Commentary

Struggling to survive? Remember our past setbacks

Veteran street operator Brad Brown learned from a setback in 2002-2006 how to approach a situation he had no control over, lessons that operators can apply to the coronavirus disaster.

Image courtesy of iStock.

January 11, 2021 by Brad Brown — President, Worldwide Video Entertainment, Inc

COVID-19 has put many coin op businesses in a critical position, but those of us who have been at it for a long time have experienced similar situations. In my case, I was able to learn how to deal with this type of setback.

I felt close to this level of "lack of control" and frustration back in the years of 2002 through 2006. At that time the distribution portion of my coin op business was being diminished as a result of game manufacturers, who for all practical purposes, were abandoning the street operator and concentrating their efforts almost exclusively towards producing bigger machines for family entertainment centers.

The purpose of this blog is to explain how I addressed this situation, but many Vending Times readers will be interested in reviewing that period in our industry's history.

A previous challenge

In 2001, the cost to subscribe to the Internet got substantially cheaper as Internet connection speeds got substantially faster. Consumers were more than willing to pay for and log onto the Internet after purchasing computers being built inexpensively by Dell and Gateway. The convergence of increased speeds through technological advancements, with lower, more affordable pricing, created new opportunities in the consumer video game market. These consumer video game companies could now directly better compete with coin op video games companies by enticing kids away from our large base of coin op video game players.

At the 2002 Consumer Electronics Show they branded this new generation of video game players as "gamers." The newest way to compete and play together was promoted as massive multiplayer online games.

Massive multiplayer online video games were an instant hit that pitted "gamers" against other "gamers" from anywhere around the world.

At the same time, technological advancements in affordable graphics chips driven through proprietary hardware home gaming systems began to match or exceed the graphics of our dedicated coin op video games. Microsoft's Xbox with its smash video game hit "Halo" was introduced.

Sony PlayStation met with huge success with the introduction of the Grand Theft Auto series which drove massive sales towards their system, and of course the explosively popular Mario Bro's., Mario Cart and Donkey Kong series was a huge hit on the Nintendo handheld portable game systems.

As consumers flocked to playing video games at home, cash box incomes declined out of the dedicated coin operated video game machines. For our industry to compete and remain relevant to our coin op player base, manufacturers started producing video games in larger sized game cabinets with larger sized monitors. Those machines cost more, and would only fit into larger sized locations with taller double wide door entrances. Most street operators did not have available space in their locations, but family entertainment centers did.

My entire distribution business model devoted primarily to the street operator was being disrupted by consumer game companies. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Choices seemed limited

I had no confidence or clear vision of what I could do except start selling more instant coin operated prize machines.

Like COVID-19, this situation was totally out of my control. I did not have a huge coin op route at that time, nor a desire to shift my focus on distributing ticket redemption games, or these new dedicated big expensive video games, so my sales declined.

I was in a constant state of fear, and I needed to find a way out of my business situation and my declining emotional state. I knew I needed help, but from where would I find it, and who would be able to help me?

By accident I found out about a master's degree program that offered a spiritual psychology degree. I was told by a friend that by going through their program it would likely be a life changing experience.

So I decided to give it a try and I enrolled. It was a great decision.

A course in self discovery

The program was deep and thorough because its primary focus was helping students discover themselves.

One of the important steps I learned was to be able to shift my perspective. I had to identify each one of my fears, judgments and any attachments I might have towards a specific outcome.

This was a difficult process. I had to be completely honest and identify any judgments that involved any shame that I held against myself.

Here is a short list of my fears and judgments:
1. Even though I understood what was happening, I did not pivot fast enough, so I must not be very smart.
2. I began to believe that I was never a good business person and not worthy of success.
3. I feared I would be broke within a year.
4. I started to believe that I would need to find another job at a much lower pay rate.
5. I believed that my children would come to understand that I was a failure at my business, and as a result of my failure, their home and lifestyle would be diminished.
6. I was increasingly depressed as I thought that all my friends would see me as a loser and I would never amount to anything or be "good enough."
7. I was nothing without my coin op career.

Once all the fears are identified, we are asked to look at all the judgments we have made towards the fear based situations and underlying issues, look at all the judgments towards each of the person(s) involved and judgments towards ourselves.

Then we took each judgement and belief and dissected them further. We ask ourselves if there were any other possibilities or alternative ways of looking at the situations. We then come up with five different perspectives and five different solutions for each item. By the third to the fifth perspective I saw a solution and began to see new possibilities.

What I learned

I realized that the feedback I was getting from the universe about the change in our industry and in my business was just information. What I wanted to do with that information was up to me.

I could choose to further my objectives for a new and improved financial coin op business model if I chose to, but without the stigma of failure.

Releasing my judgments was a process, and it took time.

I started to understand that the best solution for me emotionally was to look at them as objectively as business problems in search of solutions without injecting my self-imposed fearful state of mind. I looked at my situation as if it were not mine, but someone else's.

The next step is to reframe the problems as opportunities rather than dead ends. To consider all possible choices that are available as solutions to the problems. Next is allowing myself to choose one solution that seemed best suited for me.

One of the best ways to choose a course of action to a problem is to consider the choice simply as an experiment.

I viewed my choices as opportunities to gather data and evaluate the outcomes without the stigma of judging myself as a failure should the results not be what I was looking for.

In part two of this two-part series, I will outline my plan for coin op recovery.

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About Brad Brown

Brad combined manufacturing, distribution, and street route operations in 1995 starting with the Striker 1945 series of combat flying video games. Worldwide Video was widely known for buying and selling video games worldwide but was primarily known in the USA for selling video game conversion kits during the 1990’s up until 2001

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