Quoted from LesManley:The problem with that argument is that hardly any casual players know and/or care what a pinball machine costs brand new and people can't equate value like that if they don't know the numbers. Hell, my wife thinks my JJP POTC was only $1,000. If she had any idea what it was really worth, she'd be on me constantly to sell it. Most casual people are surprised someone is still making pins and think games cost a thousand bucks or so to buy new. When I tell people what the Halo Fireteam Raven environmental cabinet arcade game right across the room from the pins cost their jaws hit the floor. People just have no perspective on operator costs.
Around here from my first hand route experience, it is the casual players that make an operator money. You don't want to cater to a player like me coming into your establishment as you'll only make a fraction of the money you would off casual players. You raise the price on casual players to $1.50-$2.00...those same ones who generate the real dollars for your location AND already don't last more than a minute or two on a pin...and you drive your bread and butter away and destroy your pin earnings. They'll either play something else (arcade games, pool, darts, etc) which would be cheaper, last longer and give them more satisfaction, or in this area they will take their money and go elsewhere. To maximize earnings, a location here has to have some combination of things like; the cheapest prices, the newest games, great ambiance and/or well maintained games since we have several options for gaming locations that fits this bill within a fairly close proximity.
Disclaimer: This mainly applies to FEC operators.
To be fair, I’ve been doing this arcade thing for about 3-4 years now. I’ve spent many, many months in the arcade now, pretending to be a customer. Many hours casually watching how the average jacka- I mean, patron mishandles my machines. They don’t even look at the price stickers. They just put quarters into it until the game gives their audible cue to start.
Exhibit A: Need For Speed jams all the time. I’ve witnessed a full grown man put about 10 quarters into it until he realized “it doesn’t work” then he kicked the game unsuccessfully trying to clear the jam, and put 4 more quarters into the other slot. (Yes, I went and cleared it after his game and put a couple freebies in it)
Exhibit B: Seawitch does NOT make a noise after every coin inserted. This frightens the average patron. Without fail, the coin return it smashed all the way in, and the coin chutes have about $4 in them. However, every single time I clear it and run the quarters through it works fine. The jams are caused by people getting upset and smashing the return because it doesn’t make noises when the coins go in.
The average, causal player is MORE arcade-illiterate than the players of the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Now people are so dumb they need Stern to show an goddamn video of how you put coins in the chute and press the start button, otherwise they’re hopelessly lost.
I’ve witnessed thousands of transactions at my changers. People put in however much they want to spend.
They take those quarters and mindlessly dump them into games until the game prompts them to do something:
GET READY... CRANK IT!
STACK THE BLOCKS TO REACH THE WIN ZONE
PULL THE LEVER TO WIN TICKETS!
Once they run out they decide if they want to do it all again or leave.
At no point does price per game seem to matter to these people.
TL;DR it doesn’t matter how much most the games cost. They don’t look at it. The games that make money are the flashiest, loudest ones. Crank it and Big Bass out-earn my pins 15 times over. Real math.