of the leading trade organizations for the global brand licensing industry, which is obviously massive, and so they consider this to be a really obviously big deal, and the goal is here to basically take advantage of the fact that, as we've been talking about also in this show and on sound off the uh, we're seeing a lot more IP being brought into not just arcade games, but into attractions, full venues as well, leveraging IP. We're seeing, you know, the Netflix houses. Obviously that's being run by Netflix themselves, but we're seeing Mattel and Hasbro and other brands uh, you know, along with other Disney brands and, and you know, merlin has been doing this for a long time, obviously with the Lego relationships and the Ripley not Ripley, but the Madame Tussauds relationships and everything else going on there. So there's a lot of IP in this industry already, and so they've just formalized that, and so, through the partnership, licensing International and Apple will co-develop content, cross-promote key events and highlight thought leadership across both industries, and so their belief is that members are generally going to benefit from expanded educational offerings, access to new global platforms and the chance to engage with emerging trends that are shaping the future of entertainment, ip and guest experiences.
Speaker 2:That's what they say. So this is in quotes, and so obviously, as Jacob Wall, who's the president and CEO of IAPA, says, the attractions are no longer just about rides or exhibits. They're about creating unforgettable moments, often powered by beloved brands, and so they feel like this is a great alignment here, and so the collaboration will roll out later this year, with details on initiatives and events planned to be shared at a later date. I would imagine that, as Expo gets closer, we're going to hear a lot more about that. So that is the new relationship there with Leipzig International, and then we've got another partnership that I have announced, which is just recently.
Speaker 2:They announced that they're partnering with Study Academy USA to launch the next generation e-learning platform for the attractions industry professionals. So this is basically Study Academy USA is launching a customized learning management system. This is something that IAP has really been wanting to do for a long time, and so the new digital platform will have a robust library of industry-focused e-learning courses and this is going to help from enhancing food and beverage operations, elevating guest experience, promoting safety, developing leadership skills, et cetera. So the whole goal is to be able to provide education to not just frontline team members but also all the way to senior executives. And they say in quotes at IAPA we are deeply committed to advancing professional development education as a cornerstone of the attractions industry's future. This is from Michael Shelton, who's the COO of IAPA, and he said this partnership with Study Academy USA reinforces our dedication to delivering accessible, high-impact learning tools that help our members. So launching later this year so in the fall of 25, the new platform, they say, will offer a curated catalog of industry-specific e-learning content. It will be co-developed coursework from IAAPA and Study Academy USA, so they're actually co-developing that content Live training integration, as well as in CEU tracking, which is really nice. So if you have the ICAP or the ICAE designation, so I have the ICAE, which is the IAAPA Certified Attractions Professionals or Attractions Executive designations. You have to do continuing education as well, and so you have to track your CEUs. Typically, it's been done individually and you have to manage all of this yourself, so it's nice that they actually have that integrated and built in, and then real-time performance reporting and customized learning paths that you can set up as well. So, anyway, this sounds exciting. Looking forward to seeing more about this when it rolls out. But that is just the latest association news that has been announced in just the last two weeks.
Speaker 2:All right, and then, last we've got here, intercard has announced two new partnerships with both GateMaster Technologies and GoTab. So the integration with GateMaster is basically making sure that they can have the arcade and game card functionality built directly into GateMaster's point of sale and mobile tools. So basically making it really easy to streamline operations so that operators can now manage every aspect of their inner card system adding balances, time play, comping bonuses all that's directly available now through GateMaster Mobile, comping bonuses all that's directly available now through GateMaster Mobile. So that eliminates the need to switch between multiple systems, makes it easier for your staff to serve guests, et cetera, and run all the arcade operations. So that's now. If you're a GateMaster user or been looking at a point of sale system making a change, you now know that GateMaster has that ability to manage all of Intercard directly through their mobile system. And then GoTab is as teamed up.
Speaker 2:Make reloading game cards as easy as ordering a burger or a drink. So the GoTab company said. Instead of making guests swipe their card or pull out a wallet every time they want to add funds to their Intercard game card, gotab now allows staff to be able to add value directly to guests' open tab. So they've got an open tab. They've got a, you know, food order. They can now add a card balance to their card directly. So another pretty cool thing. So no extra hardware, no extra steps, and it can be done from any server or bartender using their handheld point of sale device. So you know, hey, their parents are sitting there, they've got a tab open for their drinks. Kid comes up, wants an extra, wants an extra game card. You know, some more time on their game card or whatever. More credits on their game card. Then you know they can just do it right from their bar tab. So pretty cool relationship there and partnership with GoTab All right.
