Fruit Machine Chat

There is evidence on the ground that there is a revolution on the ground that might eventually overthrow the might of the GW machine.
In a market where one player has by far the biggest share companies often overstretch and become complacent / arrogant leading to their demise.Leisure Link went tits up to be replaced by Gamestec who instead of pushing forward inherited their awful units,stood on their hands and now are going backwards.
Now one machine company has risen from the ashes of the industry to challenge gw ,offering to convert gw units into their software package(opens/dice) whilst retaining the body- this is the rise of the fat spanner machines and on to world domination. It must gall gw to be destroyed from within......

i'd suggest there is more to it than meets the eye Cool.
punter power will out: if a pub has a modern paragon plus any other SWP cabinet, you know where the throughput is going. it is possible that fat spanner have a good marketing department but in terms of quality of output they have some way to go to match the market leader. although, admittedly the latest fat spanner release has some playable titles.
true and false games with no try again will get one speculative play then be left to the spiders. and equivalent games only highlight dishonesty in an equivalent skill across platforms.

inspired went tits up because the hardware couldn't cope. gwhl has the best processing speed and the best content QED. we all welcome innovation but blind sideswipes will only put you off balance.

in a pub with one machine your choice is simple:
enjoy a pint and play it
enjoy a pint and play darts
enjoy a pint and talk to the pub bore
get a soft drink, play it and moan
go next door

Do any of the Paragon titles actually comply with the new legislation? I am thinking about the 6 books in Trivia for Dummies or the game over bonuses in Match of the Day 2.

As far as I can tell, things like Jimmy White, Blockbusters, More4 etc. seem to be exactly what the gaming commission is looking for. I'd rather play games that are structured in this way.. few spoilers (at my level, at least) and none of this collect/continue shit that the Paragon is so obsessed with.

ahem. any conflict of interest in nottingham?

the gaming commission may demand one thing, the public want something playable; the two are not mutually exclusive. neither understand the intricacy as much as we should.

let's not cherry-pick, but in answer to your first question CP: yes, of course. as for your two chosen examples: you may have a point on a discontinued title and the second is a volitive choice.

as Cool suggested; let's discuss.

Can't see Pub Quiz being affected by all this. Couldn't really give a toss about anything else to be honest.

I have spoken to a contact within the industry and I was told that the Commission are not going to force the removal of games where there are ridiculous questions as long as it can be demonstrated that you can win,they are only going to force the removal of games where a 'skill' that may be acquired through play gets you no further than a casual player.A game that just keeps going in a loop for example or a game like skill ball bingo where the jackpot is unobtainable if the game does not want to play ball.I contacted FS and pointed out the unfairness of their programming,suddenly coming across the ave attendance of Bolton Wanderers in a season isnt right but they do have a point, they have to have spoilers it helps to prevent nibblers and people like Suri who sem to delight in disabling games. My invented word for this practice is Surification.

Would I be right in saying that no serious players mind games being difficult? After all, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and there wouldn't be any money to be made by the experts who have made the effort to overcome that degree of difficulty.

That said, it's not unreasonable to ask that manufacturers don't make it impossible - not just very, very difficult, literally impossible - to win on a game.

Topical2009 wrote:Would I be right in saying that no serious players mind games being difficult? After all, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and there wouldn't be any money to be made by the experts who have made the effort to overcome that degree of difficulty.

Too true!!

cool wrote:I have spoken to a contact within the industry and I was told that the Commission are not going to force the removal of games where there are ridiculous questions as long as it can be demonstrated that you can win,they are only going to force the removal of games where a 'skill' that may be acquired through play gets you no further than a casual player.A game that just keeps going in a loop for example or a game like skill ball bingo where the jackpot is unobtainable if the game does not want to play ball.I contacted FS and pointed out the unfairness of their programming,suddenly coming across the ave attendance of Bolton Wanderers in a season isnt right but they do have a point, they have to have spoilers it helps to prevent nibblers and people like Suri who sem to delight in disabling games. My invented word for this practice is Surification.

