Number of plays is a pretty useless metric when you think about it. All plays are not created equal.

A game that spent time in a mall arcade might have a lot of plays on it, but it might have been mostly kids and each game probably lasted like 30 seconds.

Whereas a "low plays" HUO in the basement of a seasoned player might have had many, many epic 45 minute games. So, one play can cause 90 times more wear than another, or more! When the difference can be two orders of magnitude, what's the point?

An actually useful metric would be total game played time. Start the clock whenever a switch is triggered. Pause it if none are triggered for, say, 5 seconds. Some games actually do this or similar -- so let us see the total! And don't let it reset to zero!

You can almost get there on some games by multiplying total balls played by average ball time, for instance. But, bah! Those probably get reset too... and who knows whether it counts idle time with the ball languishing in the shooter lane?

Yes! That would also be so much more informative than a simple play count, although more abstract than a total time would be. And maybe just target switches, and would you want just the first closing from a spinner rip? So many variables. Time, we can all wrap our heads around.