In the fall of 2019, I built a "bartop" arcade cabinet on behalf of the UWaterloo Games Institute. Rather than being powered, for example, by a low-spec Raspberry Pi, the "Bit Box" contained a full-power mini-ITX gaming PC with a reasonably powerful graphics card (for that time). This allowed the Bit Box to serve as a perpetually ready-to-demo platform for Games Institute projects. Research prototypes, conference videos, and GI Jam games could be packaged and deployed to the BitBox and then launched from a "library browser" program.

The bartop format also meant the Bit Box was relatively portable and we could (and often did) transport it out and around the community for various public events. The classic arcade cabinet form was always instantly recognizable and was great at drawing new players in to see what the Games Institute was working on.

In terms of labour, I...