Volume 2, No. 6. March 22, 2002
New Arrivals
It's
an entertainment center!
GameWorks announces the arrival of Newport on the Levee GameWorks in Newport,
Kentucky, March 15, 2002. Measurements: 25,000 square feet (7,576 square meters),
130 games, two bars, one restaurant, 100 employees. Delivered by Andamiro, GameWorks,
Global Billiards, Hyper Entertainment, ICE, Konami, Lazertron, Midway, Namco,
Sega, Stern Pinball, Universal Studios, Williams.
Forgive the people of Cincinnati, Ohio, for thinking three GameWorks opened
up locally in less than a month. Only one installation of the entertainment
center opened in this market—in the entertainment/retail complex called
Newport on the Levee on the Kentucky-side banks of the Ohio River—but in
a marketing plan meant to build buzz while honing the center's details, GameWorks
unveiled itself in three phases.
Three weeks before the opening, about 150 media and local dignitaries were invited
to learn the lay of the location. The centerpiece Arena Bar was functioning,
but the walls were still covered in plastic, no games had been installed, and
the Jax Grill kitchen hadn't received its permit. A local caterer used GameWorks
recipes to set up the buffet. "That first event was meant to answer the question,
'What is GameWorks?'" said LeeAnne Stables, the company's senior vice president
of marketing. "There was so much interest to see what we were doing."
The second event, two weeks later, further sated the curiosity when GameWorks
invited 300 media and special guests to serve as official game testers. "When
you bring this many games in, you have to get them played, you have to operate
them," Stables said. The event allowed management to watch traffic flow and
subsequently move some games around, including a Turret Tower
which had been placed front and center inside the entry. "It looked good on
paper when we planned it out," Stables said. "But it was the first thing you
saw when you came in and it blocked the view of the bar and the rest of the
facility. We thought, 'We spent all this money to make this look good, why are
we blocking it?'" So GameWorks spent more money on a hydraulic lift to move
the Turret Tower to one side.
After a follow-up employees' guests night and a week of sneak previews, GameWorks
finally opened for real with a Friday night bash. Some 400 guests—again,
including media and local dignitaries who were beginning to feel like fraternity
brothers and sisters—showed up for a three-hour free play, free drinks
and free food session featuring fire-breathing bartenders and a local band playing
'70s disco tunes. The public were allowed in at 10 p.m., and a long line quickly
formed of guests signing up for the game-play cards.
By then,
the venue was a smoothly running operation, a direct result of the three-step
unveiling. "It is so helpful to the technical guys and to the staff to have
the feedback and have 10 days to make adjustments," Stables said. GameWorks
first employed this method at its previous opening last fall in Tampa, Florida.
Aside from working out the kinks, each media event spawned local newspaper,
television and radio coverage, and both Cincinnati daily papers devoted multi-page
spreads to the new GameWorks.
