companies getting the message?

Discuss Quiz Machines here..
cool
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companies getting the message?

Post by cool »

Couldn't get on a machine today. Reason : switched off awaiting engineer to enable note acceptor take the new £5 note. Amazed though more likely find the machine gone on my next visit.
Sloach
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Post by Sloach »

cool wrote:Couldn't get on a machine today. Reason : switched off awaiting engineer to enable note acceptor take the new £5 note. Amazed though more likely find the machine gone on my next visit.
According to the chief exec of their own trade association:

“They [quiz machines] are just not worth having — it is very difficult to make a game that will make a return now,” said Mr White at Bacta.

https://www.ft.com/content/dcb2154a-7bf ... 4b4333ee43
cool
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Post by cool »

Good work Sloach. Any chance of cutting and pasting it as the article appears to be for subscribers only or could you give a link where the article is published for all to see?
paragoon
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Post by paragoon »

So are they adjusting for the 'new' 10 and 5 pences? Would be ludicrous if they're not. I've been playing quiz machines nearly every day for a decade and could count on one hand the amount of times I've put a note in. Obviously when it's debatable if it'll pay out on a £2 win I'm obviously not going to put a f**king note in it!!
muddle
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Post by muddle »

Yes that would be interesting to read Sloach if you were able to cut and paste from where you read it.I see that he says in the article that they would like to increase the stake to £2 and the jackpot to £150.Now he's probably talking about the fruities here,but I think the quizzy games should all be £1 a play now (combined with doubling of jackpots).Pointless for example is a reasonably popular game - there's a Wetherspoons I go to 2 or 3 times a week and I always check the Pointless jackpot and it's often quite different from my last visit.However,when you consider that Pointless is effectively 40p a go (slightly less than even that given you can get a Pointless answer in the first three rounds),it's hardly taking a fortune.Maybe the games companies feel that people would be put off by a £1 a play,but I think it's worth a go in my opinion.We did after all have games like that twenty years ago.
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Nil Satis
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Post by Nil Satis »

cool wrote:Good work Sloach. Any chance of cutting and pasting it as the article appears to be for subscribers only or could you give a link where the article is published for all to see?
There's nothing too startling in the article but if you do want to read it, search for the article title ("Games machines lose their slot in British pubs") on Google and follow the link which should be at or near the top of the search results - you should then be able to read it after answering two completely pointless survey questions.

It does repeat one fallacy regarding our little world - that you can "beat" quiz machines using a smartphone. On one or two games you may be able to use them to help on an occasional question (e.g. while using the Phone a Friend bonus on the WWTBAM game that still survives on the Gamesnets) but the idea of using them constantly to answer the range of different questions you find on any modern game in the short time allowed (particularly anything with the words "lowest", "highest" etc in the question) would be like trying to drive around London by following an A-Z with half the pages missing. Smartphones have certainly had an impact but that isn't it - as the article also mentions, it's the deterrent factor of asking people to pay for something they can get for free, particularly with the pathetic prizes that are usually on offer.

It's also interesting to see in concrete terms what machines make for pubs - JD Wetherspoon make about £50,000 per pub from machine income (almost exclusively AWPs nowadays as we know), but that is down by half since 2000.
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Matt Vinyl
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Post by Matt Vinyl »

I think Muddle is on to something here. With the seemingly routine hike in AWP stakes and prizes, the inverse seems (seemed) to be the case with the SWPs. Of course, with higher prizes available, there needs to be a way of ensuring they can't be won time and time again by someone who 'knows their way around' a particular game. Food for thought, though...
"And do you ever contradict yourself, Minister?" "Well, yes and no..."
topcat
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Post by topcat »

The quiz machines had poker on? I might be wrong here but was there some sort of change on this? I have the utmost respect to quizzers who I think could make more than the 200 a day that fruit machine players would expect even to post on here. I met a couple of quiz gamers and was impressed but not amazed by their ability to remember facts and quiz questions.
Theres poker tournaments (luck mostly), pool ( mostly skill), snooker (more skill) and the lottery. Sure with the iron lady we will have more opportunities to play against our fellows
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bubbles
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Post by bubbles »

the fruit players 200 often comes from 2-3 hours of strategic targets, can't see a quizzer making much with part time hours?

they obv never have any of the empties on quizes either.

pretty shocked anyone can survive playing them tbh
Going skint....
SoccerHQ
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Post by SoccerHQ »

muddle wrote:Yes that would be interesting to read Sloach if you were able to cut and paste from where you read it.I see that he says in the article that they would like to increase the stake to £2 and the jackpot to £150.Now he's probably talking about the fruities here,but I think the quizzy games should all be £1 a play now (combined with doubling of jackpots).Pointless for example is a reasonably popular game - there's a Wetherspoons I go to 2 or 3 times a week and I always check the Pointless jackpot and it's often quite different from my last visit.However,when you consider that Pointless is effectively 40p a go (slightly less than even that given you can get a Pointless answer in the first three rounds),it's hardly taking a fortune.Maybe the games companies feel that people would be put off by a £1 a play,but I think it's worth a go in my opinion.We did after all have games like that twenty years ago.
Footy Quiz used to be a quid a go with a 20 quid jackpot...that didn't last long!
paragoon
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Post by paragoon »

SoccerHQ wrote:Footy Quiz used to be a quid a go with a 20 quid jackpot...that didn't last long!
There was a pop quiz one on the last days of the itbox with a similar structure - Never Mind The somethings...or something
cool
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Post by cool »

Thanks Nils but still in the dark tells me I have to subscribe
https://www.ft.com/content/dcb2154a-7bf ... 4b4333ee43
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Nil Satis
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Post by Nil Satis »

When I follow your link it does indeed show the "you must subscribe" version of the page but then I searched again exactly as I described above and I was again taken to the page I had previously described, with a picture of a fruit machine above a simple survey (the riveting question being "How often do you find yourself shopping? (online or offline, excluding grocery shopping)"). If I answer that question and a second equally exciting one I can then see the article. The article is set up so that you can't copy the text, only read it (well, not without a lot of extra work to extract the text from the surrounding code).

Oddly the URL of the "pointless survey" version of the page is exactly the same as the one you've posted here, so this must be something about the browser or device you are using (I am on a laptop; perhaps it doesn't work on a smartphone or tablet), or your search history or something like that. Computer witchcraft basically...
topcat
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Post by topcat »

Can you screen dump it this is turning into an Ahmad-esque essay
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quizard
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Post by quizard »

Well it would be a breach of copyright. Quiz machine players are very law abiding and above board compared to you fruit guys ;)
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