Speaker 2:That wraps up our News. You Should Know Coming up after a quick break. We've got Open and Shut with Kevin Williams and we'll dive right into it. Intercard is the only cashless system designed, developed and manufactured all under one roof. They introduced cashless technology to the amusement industry and have been leading the way for over 30 years. Cashless systems from Intercard increase customer spending, guest satisfaction and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is so proud to be serving the amusement industry and if you aren't already part of their global family of customers, they hope you will become one soon.
Speaker 4:Hey, a big hello to everyone. To this latest open and shut. How are we doing, Brandon?
Speaker 2:Doing good, you know, just on the road here in Chicago, Roscoe Village, in a new altitude trampoline park that opened about a month ago. So just doing a little bit of filming here for IntelliPlay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we've mentioned that facility a couple of times, I think in open and shut. Well, anyway, let us jump in. And so the first lineup, know, not as crowded, uh, as has been in previous weeks. Um, we're at that point, uh, where we are recording this in august, where, if you're going to have opened your facility, you would have opened it by now. Um, those facilities that are opening are either ones that are late or have been previously scheduled, or are newcomers. But anyway, let's jump in.
Speaker 4:And our friends at Time Zone have really been rolling out. They're up to 302 facilities within the Indonesian or the oceanic peninsula, where they are. They've been expanding in india, as a number of trains have been doing. You may notice that as a trend that we're talking about today and, uh, you know, 24 000 square going into a mall is something worth talking about. But we also have, uh, them shouting from the hilltops that they put a 1,200 square meter facility into New Zealand. Now, I was of the opinion that they had maybe filled up this part of New Zealand with facilities, but obviously there's room for a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's remarkable to me the sheer number of locations that TimeZone has and I guess even the parent company Teague above it. But yeah, I mean, I guess you can just shove in 10,000 square feet somewhere and still apparently make some money in those areas those areas.
Speaker 4:Now the parent company of TimeZone also owns Embed and they also own LAI, or should I say are controlling ownerships of that as well as their automated locker operation. So they'll want to keep an eye on at the moment because there's been a lot of talk about the restructuring of the operation. But it's interesting to see that on the entertainment facility side they're still actively rolling them out, moving on and we have a Mexican CineTainment facility, cinemex interesting name the operation, or CineMx, I think, would be how it would be pronounced if I put my brain in gear. The interesting thing here is that it is an existing facility being upgraded with a new IMAX as well as what we would call a synattainment operation going in there. Quite a professional-looking facility from the fly-through that we had. There are 13 cinemas in their chain and it looks like all of these will be upgrading and upscaling towards having an entertainment component.
Speaker 2:It's interesting to see that even it's not just a us trend to see. You know us and I would say north, north america, us and canada, trying to see these cinemas evolving to folks entertainments, that we're now seeing it in the rest of north america and mexico. But then you know we're going to see it, I'm sure in other places as well I.
Speaker 4:I think, uh, at the end of this year there will be a reckoning amongst the cinema sector. We're due to have an independent cinema theatre operator conference taking place and there will be some fallout about that, but we'll deal about that. Closer to the time, a venue that I had the opportunity to touch physically, the opening of Fair Games. Fair Games is a social entertainment or competitive socializing venue that borrows its theme on a carnival or fairgrounds or operation. They have a number of uniquely constructed carnival game experiences as well as a F&B food and cocktail environment.
Speaker 4:They are in a location just underneath the site of where the F1 Arcade is. They are a strong-arm throw away from a putt shack, so they're in a part of the City of London where there are a number of competitive socialising venues attempting to generate interest. They have now two facilities open. They've received some seed investments to roll out the concept, so it'll be interesting to see how many more that they're going to roll out in the next couple of months to secure their position in the market yeah, I just hope that they don't roll out too quickly in too many saturated parts of at least london.
