CAESARS PALACE II

[cool]

It seems like only yesterday that Grecian and Nils were consuming sandwiches and drinks at GW Head 0ffice whilst pontificating and generally thinking the new games on offer offered promise.

I have just had the worst ever question amongst the new batch. what was the star sign of the last performer on stage at the 1978 Eurovision Song Contest?

The programmers and question compilers for these machines are sad bastards and are in the process of destroying their own livelihoods question by question (as well as my own).

I agree with the lengthy post above completely

[logopolis]

There was just over £30 in it, does the engineer have to physically open these up to chip them? or is it done through the wires? if its the latter its strange, because its in a town centre too.

Next time the gamesnet quiz is switched off and on, then the game will be removed. Due to paying out over percentage or something. Thats what happened with one I had anyway.

[BFK]

Really? I thought that only happened on GW machines?

[Scott]

Can't see that being the case either, its been empty since around Thursday and had took £30 over the weekend, it must have been turned off when previously emptied yet the game still remained, unless its something they have introduced the last couple of days?

[grecian]

There was just over £30 in it, does the engineer have to physically open these up to chip them? or is it done through the wires? if its the latter its strange, because its in a town centre too.

I found one in a chain bar in a city centre the weekend before last (i.e. 3 April). Checked a few since then, but not on any. A very thorough job - and a good thing too.

[grecian]

It seems like only yesterday that Grecian and Nils were consuming sandwiches and drinks at GW Head 0ffice whilst pontificating and generally thinking the new games on offer offered promise.

I have just had the worst ever question amongst the new batch. what was the star sign of the last performer on stage at the 1978 Eurovision Song Contest?

The programmers and question compilers for these machines are sad bastards and are in the process of destroying their own livelihoods question by question (as well as my own).

I agree with the lengthy post above completely

Nil speaks for himself elsewhere Cool, but let me respond to this.

My last visit to GWHL was actually back in October 2009 I think, so a pretty long time ago generally and especially so when we've had the significant new development of HMRC's challenge to the industry in the meantime. I stand by my comments back in the day and think good players have had a pretty good 12-18 months out of GWHL.

Clearly much has changed and I agree at the moment that life doesn't look very easy. I'd maintain the view I've held for about 18 months now that Paragons are the leading cabinet, but they're clearly rather less good than they have been at most periods in that time. MOTD, BAM and YHW20 all remain strong titles, but the very significant additions to the bank on the last update clearly make matters a lot more challenging - and are unlikely, I think, to make the games more appealing to Joe Public. I too have had some very brutal questions come up very early doors on all titles, and I think that the Football and Entertainment categories are verging on the unplayable on both cabinets to all but the very most expert players. The return of the next game bonus on BAM is welcome, but it does seem to have come at the expense of a very tough re-instal mode which gives superficially welcoming grids but spoiler Qs from about round three onwards.

All in all, not good, and combined with the departure of a decent title like 1v100, which remained a punter favourite years after its introduction, I query where GWHL are attracting punter play from. I do quite like Eggheads although given the average JP hovers in the £4 or £5 zone it's clearly not going to form the mainstay of any serious players' earnings. And Battleships 2's an improvement on Battleships 1 although it doesn't work for a serious player on "time and motion" grounds.

I'm never as woebegone as Nil about these things, but I agree the SWP world isn't looking good at the moment. The Gamesnet line-up is just about tolerable although one would struggle to get too excited about it, as is the case for the Open. The Ind:e line up is a dreadful joke at the moment. I played a new Monopoly game on one - lovely production values, the maingame was really enjoyable and much better than Hot Property. I got to the endgame - excellent! Sadly the top prize was just *£1.50*, and that was for answering five spoilers or similar! If the industry things offering that sort of prize is the way to deal with HMRC concerns and attract punters, they are profoundly mistaken. Who's going to bother with that rubbish when fruities will pay £70? £1.50 is below the level I would collect on *on any title* (that it to say, I will always gamble on from that amount, regardless of lives left/toughness of game etc.).

I'm sure things will improve, as they always do, and because the survival of things like MOTD, BAM and YHW20 shows that the industry can design HMRC-compliant titles which can offer serious rewards to a player willing to show skill and dedication. But if the price for that is regular rolling question bank overhauls, I think we will all find it a rather tougher world...

