akator, on Wed Sep 7, 2011 12:58 PM, said:
About the same time more people started shifting to debit cards. Even if there were arcade games around that still only cost .25, many people stopped carrying cash and change. If you make them go to an ATM, then get change, that's too many steps without immediate satisfaction and the average person looses their impulse to play. Even if they do play, they are more aware of the money spent. Debit cards may not have killed the arcade, but they helped add the nails to the coffin.
Yurkie, on Wed Sep 7, 2011 4:02 PM, said:
I strongly disagree with your by 1998 people were mostly using debit card nonsense!!!
Perhaps years from now people could say "by 2011 most people were using debit cards", and while still not real accurate, it would be much more so than claiming we were nearly a cashless society 13 years ago.
I certainly did not mean to imply that the US was a cashless society 13 years ago. There is no way that debit cards were single-handedly responsible for the demise of the arcade, as I stated originally.
Obviously, trends for things like debit card adoption vary. In my crowd (friends, family, acquaintances, coworkers) I was a holdout, refusing to adopt debit cards until 2001. I didn't get my first debit card until my bank stopped charging usage fees, because I thought everyone else was the fool for paying extra to access their money. Everyone thought I was stupid for not having done it sooner. I wouldn't remember these things in such detail if it hadn't been a topic of conversation every time we went out, with comments like, "Still haven't joined the 20th century? Ha ha..."
Since I received my debit card, I have not once taken cash out and gotten change/tokens to play games in an arcade or movie theater. If we had change on us, we would usually stop and play a few games. Prior to my debit card, we almost always had cash and change at least at movie theaters.
Before I lived in a metropolitan area... somewhere they actually had arcades and movie theaters. Now I live in a rural area, and things like debit card use are completely different here. Most of the stores accept debit cards however most people carry cash, and many don't even have bank accounts. Then again, most people here don't know how to regularly bath or launder their clothes, either.
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