Speaker 4:I think this, uh, your game gets, given what they are, and get saturated pretty quickly given the type of attraction mix, so that they have walking upstairs and having a look at the audience at about five o'clock on a th at the F1 Arcade, it was clear that these facilities are doing business. Even during August, and you know, the F1 Arcade was doing business. The Puttshack just down the road was doing business. So I think it's theirs to lose if they can't generate the type of revenue that they want to achieve.
Speaker 4:Moving on and Kittleton, we are now beginning to see the impact of the acquisition of NEN by Genda. We are seeing now the rollout of facilities that are branded Kittleton. We've already seen a couple of Kittleton sites, but now these are Kittletons that are going out that would have been normally NEN's Sugar Hills or whatever their particular brand is. Now they're being dedicated as Kittletons and they're incorporating Kittleton crane components. It is the beginning. I'm not sure how many of the 15,000 locations that are run by NEN are going to flip over to becoming Kittleton's, but the process has begun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I believe it's Sugarloaf is what you were referring to, and yeah, it's a bummer. I'm not going to be able to go and check this out while I'm here. I'm only here for another few hours before I head back to the airport but it would be great to go and actually see physically, in person, a Kittleton location. I really only had a chance to see them remotely, and so the next time I'm through Chicago I'll definitely make a stop. There's also a camp which we've talked about before, not necessarily at Open and Shuts, but we've talked about it at SoundOffs and on LVX Show in general. We have a camp location right between Roscoe Village and Lincoln Park that I definitely want to make sure I get a chance to visit as well. Phenomenal retail attainments, and for more information on camp you can check out one of our past episodes.
Speaker 4:I'm interested. Next time I'm out in Chicago hopefully soon to get into Sea of K it to. But it's always good to try and revisit a facility after it's been open for a while and changed hands. But we will achieve that Moving on and an interesting concept or spin on an older idea. You have an activity park, a ball pit and climbing frame. You want to broaden your coverage so you turn it into an adult-only facility. So here we go, kick out the kids and drop in the adults, add alcohol and you're going to really have to clean that ball pit at the end of each session. This is not a unique idea but it is a growing trend where to try and jump onto the events and live the group hire market that you turn your ball pit active entertainment facility into an adult equivalent.
Speaker 4:I've kept tabs on two Funny, not a million miles away from where I'm recording this, there is a facility that survived, covid, and they all seem to have ball pits and they all seem to have canned cocktail drinks. But here we go, another one into the mix Moving on and we have some VR taking hold. Our friends at Excurius. They have their virtual reality, what I would call shared reality experience, where it's a group of people walking through an experience and it is a linear free roam kind of experience. They have their pyramid experience, they have their impressionists artists experience a museum-style event. They've just opened the latest of their facilities in shanghai. They have about 11 semi-permanent facilities dotted around uh and it is clear that this is definitely gaining momentum as a kind of replacement to the more traditional vr park yeah, I don't, you know, maybe a replacement to that park.
Speaker 2:I really think that, again, these standalone operations where you're seeing a just VR, vr, some headsets, is a little bit different than trying to create a whole projection mapped environment and each luminarium has a slightly different building structure et cetera, that they have to work around, where VR you can basically fit into any type of environment as long as you have enough space. I really wonder if and I'm curious what you're seeing here along this trend if you will see more of these immersive, quote-unquote museum experiences actually just augmenting an existing museum versus being standalone, so it becomes an attraction that's part of a museum or a science center.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head there. B so what makes this different to some of the other kinds of experiences? We're talking about a much larger throughput. You're talking about groups of 20, 30, or 40 going through these experiences that kind of is simultaneous or that would be popular to have next door to catchment. That already generates that. So you see these going next door to museums, to large throughput attractions or to malls.
Speaker 4:Yes, I see them not really as standalones but more as companion components to existing. And you know, as I go forward, I think that there are certain operators out there that were very dismissive of the smaller numbers that VR entertainment facilities were attracting, and looking at these competitive shared reality, large throughput venues is much more attractive to them. So if you were a museum owner, you would look at this a lot more than you would look at anything else. But, moving on, we also have a new opening in Germany from our friends at Zero Latency. We also have a new opening in Orlando from our friends at Sandbox VR. So you kind of see that we are kind of finding a, a pattern, a rhythm to the openings.
