X-Cape has moved, but its lessons stay the same

By Saul Wyner

After a steady decline in profits in recent years, the fully
featured on-campus arcade ““ X-Cape as we knew it ““ has
closed its doors for good.

Many of the game “cabinets” ““ where roll after
roll of quarters were sacrificed ““ have been sold. The pool
tables ““ where so many individuals have tried to impress
their clearly uninterested dates ““ have been removed. The
register ““ next to which so many hapless pool players used to
sit and hit on the clerks ““ is now silent.

The dark cavern of X-Cape is gone, leaving a hole in our
collective hearts soon to be filled by Jamba Juice, a place where
you can get five-dollar smoothies and listen to pseudo-tribal
music.

The X-Cape, in a smaller capacity and without an active clerk,
has moved to the Viewpoint Lounge ““ once a study lounge
““ to mixed reviews.

The Viewpoint Lounge was one of the few semi-quiet places in
Ackerman where students could sleep or study, and now it’s
gone.

Promises of a study lounge at Jamba Juice ring hollow to
refugees of the Viewpoint Lounge, who were there to escape the
clatter factory of Kerckhoff Coffee House, the perpetual news/soap
opera hell that is the Cooperage, and the MTV-ed out first level of
Ackerman.

Do the needs of those ousted from Viewpoint Lounge outweigh the
needs of the admittedly few dedicated arcade-goers?

In its crippled state, the arcade may leave once more if it is
not profitable. Arcade income has been decreasing since the advent
of the home entertainment system.

Back in the 1980s, X-Cape was filled with people giving into
their urges to commit poorly pixelated violence, but this number
has dwindled, and may continue to dwindle. So why do we need to
support this dying institution?

As a child, I was an “arcade rat,” bussing up to
X-Cape and the Westwood Arcade after school and walking home after
spending my return bus money on “Raiden.” I learned to
love the flickering screen from over others’ shoulders.

It wasn’t about games that I could play at home ““ it
was about community.

It was about striking up a conversation with players far greater
than me, and marveling at titanic matches surrounded by crowds
paced a respectable three feet back.

When I was a sophomore, I started working at X-Cape as a game
technician and learned to love the machines from the inside
out.

I strove to make those hunks of wood and plastic sing for their
players and learned much in the process, although I lost my job
when the arcade closed.

When I later became president of Enigma, the UCLA science
fiction, fantasy role-playing, gaming and horror club, I used the
lessons I had learned from the arcade about community, camaraderie
and respect to help fuel this 20-year institution into a new era. I
am a product of arcades.

Arcades are about community. You take a solitary activity
““ playing video games ““ and you make them far more fun
by playing them with others. The reason arcades have dwindled is a
lack of exposure and a lack of understanding.

Today’s video gamer (read: virtually everyone who attends
UCLA) has not had a real communal gaming experience.

The arcade is dead because they believe it is dead, because they
have come to learn that only “hardcore” people go to
arcades, and they think that they can get the full experience of
video gaming at home. But they are missing out.

To those who don’t care about the arcade’s final
destruction: Have you gone inside? Have you played the games? Have
you shot pool? Have you gotten your Pac-Man fix lately?

The community in the arcade is alive and well and waiting for
you, even if the venue is smaller, even if it now has a piano for
some odd reason ““ it’s an arcade, and arcades have a
distinctiveness that must be experienced.

Wyner is a third-year cognitive science student.