Another summer arcade season is drawing to a close. In my location, it's been a very good year, given the stagnant economy.

If you're like most amusement operators (myself included), redemption and instant prize games have driven your earnings all summer long. But you've probably noticed it's getting harder to capture and keep people's attention. In the eyes of the public, coin-op just isn't cool anymore.

The manufacturing community hasn't exactly responded in a way that is helpful to operators. The newest releases from the leading video game manufacturers, for example, bare a striking resemblance to everything that came before them. When is the last time a new driving game knocked your socks off? The cost for a brand new driver is prohibitively expensive compared to its modest, even anemic earnings. Even lease options offer little ROI potential.

Clinging to outdated ideas is bad. Deliberately forsaking the lifeblood of our industry is worse. Countertop touchscreen games are a fixture in almost every bar and diner in the US. But if you have a good look around one of these locations, you're bound to see people glued to their smartphones instead of the countertops. Why? Because for the price of a single play on a countertop, you can download an almost identical game app to your smartphone and play it as much as you want.

Operators are feeling the pain and to make matters worse, the leading manufacturer is rubbing salt into the wound by licensing its touchscreen games as phone apps, bypassing its operators and rendering its own hardware redundant. Smartphone users can now play the exact same games without taking cash out of their pockets.

Fate is a cruel mistress. Decades ago, technological innovation gave rise to our industry; now it threatens our very existence. Home gamers play titles like Halo or Call of Duty with or against anyone in the world via the internet. In bars and clubs across the US, people are ignoring countertop games and playing apps on their smartphones. We're at a crossroads, people. The hi-tech revolution can kill us or save us. I don't know about you, but in times of sink or swim, I choose to swim and swim hard.

To be cool again, we need to get "smart" and embrace new technology. The smartphone is the most important status symbol among young people today. Electronics retailers are running commercials about "phone envy" and a leading wireless carrier is urging the US to finish our work faster so we can all get back to playing Angry Birds.

Technology can help us as an industry to recapture the "cool" factor. But we, as operators, need to embrace it, follow it, capitalise on it and give special attention to manufacturers who are doing the same. You don't have to run out and buy a smartphone, but you should stay informed about what apps, games and features are popular among your audience. Talk to your kids; talk to their kids. And remember, at the end of the day, we can offer people a user experience that no smartphone and no social networking application can duplicate: genuine, organic, human interaction. Technology can never replace this experience, but it can sure enhance it. And that, my friends, is cool.