Speaker 4:These are free roaming vr environments. These are high level or high ticket price franchises being deployed and they're being dotted around what I would say is large throughput locations. How this is mirrored by the rest of the VR entertainment location-based entertainment market will be very telling. Is this a vampire? Are these venues going to be sucking the possible audience from the more traditional VR arcade offerings that are out there? We have yet to define, but there is definitely something happening or ruminating regarding the LBVR sector.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's definitely true, especially with Sandbox VR moving as quickly as they are, zero Latency has clearly been around for a long time and while they do franchise their own locations, they also obviously will go into or drop into existing locations as well, so you can add that system, additional attraction, to your big box FTC. On Sandbox VR, though I don't know much about this location there's no latency location in Germany, but certainly in Orlando. I think this will be an outlier for the group and the reason is you know, I think we've talked on this show about repeat visitation for platforms like sandbox vr and dropping into an orlando, florida, where you have so much tourism that you don't need to worry as much about repeat visitation that you can sometimes get misguided numbers and throughput numbers and usage numbers because of the location that you're in, and I think Orlando is going to be one of those outlier locations for this group.
Speaker 4:Well, as I said in the previous sound off, you know there was a vast number of territories handed over to franchisees and obviously a franchisor has felt that taking the Orlando ownership is worthwhile. I would agree with you that it's a very transient, non-repeat audience that they're going to be walking into. But from Sandbox's point of view, they don't really need to care about that too much because it's up to the franchisor to successfully achieve the numbers to keep on being a franchisor of their properties. I would argue that putting a Sandbox free-roaming VR facility on its own into this environment is throwing raw meat into the bear pit and I have a long enough memory to remember what happened to um niantic sorry, not niantic to a number of other uh vr free roaming wannbe's the void tried to establish something in orlando, even on disney property. Uh, and you know it is.
Speaker 4:It is a difficult market to just offer simple entertainment to when you're competing against resorts.
Speaker 4:But again, we will be keeping a very close eye on this and hopefully, while we're over for ialpa, we'll be able to stick our heads in Moving on.
Speaker 4:And another VR installation the Niagara Falls Entertainment Area Visitor Attraction Area has just added a new VR attraction to their mix, made by our friends at Front Grid. It is an interactive flying over the Niagara Falls collecting rings while in a virtual reality experience, interesting to see this happen. Congratulations to Front Grid who I know have been working very hard to get their attractions installed in venues where it is appropriate. And this kind of leads itself to what we were talking about regarding the other free roaming VR experiences that they're now pivoting more towards being used as an attraction than as a standalone entertainment offering attraction than as a standalone entertainment offering. Where we're going to go from this point and what type of developments and innovations we're going to see in the vr compared to what we're going to be seeing in the shared reality side of the business, uh, is going to be very pivotal and we're going to touch upon that a little bit in coming sound offs, but I know we're going to be touching a lot on that during the IELTS.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this is a great fit for ForteGrid's Paradrop attraction. I'm really a big fan of the mechanisms, the feeling that you get done with the Paradrop VR in the first place, and this is really a perfect fit. You're able to fly through, fly over Niagara and capture the different rings. I've seen some of the video for this and it does look like it's something interesting to augment your visit to Niagara Falls. And, having just been there on the Canadian side, on the New York side, the New York side definitely needs some additional attractions because it is not as visually spectacular as you get from the Canadian side. So I think this is a great fit and congratulations.
Speaker 4:Big congratulations to the team. Fingers crossed that they listened to the free consultancy. We wanted them to incorporate a giveaway or a takeaway component from the experience, now that they're pivoting more towards an attraction. You know you want that picture of you bouncing up and down wearing the headset while playing the game. We hope that they're incorporating a score component, just so there is some competition amongst the groups. Even if they're not going to return again to beat their score, at least they can joke with each other about who had the highest score. These are the elements that interactive, immersive entertainment needs to build upon, and fingers crossed that they've incorporated those bits into their new release.
Speaker 4:Anyway, kind of a short one. We've zipped through it. For those of you that haven't seen the Stinger Report or the Entertainment Social Arena popping up in their inbox for a while, please check your spam folder. We have some new issues going out in a couple of days' time. Remember that you can hear this Also. You can watch this as a video. Hear this as an audio. The same goes for the newsletter, and please supply us comments or any information about new openings that you want to pass on.
