Sure… nothing is hard when you just ignore the actual constraints.

Instead of focusing on the gross revenue numbers and going zOMG big numbers!! why not ask Tim what he’s actually planning on clearing a month after expenses to have a real number to spitball with?

I think everyone is just fixated on the top line number as if they are rolling around in money while watching the poor starve.

The key is he has people willing to do yhe kind of work… and having someone capable and willing to do the work is most of the battle. Lots to be learned from what it takes to keep that kind of staff.

Instead of dreaming about white collar guys doing side work… or people that run their own businesses .

Probably a lot better chance of luring a 35yr old bachelor from PA then a retired self employed guy.

Maybe don't dirt people and treat most who try to help as a hassle and you could have a viable location.
After seeing how Tim treats those who try to help I won't bother going or supporting this. But keep on telling us that there's nobody learning or willing to help while you treat people like dirt under your feet.
Funny, I volunteer at a different pinball museum and there are a bunch of young people there, learning, working, being part of a community, also have a few friends in the industry and they all have young employees, all working on pins, but yeah, the problem is other people right Tim?

B

I think your argument just further proves the point that maintenance should be a bigger priority and that more hands are needed to solve the problem.

you mean like when I said the other day...

?

I was just responding to the poster who said they were upset because of how 'easy' the fixes were. 'Easy' gets redefined and reprioritized when dealing with scale.

I do think Tim has finally shown signs of change (the merch, etc) and seen his own positions were not the correct one. I do think he will change when it comes to Techs too... but I just don't see him paying the kind of money it would take to lure people to relocate and be full time. And the local 'help' clearly hasn't been enough or is at odds with Tim.

Maybe Tim would be better off re-arranging the room a bit to keep all the 'storage' stuff behind curtain walls until they get their long term situation sorted.

Why lure anyone? Offer the volunteers they have now either full time or part time positions.

Here’s an “easy” fix then. Unplug it so that it stops taking people’s money. That’ll help scale down.

This is it. I've followed Tim to every location so far. Not been to the strip yet. I'll do my best to support whatever I can.

Sorta disturbing how many people with kids have negative experiences here. I guess a lack of maintenance staff could lead to being hyper-paranoid about machine damage, but it really seems like the issue is a lot more deep-seeded.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g45963-d620854-Reviews-Pinball_Hall_of_Fame-Las_Vegas_Nevada.html

https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/no-one-should-be-treated-that-way-henderson-father-says-family-mistreated-at-pinball-hall-of-fame-due-to-autistic-sons-behavior/

The saddest part of all those reviews for me was that the PHOF gets mad if you find a free credit on a game. Wtf? If I’m on location and win a couple free games, then I will purposely leave a credit in the game for some kid to enjoy. (Or the next adult, I don’t care) it’s called paying it forward, and should be encouraging for building the pinball community. Who knows that one free game might hook a kid for life.

When I was a poor kid in the 90’s I would be that kid that swept the coin reject on each machine to see if I could find a quarter to play with, and a free credit on a game was like an unexpected gift that brought a little warmth to my heart.

Merry Christmas everyone

Easy - if there’s money to donate to charity, use it to pay techs instead. Then when revenue is up, use that for charity.

Nobody is ignoring constraints yet u still don't understand my point. He has also run this place for years relying on free labor so clearly the labor constraints you define are not accurate. My point is if these people were paid along with others the operations would run far more efficiently....

The labor constraints are not accurate?

Are there roves of pinball techs doing full time work in your neck of the woods?

Are all the major pinball sites overflowing with pinball techs doing this full time?

Are there tons of techs in vegas that just are not working at phof but working pinball full time elsewhere in town?

Simply having money doesn’t change the problem of what it takes to staff the kind of need here.

People have a hard time keeping staff to do even the most basic cashier work and you think pay is Tim’s only problem filling the need? That’s cute

You usually have a solution and I find it suprising that you dont. I dont understand your pushback on the obvious, pay someone enough $$$ and make it viable long-term.

What other solution is there, besides scale down or make it a pinball Museum?

I should think in Las Vegas, a top of the line slot machine tech. Could earn a heck of a lot more than a pinball tech.

LTG : )

After losing all my money to Mortal Kombat or whatever I'd hang out by the pins and listen for the the knocker. So many people walk away from a free game. I can understand bumping off credits as a business, but getting upset with someone playing a found credit is weak.

I'd like to see PHOF get more games working, that should be a priority for them. And to create a more inviting atmosphere for the guests. Can feel like your walking on egg shells in there with the rule notes posted everywhere. "Geeze hope he doesnt think I smell like weed and get tossed".

