A few days ago, thanks to work, I visited the Guangzhou Canton Fair Complex and toured the "Guangzhou Amusement Equipment Industry Expo" (abbreviated as GTI) held there. It was eye-opening and shocking. As soon as I returned to the office, I grabbed my junior colleague at the next desk and immediately started showing him the good stuff I photographed. Let me tell you, this was the most awesome expo I've ever been to. ChinaJoy, BW, Gamescom, TGS—they're all weak compared to this. These are what you call real games.
Take this latest and trendiest Nai Loong fishing machine, for example. Although the gameplay isn't much different from ordinary "Fish Hunter" arcade machines, its cabinet features a huge Nai Loong... Seeing it from afar, wouldn't you feel the urge to insert dozens of coins and play to your heart's content?
Behind the cabinet, there seems to be another one with an English frame printed with "NaiLoong Big War." It looks like they're taking the Nai Loong culture global, aiming to make it bigger and stronger and achieve new glory.
You think the Nai Loong fishing game requires too much skill and is hard to master? No problem. This Nai Loong Golden Egg Smasher will surely satisfy you. Vent your primal destructive urges on Nai Loong's eggs to your heart's content. Smash the eggs, and you might even win lottery tickets!
Besides Nai Loong, this arcade expo also has stuff for hardcore players. Heard your so-called "Monster Hunter" has a new release? You can play it here first. I watched from behind for a long time; this weapon should be a Light Bowgun, but I don't know where the so-called "Affinity Bracer" you guys talk about is...
Oh, and there's this arcade machine that lets you ride a Pegasus. It's absolutely cool...
Just as I was scrolling through photos in my album, speaking with great enthusiasm, my colleague, five years younger than me, interrupted me with a confused look—
"Uh, I get the point, but what is an arcade?"
Alright, saying I don't know what arcades are is an exaggeration.
Actually, bro just hasn't been to an arcade in many years—because he finds arcades boring. By the time he grew old enough to enter arcades freely, there was nothing left in them that could spark his interest (just to clarify, bro doesn't play rhythm games).
The arcade industry today is truly a sunset industry. Except for a few arcades at the top of the industry, if you walk into any still-operating arcade on the street, you'll mostly see this scene: two MaiMai DX machines, resembling washing drums, are placed outside, next to Taiko no Tatsujin and an old dancing machine that has been in service for years. These are also the few machines that actually have people queuing for them. Going further inside, there are rows of claw machines and coin pushers arranged like copy-paste jobs. Larger spaces are reserved for various variants of "Fish Hunter," while smaller spaces hold probability-based games like "Cow Tossing." Larger shops might even have racing machines like "Wangan Midnight" mixed in.
As for the fighting games and side-scrolling beat-'em-ups that veterans always mention when talking about arcades, most have either completely disappeared or been reduced to a classic "100-in-1 Arcade Game" cabinet, lying forgotten in some corner.
Image source: Bilibili @Ear1yz
This situation has been going on for a long time, and it's likely to continue.
The root cause is that the ecological niche has been severely squeezed by the普及 of home consoles, PCs, and mobile games. "Arcade" as a form of entertainment has largely lost its specificity as a video game medium. Nowadays, surviving arcade games almost entirely rely on expensive, specialized cabinets that are difficult to bring into homes, as well as gambling attributes like spitting out lottery tickets or dispensing dolls, to maintain their appeal.
Of course, the arcade industry won't die.
As long as rhythm game enthusiasts aren't rich enough to buy an 80,000-yuan "washing machine" cabinet to take home, they'll still have to go to arcades. Machines that spit out lottery tickets still need a counter for redemption. Young people tired from shopping malls still need a place to relax. And developing third- and fourth-tier city commercial districts also need such venues... In 2023 alone, the number of arcade devices in central and western regions increased by 17.8% year-on-year.
But we cannot deny that the arcade industry has indeed become silent—it no longer produces breakout news or high-growth highlights.
As the saying goes, if you don't go bad in silence, you go weird in silence. The biggest impression this arcade expo gave me is that this long-silent arcade industry does seem a bit weird.
Take this machine in front of me right now—I forgot its name. It is absolutely the most shocking game of the year. At first glance, it's just a roughly made pachinko machine, but trust me, if you're lucky enough to win a prize in it, you'll witness a winning screen so shocking you'll never forget it for the rest of your life.