Speaker 2:Excellent, all right. Well, surprisingly short and concise. Open and shut. We shouldn't say concise, we're just short. Right, it's August, there's not a lot going on.
Speaker 4:It's.
Speaker 2:August, anyway, yeah.
Speaker 1:We'll see you on the next one, kevin. Have a good one, have a good one. Use real-time location data and customized marketing strategies to help brands like yours stand out. Radius can boost your foot traffic and build a loyal customer base. Plus, they're offering a complimentary local market analysis to show you exactly how they can help you grow. Curious, visit Radiusco and ask about your free market analysis. That's.
Speaker 2:R-A-Y-D-I-U-S dot C-O. All right, Well, coming up next we've got Adam Pratt with some Arcade Corner.
Speaker 3:Greetings everyone. It's Adam with Arcade Heroes for the Arcade Corner at the LBX Collective. I hope you've all been having a great August so far the dog days of summer, as it's known Arcade news has. It's generally inconsistent during the summertime, just because you can suddenly get big news and it seems like things are happening all over the place, and then it goes quiet for a while, and so that's kind of what it's been like recently. But we have enough to discuss here for a few minutes, first off being a location test which has garnered a lot of attention, and this would be one of those things where it was just silent and then it was like this massive thunderstorm just rolled through and then it went quiet again. But that's because during the summertime it's a perfect time really for different manufacturers to be testing out new games and manufacturers are always testing out games, as it were, but this one in particular, which I'll start playing here I guess we'll mute it just in case but this is Resident Evil 2, deadshot by Capcom and Bandai Namco Amusements.
Speaker 3:Now Capcom might feel like an oddity just because, well, yes, they were an arcade-only company at one point in time, like very early 80s, but once the NES came along. Then it was no longer that they started doing a lot of console ports and eventually they just focused entirely on console stuff. They still have a small arcade division in Japan which has popped in here and there with things on very rare occasion over the years, but for the most part they just haven't been very involved in game development. Now that's part of the reason why Bandai Namco's name is attached to this, because Bandai Namco still does have a very active arcade development division, and not just in Japan but elsewhere, and so in working with Capcom, they've taken the Resident Evil 2 remake, which came out around 2019, 2020, somewhere around there, and they're adapting it into this arcade game which you see here, which was filmed by Toby710. With arcades through a variety of different things, such as he's been a manager at different locations and such and a big contributor to the arcade scene, the arcade culture scene as well, and so he filmed this as it was on test at a Namco location in the UK. It has since been removed from test because it's garnered, I think, a lot more attention than Namco was hoping for, or they were more hoping just to see how it performed without a lot of attention to it.
Speaker 3:But that's always the challenge, really. In fact I think it's impossible and this is something that I sometimes have, I guess, not arguments, but discussions with different arcade manufacturers is I think some arcade manufacturers would love it if things could still be like it was back in the 80s and 90s, where you could put a game on test and nobody would really know about it. Like sure, you'd have a few people here and there playing the game, of course, but as far as anybody, as far as the public would know, it's like oh, those are just ramblings and rumors and such. But nowadays, with social media, it's really impossible for you to have something with as big a name as Risen Evil that has millions of fans, and having that go unnoticed and being able to just find out oh, this is how this would be, without anybody knowing about it. It's just not really feasible. But that's part of the discussions. Sometimes I almost feel argumentative at times where it's just like anybody who still thinks you can do a secret test on a game, particularly one that has a high profile license attached to it it's just you're being unrealistic that has no license to it, then chances are it will get mostly ignored, unless there's something about the game that's unique, then it can have a lot of attention put to it. But yeah, resident Evil, there's just no way, because there's just too many fans out there. And to this I mean one thing I always like to throw out with location tests, don't make a final judgment call. There's lots of things that could change about this. However, I think it's pretty clear that they're going to be using the Resident Evil 2 remake engine, which is very modern graphics. To me, this is one of the best looking games that will be in the arcade, even though the console game it's based on is a few years old. I'm not sure if they made some improvements to the graphics engine or not.
