My First Time on the GTI Expo: 3 Days as an Arcade Games Newcomer

1. Less Than a Month into the Job, and There I Was at the GTI EXPO

I'm the newest person at the company. Barely a month in — and lucky enough to attend the 18th GTI Asia China Expo held in Guangzhou in September 2026.

Walking into the hall for the first time, I saw the enormous venue, the dense lightboxes, the machine sound effects rising and falling all around — for the first time, the arcade games industry stepped out of web pages and spreadsheets and became one entire space filled with sound. I was excited, hoping to meet my first batch of customer friends. I was also nervous, hoping I'd manage to introduce our products well.

2. Three Things the Customers Taught Me

Over these three days I received a great many customers, which evolved me from a nervous rookie into someone who could introduce our products fluently. And it was in exactly those few days that I arrived at some understandings of this line I had never had before.

• The simpler the ball game, the easier it is to create excitement

I had assumed players would prefer machines with complex gameplay. The actual observation was the exact opposite. For ball games like Naughty Bombs and Travel Notes, the rules take three seconds to explain and there is zero barrier to picking them up, yet they drew the biggest crowds — because "one more turn" pops into everyone's head. The lower the barrier to play, the faster the first excitement arrives, and the flow of people in front of the cabinet never stops.

• The thrill of pusher machine is accumulation, not a single round

I only understood this by watching players try our coin pushers. Players aren't playing a single round of a game — they're accumulating a result: the coins stack higher and higher, the tickets pile up and up, until they cross the threshold. The moment AstroLOLogy's marble waterfall comes pouring down, the moment every last coin drops on Volley Coin — the people in front of the cabinet do shout out loud. What this kind of pusher sells has never been a single session of entertainment; it's the anticipation of "one more push and it's mine."

• Arcade games with IP are naturally more attractive

Our own LARVA series is the best example. For a lot of customers, the first sentence isn't a question about price — it's a laugh and "I know that bug." IP licensing removes the cost of explanation outright: players feel trust and closeness when facing an unfamiliar machine, and that is very hard to achieve with a purely original character.

3. Three Moments from the Show

• The first moment was a little funny. An Italian customer passed in front of our booth. I held out the product brochure, and he quite naturally blew me a kiss as his way of refusing, then walked off smiling. A very romantic rejection.

• The second moment brought the whole area to a boil. A friend was challenging the record at the boxing machine. One punch in, the screen went dark — he hit it so hard he knocked the power plug loose. The whole area went quiet for two seconds, then broke into jeers and applause. This showed me that an arcade machine sells emotion — even an "accident" becomes part of the experience.

• The third moment surprised me the most. A customer was trying out Travel Notes. He cleared the first level easily and turned around to tell me, "Too easy" — so I dared him to keep going. From level three the difficulty came up, he could no longer keep up, and he asked to try again. By level five, every onlooker had their eyes locked on the little ball on the machine. The instant he cleared it, he turned his head and said to me: I love this game. At that moment I truly understood the words "difficulty curve" for the first time — it isn't a parameter in a design document; it's the thing that makes people stay.

4. What I Took Away from My First Show

Three days, and I came away with a deeper grasp of what makes each of our machines strong, and a deeper understanding of the industry. For the next GTI, I think I'm ready. Not as a newcomer — as someone who is part of this industry.