Hollywood's New Game

And then there is the element of the movie, the set, the design. GameWorks's genius is in the way that the idea of a movie is synthesized into the product. Paul explains: "We want the environment to be jarringly different. You're experiencing environment, moods, angles, sight lines rendered in computer modeling designed to seduce you, lights placed in such a way to make you follow them with your eyes. It is selling the art of motion pictures, as opposed to the stuff of motion pictures."

Ultimately, the company is defined by the verb that you use. First there were movies. If Universal Studios theme parks "spin off" movies -- "Jurassic Park, the Ride" -- and if the Disney Store "merchandises" movies -- "Aladdin, the T-shirt" -- then GameWorks "distills" movies. The value added by a simple video game is in part the physical totality of the experience: No ordinary game can drop you and three screaming competitors 26 vertical feet -- but the $400,000 "Vertical Reality" attraction can. Strip away the story (this is not two hours but two minutes), turn the director into the production designer, package your product in the atmosphere of a Hollywood film premier while omitting the actual film, and you get a bite-sized, new kind of movie. You get GameWorks.

What Paul, Snoddy, and Spielberg have tapped into is the fact that, along with plot and character, movies are and always have been pure atmosphere. Think Casablanca, and the first thing that your mind retrieves isn't the script but the raw feel -- the gritty texture of Rick's Café Américain. The GameWorks team knows that when you say "movie," you're talking not just about the picture that you go to see but also, consciously or unconsciously, about the whole exciting concept of celebrities and Hollywood studios, red carpets and velvet ropes. In reproducing sensations -- in its avid sensory promiscuity ("Everything good, all at once"); in its cool, headset-wearing crews; in the way that it voraciously, overwhelmingly surrounds you like an electronic womb -- GameWorks is a new means of selling movies. It offers, simply and efficiently, the essence of movies. Whereas companies like Paramount, TriStar, and Warner Bros. feed your cerebellum, GameWorks jams a catheter into your brain stem.

Level Five: Hit Reset

The most financially original idea behind GameWorks is the market that its founders set out to create. Paul, Snoddy, and Spielberg envisioned excellent dining, and young professionals holding expensive vodka tonics with clinking ice cubes in one hand and joysticks in the other -- plus a social-sexual dimension appropriate for young adults. They envisioned a Monaco with video games. Instead, they found that their average guest was 22. There were lots of guys sporting T-shirts, baseball caps worn backward, and goatees.

So they changed everything. All facilities are now run according to a principle that GameWorks calls "day parting," which means that they're not only morphing the elements of the industry -- they're also offering a product that mutates during the day. Says one GameWorks employee: "We're developing a product that is safe, secure, and comfortable for the family during the day and early evening, and that morphs at night into something sexier for the older clientele." And it's working, he says. "Do an exit survey at 3 PM on Thursday, and it will be all families, parents with 12- to 18-year-olds. But at 8 PM, the core age is 25." There are age restrictions now, comparable to, say, the way that the movie industry rates its films. "There's no actual difference in the games," says the employee, "but the music, lighting, and atmosphere change dramatically."

Paul wasn't kidding when he said that Seattle was "just a prototype." The Seattle model had a snack bar that sold fancy bar food. The restaurant, unfortunately, had not lived up to the original plan. "When we started this," says Paul, "we underestimated the restaurant's importance in getting people to think of GameWorks as an adult place. We didn't recognize the customer." By the time they were ready to open the Miami GameWorks, they were confident enough to place the restaurant, which can seat 240 people, front and center.

There are more signs of total reinvention. For example, in the latest GameWorks clubs ("club" is really the only appropriate way to describe them) in Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Miami, and Tampa Bay, evening guests order gin and tonics from cocktail waitresses. Chicago and Miami GameWorks stay open until 2 AM on the weekends. Members of the crew, who used to wear polo shirts and jeans, now dress up more. The bartenders and waitstaff all wear ties, and the average age of employees has risen from 16 to 21. GameWorks used to generate less than 15% of its revenues from food and beverage sales, and now that number has increased to 40%. In fact, it looks as if the food and beverage part of GameWorks could very well overtake the games.