Speaker 3:One thing that I'm sure some operators might be wondering about is this amount of blood and violence is pretty intense. Like this is the most violent gory game that I've seen. Gracie arcade scene, except since maybe Carnival, which is right on brand with Resident Evil. Obviously this is not something intended for, say, chuck E Cheese's and certain family entertainment centers, but I do hope that they don't remove it entirely. I can't imagine that they might have a lower violence mode that may remove blood or change the color, like the original House of the Dead did that, where you could change it to purple, blood or black or a few different other colors Green, I think and so I could see them toning it down for certain locations, but not every location needs to do that. When I had a Carnival, I never actually had a complaint about it. I had it at its maximum violence and people loved it. It got played a lot, especially for a game from 1998. It did exceptionally well.
Speaker 3:And so now to this one. Just so you're aware, there is no release date for it yet. That's pretty rare with arcade games as it is. From what I've been told by Bandai Namco, it sounds like it's going to be a while, and so this probably won't even be at IAAPA 2025 here in November, and so it's most likely, if it passes testing and continues on and gets a full production release sometime in 2026. And we saw this with Goldstorm Pirates, where it took well over a year of testing before that actually hit production and ended up in arcades everywhere, which that just the news hit that that's now available worldwide. It had been released not long ago here in North America and now it's also available in Europe, and so if this looks like something that would be of interest to you. It's going to have to wait for a while Now in other arcade news.
Speaker 3:So I've mentioned Exa Arcadia before. They've had a couple of releases very recently A game, one called Eartheon, exalabel, and another one called Jam Jam and Jelly Excelente. Both of those games are what they call shoot-em-ups or some people call them shmups. In Japan they call them STGs for shooting game and just like you control a spaceship or some sort of craft and you're flying along blasting stuff and there's lots of bullets on the screen and so stuff like Raiden or Darius or Gradius, those are the types of games that those fit into. But those were recently made available to the X Arcadia platform. So if you have, say, like a retro arcade, a free play arcade, and you have players who are into those types of games, that can be worth looking into and adding to your collection.
Speaker 3:One thing let me pause this and let's jump to our next video that came along just yesterday or this week sorry week, sorry would be the surprise news that the is still in production. Game Fast and Furious Arcade by Raw Thrills, which only came out at the very end of 2023, is getting a port to all consoles except for the PC and the Nintendo Switch 2. It's kind of strange to me that they're doing it on the original Switch just because they're going to have to diminish the graphics quite a bit and even then it may still not run the best. Kind of like the Cruis'n Blast console port. It was passable and everything, but it certainly wasn't up to par with the arcade. Wasn't up to par with the arcade. So I assume this footage that they're showing here is from either the Xbox or the PlayStation 5.
Speaker 3:But this is surprising to me. I did a separate video about this and I have mixed feelings on it. What's really surprising, and maybe you could say disappointing, is that this is a game that's still in production. Like if this was just Fast and Furious Supercars, which has been out of production for a long time, then that would be one thing, but where it's still in production, I'm guessing the thinking is as well. The arcade version has two screens and the deluxe version has the motion seat and all the versions. Well, the arcade version has two screens and the deluxe version has the motion seat, and all the versions in the arcade have the steering wheel and controls.
Speaker 3:And, to be fair, I have a cruise, a pair of cruise and blasts in my arcade and then, after the console version came out for switch, it didn't drastically affect the earnings now. Now it did affect it. I believe it affected it just because Cruisin' could be my number one game a lot of the time, many weeks and months, and sometime there was a year or two where it was my number one earner, and ever since the port happened it's never reclaimed that spot, and so I mean I don't know if that's a scientific way to correlate it or not, but it seems to work for me, whereas the arcade-exclusive Maximum 2, 5dx Plus has been my number one game pretty consistently for the past two or three years now, and then any other game that's been arcade exclusive, like the Walking Dead or Jurassic Park, has also held that spot pretty consistently. Now I've been curious to hear what other arcade operators think about a lot of that, as I don't know if anybody has the same thoughts or feelings about that that I do.
Speaker 3:Personally, I was burned in the past with Street Fighter and games that oftentimes they see this big drop in earnings with arcade games that are ported to consoles, but obviously with something like a driving game or a Lycan game, the effect is not quite as pronounced as, say, like a joystick game.
Speaker 3:I'll just pause this here, but I already had a comment on the video that I did about this from another arcade where they've canceled their NBA Superstars order because somebody at Rothfields had told them that they weren't going to have any more ports and then this came along.
