DYNAMICS OF GAME ARCADES : STRATEGY, CLIENTELE AND ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE

Abstract

The amusement arcade has become a multi-million dollar business in entertainment in society today, bringing immense joy and satisfaction in some cases, but also addiction, to young people all over the world. However, this study does not take a look at the positive or negative aspects of playing video games, it focuses instead on the organisations providing it. This exercise features the amusement arcade in Singapore from the organisation and population perspectives through an analysis of Funpolis (Bishan & Marina Square), Wywy Wonderspace, Starstudios, Timezone, E-Zone and Laser Quest. The theory used in the study is population ecology, which used to feature strongly on the selection pressures of the environment, leaving little to the adaptation of the individual organisation within the population. New development in the population ecology literature on the reconciliation of adaptation and selection perspectives, offers hope for the theory as a viable and complete theory, and is explored in this study. Thus the attempts at adaptation by the arcades to changes within the environment and the selection process of the environment will be examined to determine the state of the population of arcades in Singapore. The findings validate population ecology as a credible theory in organisational sociology. More importantly, they locate the amusement arcades of Singapore within essentially one population bearing isomorphic forms through both the adaptation and selection processes of organisation and environment respectively. The processes have caused a change in the organisational form of the arcade from before the ban in 1983 till today. This change in organisational form further attributes the population of arcades having an isomorphic form, as the various arcades, facing change within the same environment, adapt to survive and in the process, the "optimally fit" form is selected by it. In this manner, the arcades within the population in Singapore have the same form essentially. In addition, the possibilities of community ecology and multiple environments are hinted at in the conclusion. However, the focus of this thesis is to discover how the adaptation processes of the arcades, coupled with selection pressures by the environment, have caused the organisational form to change from the past to the present, and how this in turn affects the population of organisations, the arcades. The population of amusement arcades in Singapore is essentially characterised by an isomorphic form.