The lights go out, one by one...

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:09 am

After a week away relaxing in the real world, I had time to visit a few pubs at the weekend. If ever I needed evidence that the quiz machine business is on its arse, I certainly found it. Of 15 pubs visited, 8 had got rid of their quiz machine, replacing it in some cases with nothing at all, i.e. there was just a blank space where the machine had previously been. This was made up of three 'independents', three Harvesters and (most shocking of all) two Wetherspoons. All of these had had machines in the last 2-6 months, some a lot more recently than that, and they were in four different towns which are quite some distance apart, so there was no local effect to explain the situation.

The Harvesters have seemingly made a policy decision to remove all machines from their new builds/refurbishments and to replace the SWPs in many of their existing pubs with one of those soft toy 'grabber' games. The Wetherspoons situation is not yet at that level but 99% of their places have consistently had quiz machines from the very beginning so any loss is noticeable.

We obviously have another indicator on here - this self-selecting group of many of the keenest SWP players in the country have only posted about one topic in two weeks, and that was The House of Tiny Treasures - call me old-fashioned but I always find it hard to treat as a serious game something a four year old would enjoy playing.

No doubt this post will earn me another appearance as a snide answer in someone's next question set but if I were you, lads, I'd be more concerned about asking myselves the question: "How have we let our product deteriorate to such an extent that a major national pub chain finds it more attractive to site a space-consuming game that just allows eight year olds to win a stuffed Angry Bird or Bart Simpson than one of our quiz machines?". That's quite some achievement...

Thumper · Post by **Thumper** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:15 am

Nil Satis wrote:"How have we let our product deteriorate to such an extent that a major national pub chain finds it more attractive to site a space-consuming game that just allows eight year olds to win a stuffed Angry Bird or Bart Simpson than one of our quiz machines?".

The problem is that the grabber machines probably have more entertainment and a better chance of success than SWP's these days!

Thumper · Post by **Thumper** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:17 am

For your average Joe Bloggs (like me) that is

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:27 am

That's one of the points I'm trying to make. You don't have to be that old to remember when a decent player almost always had to 'queue' a few times a day as punters piled their cash into the quiz machine. That of course was the way the whole business worked - lots of money going in with considerably less money coming out. The small percentage of good players who could win on the games was never the whole picture, otherwise how else would the business have survived for 25 or so years? Now however most games are either ludicrously difficult (for punters), deathly dull or both, and it's much rarer to have to wait for any quiz machine.

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:37 am

It's all a bit anecdotal. I have detailed records over a large geographical area, and the machine loss rate over the last year is pretty small. Fair point re the game designers and suppliers though: if the industry is in trouble, they are to blame, and with good reason. Look at two of the big suppliers: Gamestec think it's acceptable to have games which never boot up with the correct lateral alignment, or boot up with random alignment (not as if this is a new problem, it's been happening for umpteen issues), and apparently can't port certain games from other terminals without fucking them up completely in a variety of manners, the MOTD free pass crash being a fine example. A significant percentage of their terminals run so slowly that you had better not order a coffee to play them, or it will be cold before the first game finishes. Sceptre operate an unethical and possibly illegal floating policy. It's sloppy, incompetent, and completely unprofessional.

quizard · Post by **quizard** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:57 am

I must say I haven't really noticed that many have got rid of them. And some like Yates who blew them out for a while have got them back again.

Talking of porting games, one curio I saw the other week was the Paragon/GWHL package running on a Gamesnet 5. It ran it like shit LOL.

cp999 · Post by **cp999** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 12:00 pm

Well, that's a surprise! A bit like trying to run PS2 games on a Spectrum. The GHWL content runs fine on Opens.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 3:26 pm

Clearly there will be different patterns in each locality but as the pubs I mentioned covered High Wycombe, Maidenhead, Slough and Crawley, that's quite a reasonable 'sample' of the South East I would say.