Speaker 3:Now I did ask Rothschilds about this and they're not involved with it. It's done by Game Mill Entertainment, which does get other things than just porting some of Rothschilds' games over to consoles, some of rothwell's games over to consoles, but still, at least from at least one small segment of what I've seen, it seems like some operators are not happy with it, but I don't know how widespread that is. Comment below on wherever you're watching this podcast as to what you think about it. Now, from what I'm, I'm seeing game players out there, especially Rothreals fans, are very excited about it. Very positive reactions coming on this, except for, I guess, someone on PC, probably because you have accessories that work with it there. But yeah, I guess we'll see how this performs on the market. Perhaps it could have the bonus effect of bringing more attention to the arcade scene and getting more people looking for the arcade machines out there, who knows? But either way, that's the arcade news for the week and happy to catch you up there and we'll see you next time, all right, well?
Speaker 2:all right. Well, thanks adam for that. And yeah, you're super, super excited to see how those you know, how you know a little bit more about those when you get a chance to actually play them myself, hopefully at iapa expo, but, um, all right. Next up we've got Chuck DeMonte with Promo Pro Tips.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to Promo Pro Tips with Chuck DeMonte. That is me, and today I want to go over Google Ads for you and the objectives and the campaigns you should be running when doing Google Ads, and at the very end, I'm going to share with you a pro tip of how to get the most out of your Google ads. So stick around for that. So, first, a few segments back, we discussed Facebook ads and the different objectives, the different campaigns you could use. This is a similar thing I want to go over with you today. Right, we look at and do Google ads for FECs every single day and a lot of times we take over people's accounts. They're not running the proper campaigns, okay, so what are the campaigns you can run on Google? Let me share my screen real quick and we can take a look at what that, what that looks like. Okay, so the different campaigns you can run on Google Okay, you have performance max campaigns.
Speaker 1:Now, this is basically Google. You're telling Google, you tell me where to put my ads. Right, they'll put it in in in for search. They'll put it with video. They'll put it all these different places, okay, um, and find the you know the best ROI for you right. Uh, there's search campaigns. Now, this is when you do a search and you pop up as an ad, right? So I have an example here, which I'll show you again in a second. You see the sponsor ad. These are search ads, okay. You have display campaigns. Now these are retargeting banners like this, like you see here. Okay, I shouldn't say retargeting. You could also put them to new people, but I'm sure you've all seen it before. You click on something and then you go to another website and you see banners for that other website. You just thought following you around the internet, right, that's retargeting. Okay, A lot of times you use banner ads for that. You could also use it for new. This is good for brand awareness. What else do we have Video campaigns. That's simply videos run on YouTube. Next, you have app campaigns. If you're on an app, you want app downloads. And then there's shopping campaigns, really for e-commerce. Really, this is performance max as well.
Speaker 1:In my experience, unless you have a much larger budget, you want to be in one place, and one place only for FECs, and that is search campaigns. Okay, why is that? Search campaigns have the highest intent. There is demand built into this campaign. So if I'm looking for a kid's birthday party near me. You should want to show up for that right Now. You could show up for that organically, right? That's search engine optimization. You could be on these results, but it's easiest to be on a sponsor results for starters, right? Not that you shouldn't do SEO. Seo is important, but again, your search campaign.
Speaker 1:Now. I'm obviously looking for a kid's birthday party near me. What if I was looking for a kid's activities near me? Whatever, you should want to show up for that, okay. So that's why I say, unless you have a budget, those other things performance max they're going to put you in places that spend money, in places that people are not converting on. So, unless you have a really high budget and you're just trying to work on brand awareness, right, then, yeah, put some money into that. But for the, for the budget you do have, I want to make all the money I spend in there and make me more money, right, so, again, so you want to show up on here, right? So that's first and foremost where you should. You know the really the only campaign you should be using for Google ads.
Speaker 1:Now the next thing which a lot of people miss okay, they don't connect their Google business profile, right. So your Google business profile I'm sure you're familiar with that, but if not, that's this right here. Okay, this is what you call the map pack. Now, occasionally I will see a sponsor result on the map pack and it'll show more, but typically you only see organic results, the top three organic results. So there is ways SEO you can be on these top three, right, you want to make sure you sort of rank higher for this search, and a lot of times I'm searching this, this will even be on top. It's not uncommon nowadays for this map pack to be on top of these sponsored ads, right.
