21st century arcades offer gamers play North Bethesda center cashes in on multi-billion dollar industry with plenty of PCs and big-screen TVs
Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006
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by Chris Williams

Staff Writer

Michael Feldman received a few raised eyebrows when he first talked about opening a gaming center in North Bethesda, where players could come to play video games on PCs and home game systems like the Xbox 360.
‘‘People would always say to me, ‘I can buy an Xbox and go home and play it, so why would I come to your center?’” he said. ‘‘My response is.... You can buy a six-pack of beer and you can go home and drink that beer, but chances are you’ll go to a bar. Why is that? Because of the social environment.”

In the multibillion-dollar video game industry, the days of the dimly lit video arcade where two friends fed quarters into a machine are history. Places like Feldman’s X3O Gaming Center, with 23 high-end PCs linked together, appear to be the future.

Located at Marinelli Road and Rockville Pike, the 1,400-square-foot center is a brightly lit room with a lounge atmosphere. The PCs surround the perimeter of the room. Cushy oversized beanbag chairs swallow gamers in front of three big-screen high-definition TVs, each equipped with Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 system.

For an hourly or daily rate, gamers of all ages and skill levels compete and trash talk each other while teaming up and competing in games like ‘‘Battlefield 2” and ‘‘Counter-Strike.” Gamers compete not only with other players at the center, but online against people from around the world.

Nick Fitzsimmons, X3O’s marketing director and an avid gamer, estimates that about 70 percent of their customers already have the games they play at the game center.

‘‘When they come in, they look around and see what games people are playing and they want to play with someone,” Fitzsimmons said. ‘‘That’s what’s really drawing them to come back again and again. It’s making these new relationships here, finding people who have the same interests.”

Adam Robinson, 22, has been to X3O four times in the last six weeks, though he lives in Manassas, Va., and owns about half the games available at X3O.

If you go X3O Gaming Center is located at 11640 Rockville Pike in North Bethesda.
Hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday-Thursday and 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday-Saturday.

Premium memberships and special rates for birthday parties and groups are also available.

X3O strictly follows the ESRB ratings system, only allowing children to play games with ratings authorized by their parents with a written permission slip.
For more information, call 1-866-934-6936 or see the Web site at www.x3o-gaming.com.
‘‘It’s always a lot more fun to be sitting there playing the guy right next to you and just looking over there and laughing at him after you kill him,” Robinson said. ‘‘And then you can go and get a bite to eat afterwards.”

Playing on a bunch of high-end computers linked to the same network has its advantages, too, Robinson said. There is no delay as one computer struggles to keep pace with another, which can often occur when players are on different networks. In first-person shooter games like Quake 4, for example, Robinson often has to lead his target a bit when aiming. Shooting the guy sitting next to him on the LAN at X30, ‘‘it’s true aim,” he said.

According to an industry study released last week by New York-based ABI Research, the video game market will expand from $32.6 billion in 2005 to $65.9 billion in 2011 as a result of its ‘‘fast-growing online and mobile gaming segments.”

‘‘It’s the growth industry of [the 21st century],” Feldman said. ‘‘You can sit in front of the TV, which is a passive thing. You can go to a movie, which is not only ridiculously expensive, but most people can bring that into their home now. Or you can go into this world where you’re the protagonist.”

The center encourages competition through regularly scheduled tournaments and special events. A ‘‘Madden NFL ’06” tournament this Saturday offers a top prize of $500, a jersey and 10 free hours of gaming. X3O also sponsors competitive gamers who play in major tournaments around the country, recently sending a team to New York for an event. A pro shop located near the front of the store sells competitive gear for the hardcore gamers like special gloves, mouse grips and headsets.

Of course, it’s not all fun and games at X30. To make the most of the business during days when most of their customers are at work or school, the center holds computer training courses for businesses and also provides technical support.

Not surprisingly, the biggest customers of X3O are young males. But Feldman said he hopes to shift that particular demographic, which is not a true reflection of the average gamer. In fact, a 2005 study by the Electronic Software Association showed that 43 percent of gamers in the U.S. are women.

‘‘The biggest thing that I wanted to do was to bring the female gamer out of the proverbial closet and get them in here,” Feldman said. ‘‘That is why the place is bright, that is why it has a lounge feel.... It’s not a dank basement with stinky boys in it.”

A good place to start was with his own wife, Christie Feldman, 31, a nursing student who also works full time as the director of finance and administration for X3O.

‘‘The extent of my gaming before I got into this was, you know, solitaire,” she said.

Then ‘‘World of Warcraft” caught her eye.

‘‘One of our staff got me into this game,” she said. ‘‘He and his girlfriend used to come in and play when he wasn’t working.”

Along with ‘‘Dance Dance Revolution,” ‘‘World of Warcraft” is one of the more popular games among the female customers at X3O. Currently the top-selling PC game on the market, the role-playing game connects millions of players in a three-dimensional world, sending them on quests and adventures, and brings the clunky acronym MMORPG into the video game vernacular. (That’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game, for the uninitiated.)

‘‘You create a character, you can choose its skin color, hair color, what special abilities the character will have, and then you give it a name,” Christie Feldman said. ‘‘It’s basically a little you.”

There are signs of narrowing the gamer gender gap, she said. About 75 percent of the customers on Valentine’s Day last week were women. A recent birthday party brought 17 13-year-old girls to the center to play ‘‘Dance Dance Revolution” and video karaoke, Fitzsimmons said. And then there’s ‘‘Ladies Night,” when women play for free on Thursday nights and guys receive free hours of play for every female friend they bring along.

‘‘It’s nowhere near where I think it will be,” Feldman said. ‘‘But you have to start somewhere.”