As someone who has seen virtually all the machines since Give Us a Break and has played all over the country on and off for 20 years (albeit never as my only form of income), I thought I'd add my two penn'orth to cool's interesting post.cool wrote:If the machine income from swp's is in decline why are (1) there are more makers of games than ever (2) All the big pub companies have them in their pubs (3) The manufacturers/ suppliers of the machines are constantly trying to improve the look /content of the machine (4) many more pubs have two swp's in them
I could well believe that machine income overall is in decline but would equally agree with cool's points. However the two views aren't incompatible if you look at it like this:
(1) More makers of games than ever - possibly related to the expansion generally in the IT sector and the much wider availability of programming skills in the population. How many people would have had the interest or expertise to create quiz games 20 or even 10 years ago? We would all I'm sure agree also that increased QUANTITY rarely if ever relates to increased QUALITY - better 5 good games than 50 crap ones!
(2) All the big pub companies have them - true I guess, but this has been the case for several years really
(3) The improvements in look and content - they are trying to do this agreed but is this a desperate attempt to chase an ever decreasing pot, and to draw in people who otherwise wouldn't play the machines? Again, I'd also make the point that I'd always prefer to play a clunky, visually dull game that offered decent prizes than some beautifully designed piece of art that only ever offered £1 and that for 15+ minutes' work
(4) More pubs with two SWPs - possibly true but again this could also be due to each individual machine earning less than previously and hence pub companies feeling the need to take up more valuable space to keep at least some income rolling in.
A lot of this is based on guesswork of course and I'm not saying I know the answers any more than cool or anyone else.
As for the future? Well, to be honest I've never really understood why pubs ever have SWPs if they are just there to make money. Fruit machines have always seemed to me the most incredibly lucrative form of gambling (for the owners, not the punters!) - what casino or bookies wouldn't give their right arm for 30% guaranteed take?? Obviously the quiz machines aren't there to LOSE money for pubs but for me they have always been partly about providing something sociable that will encourage people to (a) come in at all and (b) stay drinking for longer.
However I've found the last year or so incredibly depressing, not just for players like ourselves but also for the prospects of ordinary punters continuing to play the machines in great numbers. The quality of so many new games has been so poor that it does make me wonder how long there will be decent SWPs worth playing at all. I realise punters and players want different things but when the one thing that punters want (a reasonable length of game with an occasional win of £3 to £5 to make the challenge worthwhile) is being gradually removed from each new game that comes out, I do wonder what the future holds.
There you are - that's what getting knocked out of the FA Cup does to you...