Speaker 1:But we want to make sure we connect the Google business profile because if I look on here and I want to see, okay, what's closest to me, right, you see here. Now there's sponsors here as well, right, and so what I'm doing when I'm connecting my Google business profile, I'm optimizing for certain things you could do right on the um on the Google business profile get direction clicks, right. Uh, share, save, website, you know. View a menu call, right. You could do all these things when you click on the uh results. So, that was the sponsor result. They just clicked on right, although it didn't pop up properly, but, um, so you get the point though. Right, you want to be able to connect this, so you're showing up in this area. This is a very common user customer experience.
Speaker 1:People are searching via Google maps, okay, and you want to make sure you pop it up for that. Now, one of the coolest things when you connect your Google business profile, you can obviously see this blue down here. Google knows where I am, so they're going to be able to track. Whether you like it or not. They're going to be able to track. If I see one of these ads and I end up in Topgolf in Holtzville, they're going to be able to tell Topgolf when they're running ads. You got an in-store visit. Basically, somebody saw your ad and then, within the next 30 days, they showed up in your location, right, so that is phenomenal you could get, you could really understand your ROI from that, right, and what are these ads are producing. That's only if you connect your Google business profile. So super important. You do that, okay.
Speaker 1:Now, last and most importantly, right, one of the one of the last things, one of the biggest things you want to do when you're doing Google ads is try and connect conversion tracking. Now, not every online booking software is capable of this. Okay, Some are, some aren't. Even when they aren't capable, man, it can be difficult. I know marketing extremely well, but we have a data attribution manager, which is this title? Right? We try and figure out what is the attribution of different marketing efforts, okay, and what is that, you know, a conversion. What is that attributed to? Right? What channel is that attributed to?
Speaker 1:So, sometimes, where I'm having conversations with them and things go over my head tremendously, right, it can get complex when you're trying to connect all these different websites and ads and all this other stuff, but it's worth finding somebody, hiring somebody and spending the time to try and connect that, because, basically, what's going to happen is when somebody clicks on one of those ads that I was just showing you one of those search ads kids birthday party near me and they click on your ad and land on your website, you want to know if they converted and how much they converted for right, for two reasons Do you know if your ads are working and if you're making money?
Speaker 1:And the second reason is it allows Google to do better, right? Google will see the type of person that converted, okay, and it'll see what they're. You know what do they do across the internet, what's their demographic right? Whatever data points that Google has and I'm sure it's a ton it'll be able to start understand the type of people that are more likely to convert and they'll show your search to more of those people. Okay, so if you can implement conversion tracking, it is an absolute game changer. You should always try and do that, so hopefully it helps. Remember, if you're running Google Ads, only run search ads unless you have a very, very, very large budget.
Speaker 1:Other than that search, try and connect conversion tracking and connect your Google business profile.
Speaker 2:So go out and run some ads, some Google Ads successfully of Google Ads. Successfully Catch the system from Intercard, increase customer spending, guest satisfaction and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is so proud to be serving the amusement industry, and if you aren't already part of their global family of customers, they hope you will become one soon. All right, well, before we wrap up here, I just thought I'd bring some trivia to the table. So Adam mentioned, during his Arcade Corner, the dog days of summer. Right, and I've talked about dog days of summer many times, especially in August, it just kind of drags on late July, whatever.
Speaker 2:Well, apparently, according to the Farmer's Almanac, the phrase originated in ancient Roman times, and the Romans noticed that the star they called Sirius they also called the dog star was in conjunction with the sun in late July, and they believe that the dog star's brightness in that period of time made things hotter on earth during the late summer months, and so they named this period of time the days of the dog star, which later shortened to dog days. So there you go, that's what we call things, the dog days of summer. There's always some story there. I just thought that'd be a little bit interesting. Okay, well, that's what we call things Dog days of summer. There's always some story there. I just thought that'd be a little bit interesting, okay, well, so just as we wrap up here, don't forget we've got sound off with Kevin Williams, number 87 coming out this Tuesday and two days on August 19th, and with that this is a wrap. This is Brandon Wiley signing off. Stay tuned and keep kicking ass. Bye.