It's a pipe dream. It's like asking Chris Hibler and HEP to team up and move out to Las Vegas to fix all of PHOF machines. You could offer them a million each and I doubt either one would take it. You have to want it... working with Tim all day... and living in Vegas... and no one with the skills wants that. I went there once. Never again.

Could a 1/3 - 2/3 line slot tech make a decent 1/3 to fill that gap, and possibly fill what seems to be an unrealized niche in Vegas?

flynnibus is all knowing. If he’s pushing back it’s because the universe has willed it this way. He who knows all has spoken, do not argue his wisdom.

Well honestly, I think he posts some pretty legit information and seems pretty knowledgeable on pinball and business in general, thus my real curiosity on his pushback on what seems obvious. Hire someone or scale down to meet the ability to maintain at an acceptable level.

He's providing zero wisdom .... just making excuses for an operation that clearly needs new direction

I agree 100% it needs new direction... however I think he's providing the wisdom of someone who maintains 20+ on location games every single week and understands the reality of trying to get a team... much less a single person... to maintain 10x as many machines.

I can’t be onsite for 30mins without strangers interrupting me asking for pinball repair work or referrals. The shortage of people who do this work is real. And that’s in a market where the going rate is over $100/hr.

There is a HUGE difference between the idea of someone who fixes games as a side gig or as a volunteer and someone who is willing to make coinOp their full time career and is willing to do the work non-stop. You’ll find an endless supply of people willing to give ideas or talk about helping… but where the rubber meets the road… and after a fee months you’ll find the help quite different from what was offered.

Hobby verse pro. CoinOp is a tough job with low pay.

I already said what my suggestion was… I’d be talking to the real pros who run businesses on the back of these kinds of techs. Not the guys who can get by with one or two lifers… the guys who have ro recruit, train, and keep that help on staff long enough to make it worth it. GEX, TNT, PPM, etc. find out who they have success with… what kind of pay they need… what were busts… etc. and maybe try to lure an established master tech to vegas to build around.

Obviously Tim’s need is beyond volunteers. But he also needs someone (besides himself) he can build a tech staff around. A staff that is going to need multiple full time people and augment with volunteers to handle the lightweight stuff.

But this solution is more than ‘just pay the man!’ — you need ‘the man’ and Tim needs to address the blockers they’ve had in the past.

Another issue is apparently they are/were super paranoid about theft so anything around the coinboxes was high drama and a problem with help. That’s not sustainable with real help and oins. Vegas is some of the most watched public spaces around… cone up with a monitoring or control system that eases that concern.

Their problem isn’t just ‘set a tech budget’. Anyone who actually hires staff these days knows better than that.

It's basic common sense though that, in general, someone who is paid for work is able to devote more time than someone who is doing it on a volunteer basis. So when there is a major problem with machine maintenance such that is having a big negative impact on customer experience, and there is an excess of cash on hand, it doesn't really make sense to keep with the "volunteer only" model.

It would be an interesting comparison… especially since vegas is a union town.

But it leads the question… who is he really competing with? Tim’s comment about people not wanting to make the phof their career is a key observation I think many under estimate.

Do you keep working in hvac or the jiffy lube with hopes of moving up the ladder… or at least be able to switch jobs to get a raise….

or do you go work for this hippie to with little upward future to learn a skill set that has what kind of portability to work for someone else?

These are real challenges to overcome that you don’t solve long term with just offering more koney.

At the end of the day its all about the koney.

I mean, I don't quite get it that somehow all these other museums and pinball arcades have no issue with techs. We have a small one down here in Del Ray beach and they typically at all times got two techs on the floor working on machines and trying to fix issues going on with customers. They even on the spare time will do house calls as they they are techs for a living, and will hit up other locations that need help obviously for pay. Other arcades I go to also have regular techs on hire to always be working.

This attitude that folks don't want to work anymore or are lazy or don't have the know how... again yet other arcades have no problem getting help... cause they pay for professional help. And I find it hard to believe in a city like vegas that has so many machine operators and techs cause of all the slots and other casino machinery, that there isn't folks who would also be able to handle pinball

Repair work in an active arcade can be tough work. Physically demanding, on your feet for hours or all day, loud, distracting, full of constant interruptions, and your attention is split between what you're working on and safety concerns like making sure an oblivious child doesn't grab your hot soldiering iron.

Not everyone can deal with all that or wants to deal with all that on a regular basis.

Repairing a game in the comfort of your own home or workspace isn't nearly the same.

So, not only is the job difficult in a non-technical way, then you also have to deal with the technical issues that crop up.

Sure, there are a few dedicated individuals who would do it for the love of pinball. But really, you need to pay people enough to want to deal with all that over the long haul.