The Harvester issue is a general one - they have put up several new builds/complete refurbs recently on my 'patch' and all are machine-free (AWP and SWP), but I have also noted 5 or 6 SWP removals in their older, non-refurbished places.

The two Spoons (Slough and Crawley) were more surprising really - the Slough one in particular has so many fruit machines that (as some have said about Spoons places on the General forum), it looks more like an arcade than a pub, yet they have decided there is no point in having a quizzer as well.

Topical2009 · Post by **Topical2009** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 4:42 pm

I've only been in the Slough Spoons once (only ever been in Slough once, for that matter - lucky me, I hear you say) and the quiz machine was refusing to take money. I've heard people on here talk about machines which seem to be perpetually out of order, so maybe the issue was one of unreliability? If you've got one sort of machine which just does what it's supposed to, and another sort of machine which causes customer complaints, or requires regular engineer visits, it's pretty obvious which one you're going to ditch if you have a choice in the matter. Those of you who are out and about a lot, are you finding non-functioning quiz machines a big problem?

QuizMaster · Post by **QuizMaster** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 5:06 pm

Games are shockingly poor nowadays, but then they always have been to an extent. A poll of SWP games on here would reveal as many crap ones from 5, 10, 20 years ago as there are now.

It's also difficult to quantify what makes a game good since it is all about perspective and opinion. I would imagine that most punters would tell you that Monopoly Hot Property is a 'good' game and so is 'Cluedo'. I would say they are bent as fuck and a pointless waste of my time and ability. I must have run around that Cluedo 'Wheel of Death' or whatever its called, 12 times and never got past the £1. I would imagine that this is not the experience that punters get.

I do like Million Pound Drop though. I think that appeals to most cross sections of the playing public. You'd struggle to find somebody who didn't like that.

I think it's more a question of choice than anything else, as normal players are far more discerning than they were 5 years ago. Most games on my iPhone are far superior in terms of presentation and gameplay than those on the local quiz machines. And more importantly, they are free. Once something else is offered for free, you wonder why you ever paid for 'the pleasure' of playing it.

I think the fact that the kiddie equipment replacing the quiz machines is about A/ Profitability (they rape a £1 off you in about 10 seconds for some crappy toy)
B/ Clientele (Nearly everybody who goes to a Harvester these days takes their screaming brood with them)

I'm surprised the Crown Carveries aren't offering machines which dispense free colostomoy bags and Sanatogen, judging by their clientele.

Northern Monkey · Post by **Northern Monkey** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 5:54 pm

Topical2009 wrote:I've only been in the Slough Spoons once (only ever been in Slough once, for that matter - lucky me, I hear you say) and the quiz machine was refusing to take money. Those of you who are out and about a lot, are you finding non-functioning quiz machines a big problem?

See it fairly regularly but most of the time when the coins are dropping straight through it a simple off and on at the plug will cure it.

quizard · Post by **quizard** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:54 pm

QuizMaster wrote:
I'm surprised the Crown Carveries aren't offering machines which dispense free colostomoy bags and Sanatogen, judging by their clientele.

HEY! I love Crown Carveries YUMMMMM!

betchrider · Post by **betchrider** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:49 pm

Seen a gw that has had“no signal" bouncing rOund the screen for about a month now!

rogerthymes · Post by **rogerthymes** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:49 pm

I saw a 'no signal' machine last week and turned it off and on again and it booted up ok.
Later the landlord walked past and seemed surprised it was working. I just muttered it was fine for me and he didn't argue.
Been nice to see some of the old games return on a certain type of cabinet (always forget which is which) it's got the old Ant and Dec Piggy Bank thing which i'd totally forgotten about and the Q Pop Quiz which I used to know most of the random stuff but can't recall it anymore.
Also found a Pints Make Prizes which still had a Pull The Barmaid card. What fun.

Northern Monkey · Post by **Northern Monkey** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:59 pm

Ant and Dec Piggy Bank thing which i'd totally forgotten about

Which unit pray tell?