ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analysis of A-cho, a game centre in Kyoto, primarily in relation to the practices associated with arcade fighting games in Japan. After a short description of the venue in terms of the venue’s spatial design and cabinet placement, the chapter describes the venues’ key locations, which are engineered to favour observation as a type of engagement, similarly to the nineteenth-century figure of the flâneur. This is followed by a discussion of A-cho’s involvement with digital communication and the service industry in the form of food catering, which nuances the conception of a videogame arcade as a space bound by physicality, and highlights its reliance on the emotional labour of its staff members to build appeal and personable outreach.
The chapter concludes with an account of a BlazBlue Ranking Battle tournament, focusing on the rhythm of the contraction and dissipation of venue-goers’ attention towards the event as a result of the interplay between the human and non-human agents involved, which illustrates the dynamics of play as performance in context.