I'm sure most volunteers and folks taking side-gigs would prefer to retreat to the comfort and quiet of their own space after a while. When a job is hard and/or difficult, you need to pay them enough to overlook the negatives; that's pretty much the same as with any job.

Anyone in the service or food industry will probably tell you that most of those jobs can be difficult in some way, and sometimes degrading or unrewarding. But, if you pay someone incredibly well to look past all that, then they will likely stick around.

Tim has gone out of his way to humiliate, harass and talk mad crap about these people, seen it myself, when you publicly talk crap about the owners of these places, and talk behind their backs, dirt them at events honoring them, tell everyone that you should be honored and literally call these other places a joke, in public,to the owners faces, in front of their friends and family, loudly and obnoxiously, how can you expect them to help?
Serious question.
B

Small places can manage with a smaller team. Your local place has 70ish games, PHoF has 330ish.
Even Pinballz Arcade near me has a paid team of techs for their three locations (probably under 200 pins total) and the condition of the pins is marginal.

And the amount of revenue is proportional. You got such a big location and so much money coming in, then I mean... you hire more staff. And you get folks saying how they will be at the Hall of Fame and see no one working on machines but often Tim.

Bigger the location, the more machines breaking, I mean the answer is pretty clear on what needs to be done instead of just ranting about the youths not wanting to learn.

Agreed, why is there still this pushback on the obvious.

PAY.SOMEONE.ENOUGH

Thats it. Seems the PHOF is unwilling to do that and is possibly suffering.

Its too bad, I feel there should be some qualified techs that are used to working around $$$ in Vega$ of all places..

All the issues people are bringing up leads to the same thing - Tim. It’s his show and he can run it how he wants, but damn

I live a block away from a brewery where another pinsider has like 20 games. He lives 45 minutes away so anytime something breaks during the week he’ll text me and I will go over and fix what I can for free (gasp) just because he’s a pal of mine. I’m happy to free a stuck ball, rebuild a mech that came apart, resolder a wire that came off a flipper coil so the games can stay on throughout the week. I just love pinball and that people play at the brewery and I live near by. If I lived in Vegas I’d probably do the same for Tim.

Not everything is about money.

There are people that just want to help such as me, and according to most of pinside I’m a giant piece of Shit.
However based on my dozen interactions with Tim every time I go to Vegas he probably wouldn’t be interested, and my wife would probably bitch at me for helping him because of how he snapped at her for looking at a game too closely he had the hood up on.

You can’t tell me there aren’t more pin heads in Vegas that would love to spare a few hours a week to just tinker on the games and keep them alive. But no one’s offering to help or they are and being told no. Either way it’s something to think about.

Heya! I live down the street from the PHoF. Already talked to Tim and some other volunteers there. I'll be volunteering over there in the coming year.

It seems like a great opportunity to learn how to keep these games going. Hopefully things go well, and I'll be able to recruit some other Makerspace friends into doing the same. Will see how it goes.

Great to hear and I hope it works out. I’ve learnt a lot from my tech over the years and can now help others fix their games. Volunteering should be a win win for both sides of the fence.

Tim probably doesn't want to spend hours training a new volunteer since he sees it as an endless churn of volunteers that only stick around for a short while, while he could instead be using those combined hours to fix games.

Most of that training probably isn't necessarily on technical repairs, but more of an orientation on how he conducts and prioritizes repairs, how parts are organized, how to order new parts and note when there's low supply, etc.

But then that circles back to the point of actually paying people enough to want to stick around longer than a churn of volunteers who may lose interest after a short while. At some point you need to invest in people within a business, not just the facility and physical assets.

I just want to hear how they manage 800+ coin slots without wanting to kill themselves Especially on all those old games.

All the negative reviews mentioning the “old man with ponytail and headlight following them around harassing my kids”, so many reviews saying the same thing it becomes very comical.

Not just limited to Tim though, every time an employee is mentioned it is mentioned that the employee was rude. Ha!

Thanks. Thats the attitude I'm going in with. There's a ton to learn, and they get some help getting things sorted. Even if it's just cleaning and waxing playfields, it's more stuff that gets done. But, I can also solder and use a multimeter. Will see how far this goes!

Otherwise, they have seemed genuinely happy to just have problems reported. So, if you find find an issue, tell someone and they will write it down in the notepad on the counter to fix. They aren't playing all day, so it's easy to miss things.

Does the PHOF have a succession plan? What happens when the owner retires/quits, etc....Does he have a right hand man/woman that takes charge?

Reread post #871. Tim himself says "At some point in the future, this project will end and all the assest will be sold". So what I extrapolate from that statement is that when Tim decides to pack it in he'll just sell it all off. From my experience, when someone starts to say things like this, he is starting to think about it or is seriously thinking about selling it all off.