With the four large characters "Lucky Star Descends," an animation with special effects comparable to industrial-grade nonsense begins to play. Two gears, which definitely aren't stuck, spin rapidly and fly off to the sides. A twisted mechanical dragon suddenly bursts out from the middle, eyes glowing as it flies upward...
As everyone knows, the dragon is a symbol of imperial power.
Then, the scene abruptly shifts to a cloud layer. Pushing aside the dark clouds, a meaningless spherical lightning bolt appears in the center of the screen. The lightning flies up and down, changes direction everywhere, and continuously multiplies like the dragon ball of a giant dragon, as if every pixel on the machine is announcing to the world that the lucky star who just won the 40-ball jackpot can now claim the throne...
Alright, I can't keep making this up.
Anyone with eyes can see that the "human content" in this winning screen is far lower than the meat content in a starch sausage. All visuals are purely AI-generated with no human input—and it looks like it was generated using old models from a few years ago, when AI animation first landed. The quality is only slightly better than Dwayne Johnson eating rocks or Will Smith eating spaghetti, but not by much.
In comparison, the boxing and soccer combo arcade machine in the neighboring booth is much better.
Although all characters have the same AI-generated tough-guy faces, although the boxers' falling animations are floaty and bouncy, although the banner ads in the background are filled with gibberish, although the soccer players' straight ground rolls inexplicably fly up halfway through, and although the goalkeeper makes a perfect diving save against a straight shot to the center...
But at the very least, the characters here all have two arms and two legs, with exactly five fingers on each limb extremity—no exaggeration, no slander, it's completely on par with the level of animation AI after its previous intelligence drop.
Even the most classic slot machines weren't spared. What era is this, still sticking to traditional fruits, diamonds, gold coins, and "777"? The slots coming out of my machine are obviously stitched-together Pokémon...
Machines like this, stuffed with cheap AI assets, practically dominated half of this arcade expo.
Of course, the leading manufacturers in the industry are still trying to come up with something new. Wahlap, the distributor of MaiMai, collaborated with the official Pokémon brand to create "Pokémon Snap Point." Shiyu Technology, which mainly produces various card machines, partnered with CDPR to create "Cyberpunk 2077: Night City Rush." Thanks to sufficient resource investment, these new flagship machines achieved quite impressive results, becoming the absolute focus of this GTI expo.
However, in the broader, lower-tier market dominated by small and medium-sized manufacturers—the places filled with various fishing machines and coin pushers—things have taken a turn for the worse.
As mentioned earlier, the arcades surviving today either attract players with unique cabinets and games tied to those cabinets, or they possess inherent profitability in high-traffic areas. However, small and medium-sized manufacturers lacking resources do not have the ability to develop unique cabinets and accompanying games, so that path is essentially closed to them.
Therefore, the only direction left for them is cabinets that have been fully market-tested and are profitable—such as coin pushers, claw machines, and pachinko machines with gambling attributes, as well as low-development-threshold interactive machines like boxing and basketball shooters.
However, the implication of "fully market-tested" is high homogenization. For instance, looking at the entire coin pusher market, the gameplay is extremely similar: "launch coins from a certain direction." The only differences between machines are the cabinet appearance and the celebratory animations played upon winning.
To address the issue of homogenization, Japanese pachinko manufacturers commonly introduce collaborative IPs. Basically, you can play pachinko machines themed around most anime and games in Japanese pachinko parlors. Many manufacturers also collaborate with rights holders to produce animations exclusive to pachinko machines, attracting non-core players.
For example, the rights holders for Steins;Gate once collaborated with pachinko manufacturers. Character route endings from the original game that were never animated, as well as the dramas "Babylon of Sorrowful Mind" and "Heid of the Dark Dimension," were turned into animations exclusive to pachinko machines. Quite a few character fans and original work enthusiasts were drawn to the stores to play because of these animations.
Image source: Bilibili @Nyarlathotepdesu~☆ filming the Steins;Gate 0 pachinko machine
Even "Kaiji," whose original work satirizes gamblers, has been turned into a collaborative arcade machine by these pachinko manufacturers... As you can see, the art style of these machines is quite exaggerated. The previously popular domestic "Prosperous Tang Dynasty 999999" fishing machines were also imitating this pachinko style.
Kaiji Pachinko Machine
But I'm getting off track.
Returning to the previous topic, the path of using IP collaborations to create differentiation doesn't really work in the domestic market either. The spectacle of Japan's pachinko industry is built on its deep arcade history and pachinko culture. Most manufacturers capable of such IP collaborations are wealthy and have access to a vast pool of potential IPs...