What's the difference between?

1: skill ball bingo refusing to drop the jackpot ball
and
2: a quiz game giving you 10 4-answer spoiler questions?

I'd say it's the same thing. Assuming the spoiler questions are a 25% chance then the chance of someone answering all 10 of them correctly in one game is 1 in 1,048,576. Considering that this may only be one jump up the prize ladder I'd hardly call this a chance of winning. Let's say it makes you do 20 questions like this. It's now a 0.00000000000009% chance of winning. This is to all intents and purposes 0 and no different to the bingo game refusing to drop the win in.

At the end of the day games can block prizes, and they need to. I just think disallowing certain blocks but not others is a bit odd.

While I understand that the function of spoilers is to stop experts emptying machines, to use them to beat lesser players is just laziness. I have huge gaps in my knowledge and they aren't difficult to find. But if I keep seeing questions about lake areas or Gillingham managers' draw percentages or other stuff that I could never have possibly known and could never possibly remember for next time, then I'll just find something else to do.

Cf: I suppose it depends on how rigid they are going to be about the laws. With the example you've given, it could be taken that...

Bingo: Impossible to win as there is no way the player can influence the ball to drop - the programme code has said it doesn't want you to win, so you will not.

Spoilers: 'Possible' (although as you say, very, very unlikely) to win as the player influence decides on the outcome, not the programme code.

---

I agree that I would much rather see harder games that only those who have / have built up the expertise can win on. But, the problem with that is the moment someone realises they have mastered it, off they go around the country wiping it clean and that's the end of the game.

Suri-ly, there 'needs' to be some element in all games that will prevent this, else the SWP world will come to an end?

There was chat about 'compensators' in the HMRC document, but I can't see how this could possibly fit in with the rest of their stance, it comes across as:

"The player must always be able to win the top advertised prize in each game played..."

"...But a compensator mechanism will be allowed to be present..."

So you can always win, but there's allowance for something to stop you always winning?! Eh?

Cf wrote:

cool wrote:I have spoken to a contact within the industry and I was told that the Commission are not going to force the removal of games where there are ridiculous questions as long as it can be demonstrated that you can win,they are only going to force the removal of games where a 'skill' that may be acquired through play gets you no further than a casual player.A game that just keeps going in a loop for example or a game like skill ball bingo where the jackpot is unobtainable if the game does not want to play ball.I contacted FS and pointed out the unfairness of their programming,suddenly coming across the ave attendance of Bolton Wanderers in a season isnt right but they do have a point, they have to have spoilers it helps to prevent nibblers and people like Suri who sem to delight in disabling games. My invented word for this practice is Surification.

What's the difference between?

1: skill ball bingo refusing to drop the jackpot ball
and
2: a quiz game giving you 10 4-answer spoiler questions?

I'd say it's the same thing. Assuming the spoiler questions are a 25% chance then the chance of someone answering all 10 of them correctly in one game is 1 in 1,048,576. Considering that this may only be one jump up the prize ladder I'd hardly call this a chance of winning. Let's say it makes you do 20 questions like this. It's now a 0.00000000000009% chance of winning. This is to all intents and purposes 0 and no different to the bingo game refusing to drop the win in.

At the end of the day games can block prizes, and they need to. I just think disallowing certain blocks but not others is a bit odd.

I've learnt all the spoilers

I've learnt all the spoilers

Backs my point up...

On Word Up, with a combination of low-scoring letters and high target it probably isn't even theoretically possible to win the pound, never mind the jackpot.

Would that have to be adjusted so as every time you clear the grid, you win a tenner? (Matt hears Istenem's pots jangling (not to mention his pockets. And QM preparing an 'I couldn't give more of a toss' response!)

Guess they'd have to adjust it so as a clearance causes a new grid to spawn...