[QuizMaster]

I must admit it is getting tougher out there. The last Pub Quiz bank had a massively overhauled spoiler bank, and has knocked out my earnings for over 4 months. It's taken me that long to get to grips with it and I'm playing 30+ hrs a week. I'm pretty much back up to speed now but it's been a struggle.

I take it the GW stuff has undergone some similar sort of transformation recently. My only comment would be that it's a set back, but not an insurmountable one. You're not supposed to earn a living out of these - you're supposed to play them for entertainment. I see loads of punters get entertained out of playing that new Monopoly without ever getting pissed off (although how they do no get annoyed when they get a '?' and it says 'You Lose 2 Try Agains' I do not know. They don't complain about the size of the prize because they never get to the endgame.

The people who get to the endgame know what the word 'redolent' means. And they know that John Travolta turned down the lead role in 'Chiacgo' so it went to Richard Gere. This is the sort of stuff we take for granted as knowing and punters have no idea.

I stood behind two kids the other day who were asked the question 'Who had a No.1 hit with 'Dreadlock Holiday''? This stumped them, to such an extent that one said to the other 'I've never head of 'One Zero C C'. Needless to say they never got to the star sign Eurovision questions you speak of.

Then they started playing that bingo game because , as one said to the other, 'Let's play something without questions since we don't know fuck all'

I would suggest this is more of an indicative comment on 21st Century Britain than the state of the quiz machines in the UK. The fact that he should have said 'We know fuck all' instead of 'We don't know fuck all' is also a comment on the poor grammar being taught in today's schools.

In summary - they've changed the questions. TSB. Get used to it.

QM

[Nil Satis]

It seems like only yesterday that Grecian and Nils were consuming sandwiches and drinks at GW Head 0ffice whilst pontificating and generally thinking the new games on offer offered promise.

Agreed, but as grecian points out, those visits were some time ago (May and Oct 2009). I was then, and remain, very grateful for their invitations and the hospitality we were showed. I also stand by what we said then in terms of positive feedback and as I stated in my 'end of the world' piece, I did think that GWHL had for maybe 12-18 months been the market leaders in terms of product quality and innovation. This is why their recent products have been so disappointing. They are not quite back to the state of say 3 or 4 years ago when Paragons were indisutably the worst machines around but I'd say they haven't got far to go to get there. Sadly none of the other companies are willing or able to take up the mantle.

You're not supposed to earn a living out of these - you're supposed to play them for entertainment. I see loads of punters get entertained out of playing that new Monopoly without ever getting pissed off (although how they do no get annoyed when they get a '?' and it says 'You Lose 2 Try Agains' I do not know. They don't complain about the size of the prize because they never get to the endgame.

I think anyone with sense would realise that we, i.e. the tiny minority of players who can win regularly on quiz machines and who post about this on here, are absolutely not the target market of the SWP companies. I was tempted to say we are in fact their 'enemies' but that title must surely go to those who either physically steal money from machines (although this seems to be a much more common problem with the fruit machines, presumably because of the much higher amounts of money they hold), or those who find and/or exploit the bugs in programming that allow a machine to be emptied without any real skill being required, although often extreme patience and a very high boredom threshold are needed in those cases!

But at best it seems we are an annoyance to the SWP companies and at worst a group that they would be happy to see disappear. However I have always believed that the factors we want and the factors that punters want in quiz games are not mutually exclusive. Something like that new Monopoly game (which I had thought to mention as easily the worst new game since the HMRC guidelines came in - can it ever have been harder to 'win' £1 for your 50p stake?) is a case in point. How soon will punters get bored when they realise this very issue - that they will virtually never win on the game - or in the very rare case when they do make it to the endgame, they realise what a con awaits them?

The programmers and question compilers for these machines are sad bastards and are in the process of destroying their own livelihoods question by question (as well as my own).