Uh, surely no one would actually go to an arcade specifically to watch a Nai Loong exclusive animation and spend the whole afternoon frantically playing the Nai Loong fishing machine, right?
"Innovation" and "differentiation" are likely pseudo-propositions for small and medium-sized arcade manufacturers in the lower-tier market. Therefore, in a market where innovation and differentiation lack returns and the customer base is relatively fixed, "cost reduction and efficiency improvement" becomes the natural choice. The cost-cutting method we see now is replacing art resources with cheap AI assets.
However, we've already seen the actual results. To us "outsiders" who haven't stepped into an arcade in a long time, this so-called "cost reduction and efficiency improvement" is more likely just "cost reduction and increased laughter."
The most classic AI-generated work, anyone get it?
I could have clicked save, exited the document, and submitted the draft to enjoy the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday break right here... But as I wrote, I increasingly felt something was off—are we really just so-called "outsiders"?
Swept up by the tide of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, gradually swallowed by cheap AI, seems to be far more than just the arcade market.
On the evening of September 10 (Beijing Time), Japanese publisher LEVEL5 held the "LEVEL5 VISION 2026 II Dream" presentation. The experience was shocking to the world because it is the only known game publisher to use entirely AI-generated animations for transitions. Throughout the presentation, the uncanny valley effect and artificial feel typical of AI animations were pervasive, resulting in extremely poor reception and widespread criticism both domestically and internationally.
Many in-game cutscenes have also been pointed out by players to have a "strong AI flavor." For example, the protagonist introduction animation in the new Inazuma Eleven title, "Inazuma Eleven: Revolution of Fire," is practically the standard AI animation—strange lighting, choppy scene cuts, and meaningless panning and zooming camera movements. Its quality is no better than the boxing and soccer combo arcade mentioned earlier.
A bit further back, we can also see AI-generated medieval oil painting collectibles in "Red Desert," along with puzzle diagrams that don't match at all—because the AI's generation level is so uncanny, the puzzle patterns completely fail to align with the reference images.
Image source: Bilibili @PMM_LORD
Recently, many domestic anime-style games were sequentially exposed for having image assets containing AI-generated watermarks. Although it's unclear whether this was an issue with the original assets or secondary processing, the controversy over "Doubao Artists" still sparked a wave of boycotts in the community.
Not that Doubao, just get what I mean
AI-generated content... or rather, AI-generated content cheap enough to be recognizable, has long permeated the industry. However, due to strong backlash from players, it hasn't been able to act as "brazenly" as it has in the arcade industry.
Currently, after being exposed for using AI, most mainstream manufacturers tend to apologize or replace the assets. After "Red Desert" was caught using AI, it replaced the AI-generated art resources in patch 1.01.00. LEVEL5 President Akihiro Hino publicly apologized after the presentation, admitting to "excessive use of generative AI in promotional content." Larian, which mentioned using AI-assisted creation in an interview last year, also issued a statement saying they "will absolutely not use AI to replace developers, nor will they release games containing AI-generated content."
However, the arcade industry differs from the mainstream market: it is more marginal and isolated. Not many arcade players can raise their voices loudly enough to protest the invasion of low-quality AI content. Its main users—middle-aged people in front of coin pushers and fishing machines, and children dropped off by adults shopping in malls—mostly lack the ability to identify low-quality AI content, let alone "resist" it like mainstream players.
Meanwhile, AI capabilities continue to improve. Around the same time as the LEVEL5 presentation, the GPT-6 Astra model was officially released. Its game development capabilities instantly became a focal point of discussion—with just tokens, prompts, and time, GPT-6 can create demos for various game genres, from 3D racing and FPS to RTS games similar to "Red Alert," which can be simply run and played.
There are even many indie game developers who had their ideas "leaked" online in advance, leading others to steal the concepts and recreate them with AI. In July this year, indie developer Freya Holmér posted a 50-second concept video for a "Tetris-like" game online. Within a single day, the same game was pixel-perfectly replicated by other developers using AI.
It's hard to say whether further upgraded, smarter, and cheaper AI will replace human developers as the dominant force in the future. AI's boost to productivity is indeed immediate. We can't guarantee that the manufacturers apologizing today and promising not to use AI won't follow the same path as these small and medium-sized arcade factories in the future.
Past experience, if not forgotten, is a guide for the future.
Let's hope that what's happening in arcades doesn't repeat itself on PC and console screens.