I traveled today
... And in the LAX Delta terminal, I saw a bizarre Gamer Cafe (??) which mostly consisted of large screens playing Twitch streams. It was almost completely empty, but was also weirdly small. I suspect less than seven of the screens were set up for games.
And there were an awful lot of game characters on the wall. I am curious who runs this, whether they make any money, or whether the characters are licensed:
I have written about this before but i looooove seeing weird or funny examples of how Gamer Stuff atill sits so uncomfortably alongside all other entertainment in our society. I love how this space is trying to attract kids? Or teens?? but is also like, dead empty, probably because in an airport it is, I guess competing with the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch. Imagine being a gamer who can afford to fly on an airplane, and afford to pay for a gamer cafe, and NEEDS to game at the airport... but doesn't have a portable device? No laptop? Not even a Anbernic? Hell, I forgot that it's even competing with phones! I spent all my time at the airport today playing Dog Online on my phone.
I saw a guy playing Skyrim on his Switch on my plane, and I saw two guys with Steam Decks. The woman next to me cracked open her laptop and played two hours of Slay The Spire 2, and I considered saying something to her about how much I also like that game, but I chickened out and decided not to because I could tell that she was MUCH better than me at it. The only successful gamer cafes I have been to in the US were community hangouts, intended for group play. You are not gonna play League or Tarkov with your high school buddies at the airport. I am not sure American airports are a good spot for gamer cafes...