Arcade Club is a gaming lounge in downtown Oakland with forty consoles and a tournament every Friday. Until last year, the queue lived on a whiteboard by the door, and the most important skill in the building was guarding your place on it.
The club wanted an app. What they needed, it turned out, was the whiteboard in everyone’s pocket: the same list, the same order, and a nudge ten minutes before your turn so you could leave the bar in time.
Small scope, on purpose
- A live queue that holds your place wherever you are in the building.
- Group bookings, so four friends can claim one console without four accounts.
- A lock-screen tournament bracket on Fridays, updated as each match ends.
We built it in React Native and launched on iOS and Android in the same week. The whiteboard is still by the door, now with the app’s QR code on it, and the club’s own developer has shipped three updates since we handed it over.
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