Why would you keep putting up with the bullshit of being sued, fighting for land that you rightfully own and dealing with all the problems and headaches? Maybe it's time to start enjoying life and having fun.

QSS

Years ago I went to PHOF, stayed all day, was super amazed while as the same time super disappointed about all the games with issues.

I went to Pacific Pinball Museum and was super amazed at all the games but at the same time disappointed in the condition of some.

I went to Asheville and was ungodly disappointed in the state of their machines, as in embarrassed they played so bad.

On the flip side went to Free Gold Watch and there yes the games are immaculate. Same goes for Nic’s collection in Roanoke (and it was terrible before he got there)

Tims place was what inspired me to open my own arcade. We have 45 pins on the floor. It is damn near impossible to keep them all running well. I’ve seen it done well, I’ve seen it done poorly. Tim’s place is neither the best nor the worst, and scaled by size of collection is pretty average in this regards.

We are graced by having two super amazing volunteers who take pride in having those games purring at my arcade. If we didn’t have them our games would play like crap left to me. I don’t have enough time, and I get the rest of the video games to deal with mostly myself (with not enough time to do so).

So what’s my point in all this ? The state of the pins depends on entirely who is working on them. We got super lucky. Most places don’t.

Ok then why not pay the man ? Is my arcade just being some money grubbing endeavor breaking the back of its volunteers. Actually no. We’ve just passed our 4th anniversary. We just had revenue over $200K for the first time ever.

I have in 4 years not paid myself a dime. If we had to pay $100 an hour for a full time tech, we’d be out of business. This business model I hate to say runs on the good graces of its volunteers - which effectively is what I am even as owner. By the time you subtract rent, electricity, insurance, front desk employees, parts repair costs, it’s not a high margin business. Don’t confuse revenue with profit. They aren’t the same.

It’s not that I don’t think you should pay your technicians that do repair. You should. We will before I start taking payouts myself. But we have all taken a vow of repair poverty. When you start getting paid it becomes a job, an obligation, not something that you are doing because you enjoy it. And then you start having obligations about hours you are expected to be there, and games that aren’t working and you should get back up ASAP.

So we specifically discussed this with our crew and for now we go with no pay. I’m not saying this would work for everyone, I’m not saying it will sustain us indefinitely, and clearly with a collection as large as PHOF there are limits to our model. But it works for us, for now. and our volunteers take pride (as they damn well should) when we have tournaments and people gush over how well the collection plays.

Just one persons perspective, but on a topic I feel pretty well versed in compared to most. I get Tim’s dilemma. I don’t have a good solution other than to just put out Stern games (joking). Pins break a lot, especially old pins, each place finds its own solutions. Some work better than others.

Here’s what I would do if I were Tim: get the games that don’t play off the floor and replace with those that do. They you aren’t so focused on the out of order signs and can take you time on a game in the back away from the maddening crowds. Also makes it look like you are bringing new games on the floor. This is what airlines do, take a plane out of service and do maintenance. It can work if planned well.

Problem 1 : Tim has no interest in paying good techs.

Problem 2: it’s doubtful he’d be able to find the team of techs he needs, even if he was willing to pay them well.

Just host a tech weekend once a year and people come fix.party and play.

Got to Vegas about 5 months ago and it had to be first stop of the vacation for us....(okay for me anyway)

IMG_0662 (resized).jpg

I've not yet been to the new PHOF location, but at previous locations, the "employees" were invisible, as (I believe) they should be. Pinball is pretty "self-serve", so the only interaction the average customer is going to have with a PHOF "employee" is if the customer is breaking one of their rules; those of us who've recently owned/run _any_ public-facing business know how well most people these days react to being told not to do something, no matter what it might be, and no matter how nice (or "rude") they're treated.

Just an observation...

They should get with the times and just put everything in free play. A lot of the maintenance problems can come from coin mechs. Imagine if they didn’t have to waste their time fixing mechs, loading tokens, etc. When they could just have a front desk that collects cash all day, people can play all they want and the techs can concentrate on just fixing games. I will never set foot in that place again because machines are so poorly maintained it is almost laughable. I get how hard it is to maintain that many games but if you turn them off, try to actually fix them maybe people won’t be so pissed instead of ignoring the issues and allowing people to put their hard earned dollars into broken machines. It puts a bad taste into peoples mouths and you won’t get return business. I don’t know Tim I have only been to the HOF one weekend but that dude certainly rubbed me the wrong way with his antics that weekend I was there regardless of how much he does for the community when your a dick why would anyone want to support you. Good luck PHOF there are so many other locations across North America now that you better step up your game or you will fade into the sunset.

This is Pinside. Stop making sense, right now.