As for the new GWHL question sets, the overhaul isn't itself the issue. In fact here I might just have to return to Isty's very favourite Napoleonic quote: "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence". It strikes me that the intention may not have been to make the existing games so much harder, but what appears to have happened is that whoever writes the questions has been instructed to stick to just 2010 and the early part of 2011 as their source. Let's say there were 20,000 existing questions and 5,000 new questions. That gives you 20,000 questions covering all of human history, art, science, sport etc and 5,000 questions on ... the last 15 months. It's no wonder that the question writers have had to dig so far into the depths of obscurity just to fill their quota. Obviously these numbers are completely hypothetical but it looks to me like this is very likely to be what has happened.

In the end of course the SWP companies may be completely happy with their current product ranges and be able to point to increasing sales and higher cash returns. After all things like the Megatouch suite which offer no prizes must be more profitable than going to the trouble of developing skill games with decent prizes. Somehow though I doubt it.

[ZAX]

Annoyance or not, lets not also forget that whatever happens and whether you walk away from swp gaming or not, you satis, have been forever immortalised along with UP, ernest quality etc in a question on the machine databanks which came up yet again today (eggheads no less) which completely threw my mate! You dont get that kind of fame playing the fruits....!

[fotherz]

1 coin in bucket and 1 in hopper now and can't refill on the churn

Hear hear!

:

[Matt Vinyl]

Buckets, Churns? Is this http://www.cowchat.co.uk?

[grecian]

I think QM is wrong, and underestimates the standard of the general player. Yes, there are no doubt some absolute bottom feeders of the kind QM saw playing the 10cc question.

But I think there's a good deal, and perhaps the majority, of players who inhabit territory north of out-and-out fuckwittery while remaining a long way below the standard of the top boys. Take Monopoly Hot Property - on almost every venue that has a high score table full of 5k+ scores. I very much doubt those have been put on there by pros, because I suspect that most pros wouldn't touch MHP with a shitty stick. Those scores have been registered by Joe Public, who love this game, and the scores indicate there are plenty of players easily able to navigate the easy stuff. I don't think that's suprising - I imagine SWPs, like pub quizzes, are done by people who like quizzes, and you'd expect those people to be tolerable at quizzes if not brilliant. The story's the same on something like Eggheads - this game clearly gets a fair amount of play (from the speed the JP builds up at), but I rarely see it north of £5/£6 - Joe Public is good enough to JP this game.

I think Joe Public is, in the main, easily able to appreciate when a question is difficult and when it's an unfair or ridiculous spoiler, and is definitely able to appreciate when a spoiler has been used too early in the game (often because it'll have knocked them out). I would caution against SWP companies adopting QM's rather complacent thinking on this point, as I think they might get a bit of a surprise when punters stop playing games that are simply unfair.

And Nil is right about the question revamp. I am absolutely fine with updates to banks, and indeed welcome them, because I think it gives the player with a (non-SWP) good/very good general knowledge a (temporary) advantage over specialist bank learners. But here it is the nature of the update - the reams of highly obscure and arcane 2010/2011 knowledge distorts the bank and will just look plain stupid in two years or so. This sort of thing will be spotted by Joe Public - it's not like these questions are reserved 'til the very furthest reaches of the games, is it?

[wrightn307]

people tell in every f**ker

[cool]

When youve worked it out for yourself your right to be irked but I bet the vast majority learn the secrets of Quiz and fruit machines by word of mouth and so theyve got no right to be pissed off when others learn of the emptier.
Which are you?
As its all but gone its irrelevant anyway I suppose..........

[Captain.Tattybojangles]

I just poke at the seemingly unending list of questions and hope that I'm right in most cases! That said, I was playing some Pub Quiz with my mate yesterday, and he piped up with the "I've never won on these..." remark, so I decided we might as well go for the win. We did play a fair amount of games but in the end we got to the sacred pound...and in the end that game went right up to the fiver! The ten pound questions were absolutely horrible though and destroyed us, but the others seemed fine, knowing what animal a pintail is for the last one to get the fiver.

Games like Pub Quiz do seem to throw you here and there sometimes. I've had particularly evil ones half way through round 2 but also the jokey ones in round 4 or 5 where one of the answers is Bum or something Merde, so it seems to cater nicely. I have missed some sitters though such as the sea of Baffin Bay washes upon where...But any others I do enjoy knowing new stuff and pub quiz is the way-ish to go about it.
Worst one without a doubt was asking me what a Choprolite(sp?) is...And for once the answer was the jokey sounding one! I'll think twice before not choosing Poo