Devin Durham has been the owner of 1984, the popular arcade in downtown Springfield, since its opening on July 7, 2005.
Filled with a mix of classic arcade games from the 1980s and ’70s, as well as several pinball machines, customers pay $5 per person to get in, and enjoy unlimited plays on every game except pinball. He estimates the location gets at least 600 customers a week.
He also shared other details about the business and its history in a recent interview with The Scoop:
He got into the business by accident.
Durham never had a master plan of opening a theme arcade. “I’ve been collecting these machines for 30 years — I guess 20 years at the time we opened. Anyways, I had had these machines for some time. I had so many of them spread out of such a big area, in like garages and in storage, that it was kind of obvious that I needed to do something with them or get rid of them.” After getting all his machines in one place, the idea to open an arcade occurred to him. “It all happened very organically.”
No, the arcade isn’t named after the book.
While there are references to the George Orwell-penned classic among the ’80s memorabilia that decorates the arcade, that’s not the source of the name. 1984 actually has a triple meaning. First, that was the year Durham graduated from high school. Secondly, ’84 is considered “the last year of the real arcade,” Durham said. ’83 saw arcades begin to lose money, and ’85 was the year that the home video-game stations became popular. However, the third reason behind the name may be the biggest: “The year 1984 gets referenced a lot just as an iconic ’80s year. Much like how any decade has (an iconic year), like 1969 with the ’60s, 1976 with the ’70s, 2000 is the year of the 2000s. … It just seems to be a year people gravitate towards when they talk about the ’80s.”
The diversity of the customer base was a shocker.
Durham grew up in the arcade culture of the late ’70s and early ’80s, and this gave him certain expectations for what his customer base would be. “Pretty much if there was a girl in the arcade, she was there with her boyfriend and ready to leave. And that’s because at the time there was a lot of gender specificity regarding technology and games.”
When Durham was getting 1984 ready to open, he expected it to be a nostalgia-based business for a very specific niche — male, middle-age nerds. “So we immediately start getting nuns and sororities, and all this crazy stuff I never, ever expected to see. Another thing is that we will get pretty young kids, and they’ll already know all these games already. It surprised me that knew what Dig-Dug is and what Tron is.” Durham credits the many different ways people can play the classic games — for example, on their phones — as helping spread the knowledge among the young kids.
He likes to keep things fresh and new.
Over the years, Durham went from having just two pinball machines to having 14 today. This has led to some expansion and rearrangement, but some of that occurs for other reasons. “Every month we clean everything, and when we do that, we pull everything out from the wall, so that makes it easier to put stuff back in a different place. So every month or so you will see a minor rearrangement, and then pretty much every year, we do a major rearrangement to shake things up.”
Part of this shake-up involves changing the glow-in-the-dark paint in the bathrooms. Durham takes pride whenever someone comments on how he “has the coolest bathrooms in Springfield.”
The arcade has reached its capacity — for now.
Durham likes the location he’s at now since the only problems to emerge have been sound complaints when 1984 first opened. However, he cannot fit any more games in the space he has now.
When discussing moving locations, Durham says, “That may or may not happen. We’ll see.” Durham has also discussed — but has effectively ruled out — opening a second location. “I’m concerned about the parasitical effects of second location. We get people coming in from easily 150 miles around. So if I put a second one in that bubble, I’m actually doing damage to the first store. The second thing is that if I start another one, then I’m going to have to spend a lot of time going to and running it, which I don’t want to do, especially if it’s in excess of 150 miles away.”
For now, Durham is content to “try and make this location as cool as we can,” but if the chance is there and the moment is right, don’t be surprised to see 1984 find a new home.
