The lights go out, one by one...
I agree, puns usually only raise a mere curling up of the lips at best. I'm not sure which humour you prefer?
I was in Cricklewood Bingo the other year and noticed a Paragon cabinet.....I rushed over expecting to find such treasures as Dond No Boxes, but it was just a Bingo Express terminal. Grrrrr.
I was in Cricklewood Bingo the other year and noticed a Paragon cabinet.....I rushed over expecting to find such treasures as Dond No Boxes, but it was just a Bingo Express terminal. Grrrrr.
JG
... whereas we all know where the itBoxes went when they died - they became those FOBT monstrosities:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bo ... ne-2844463
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bo ... ne-2844463
Played a quizzer yesterday in a uni pub, i was visiting with some old mates, who like myself wasted most of our lives at uni in pubs and on quizzers. (I apologise in advance for this rant)
No one had touched it for about 2 hours, and as i (like most casual players) hadn't really given them much attention recently, thought i'd go and have a play to see what they were offering nowadays...
For some context, i've been working for a large online gambling company for about 18 months now, so my attention has shifted away from offline.
Went over to play it, no idea what cab/gameset it was(i thikn its the fat spanner cab, one which jimmy white was featured on with the white cabs). It featured clasics like "Formula Win" "Classic Pub Quiz" "Tug of war" "Golden Boot" "Road to 66" , some Russell Grant dross, some tug of war game which looks like it was made for a super nintendo(where we needed to get about 25 questions right for £1), and our favorite, Golden Balls where the machine was averaging about 4FPS, couldn't even play word soup properly as the calibration of the screen was off...
It's not suprising no one plays them any more. For our £5 we tried 10 different games, of which none of them gave us
a. a hint of entertainment
b. a sniff of £1/feeling £1 was close if we played on
c. any sort of replay value/desire to play on
Indeed, by the third pound we were deriving quite a lot of enjoyment just by laughing at how shit and surreal the entire experience was was, i don't know what the tug of war game is called, but it's quite simply the most embarrassing thing i think i've ever seen. The concept of the game is understandable enough, but it's like the project manager at whichever company it was is a small child, who thinks that watching a load of fat, large nosed gnomes floating down a ravine is some sort of good experience. There's not even a "Tug", when you get a question right, one gnome just levitates forward then falls down... that was probably the highlight of our fiver.
Whilst i accept that there's still decent offerings out there on the right machines(colur of money/million pound drop etc), it's not surprising that the industry is in such turmoil. Most casual player who staked on that would most likely not realise there's different offerings on different cabinets, and quite simply just never play a quizzer again.
For someone who works in the online gambling industry, we're often posed with questions around offline vs online gaming, & how we think it's going to play out in the next 5 years with the influx of mobile & tablet casinos on smartphones & increasingly advances phones & phone games, an the answer for me is simple.
What i saw makes me 100% sure that unless the SWP industry takes a long hard look at itself, it will be dead in 5 years in its current guise....
For that fiver, i could've been in the same pub and:
-Had more alcohol
-Played 10 games of pool
-Chucked it into a fruit machine (admittedly would've most likely given me the same result)
-Loaded up my iphone and had 5 £1 spins on Rainbow Riches in HD/played a wide range of gambling activities on a reputable online casino
-Spent that £5 on some top quality phone games
-Loaded up the jukebox for a decent period of time with good music
That's just 6 things off the top of my head which in future will be seeing my money before a quiz machine, and there's probably even more.
For the industry to have any chance of survival, it needs to take a long hard look at itself. It looks to me (admittedly most likely ignorant of a few things nowadays) that it's in some sort of self-defeating downward spiral where there's less and less money in the industry, so games designers are spending less and less money developing games, and operators are spending less and mess money actually maintaining and checking the cabinets out there are fit for purpose.
No one is going to complain that the screen calibration is slightly off, and no one is going to complain that the machine is running at 4FPS, instead they'll simply never bother again. Likewise the guy collecting the cash isn't going to be having a punt and reporting back that the cab doesn't work properly, all he'll be doing is reporting that machine hasn't taken a lot, without any context. My best guess is that next time i'm down it just won't be there anymore, it's gone from 4 fruits and 2 quizzers to 1 fruit and 1 quizzer over the time i've been there.
I don't know who's more to blame, but it feels like the whole thing is winding down, and no one really cares or is doing anything proactive to stop it happening, more still making a profit until that's no longer possible and moving on to creating content & machines for other channels, indeed, the best are already jumping ship.
To prove this point, later on that evening i played something from games warehouse which was the "compelling entertainment" which they promise... Yep, i opened up Sky Vegas and had few spins on their massively successful "Gold Strike" slot... Games warehouse have done an excellent job of creating a slot which appeals to players, and has a "feel" to it which isn't available on almost all of our slots which are from the big american and casino based companies who make slots.
I'm not even sure what my point is anymore, but for me it looks like it's fast nearing the point of no return. I see GWHL are making quality content like Pointless & The Chase, but when x% of cabinets feature dross, it's just getting lost in the shake up, & when (probably) the only company left of any stature is planning its escape, it says it all.
No one had touched it for about 2 hours, and as i (like most casual players) hadn't really given them much attention recently, thought i'd go and have a play to see what they were offering nowadays...
For some context, i've been working for a large online gambling company for about 18 months now, so my attention has shifted away from offline.
Went over to play it, no idea what cab/gameset it was(i thikn its the fat spanner cab, one which jimmy white was featured on with the white cabs). It featured clasics like "Formula Win" "Classic Pub Quiz" "Tug of war" "Golden Boot" "Road to 66" , some Russell Grant dross, some tug of war game which looks like it was made for a super nintendo(where we needed to get about 25 questions right for £1), and our favorite, Golden Balls where the machine was averaging about 4FPS, couldn't even play word soup properly as the calibration of the screen was off...
It's not suprising no one plays them any more. For our £5 we tried 10 different games, of which none of them gave us
a. a hint of entertainment
b. a sniff of £1/feeling £1 was close if we played on
c. any sort of replay value/desire to play on
Indeed, by the third pound we were deriving quite a lot of enjoyment just by laughing at how shit and surreal the entire experience was was, i don't know what the tug of war game is called, but it's quite simply the most embarrassing thing i think i've ever seen. The concept of the game is understandable enough, but it's like the project manager at whichever company it was is a small child, who thinks that watching a load of fat, large nosed gnomes floating down a ravine is some sort of good experience. There's not even a "Tug", when you get a question right, one gnome just levitates forward then falls down... that was probably the highlight of our fiver.
Whilst i accept that there's still decent offerings out there on the right machines(colur of money/million pound drop etc), it's not surprising that the industry is in such turmoil. Most casual player who staked on that would most likely not realise there's different offerings on different cabinets, and quite simply just never play a quizzer again.
For someone who works in the online gambling industry, we're often posed with questions around offline vs online gaming, & how we think it's going to play out in the next 5 years with the influx of mobile & tablet casinos on smartphones & increasingly advances phones & phone games, an the answer for me is simple.
What i saw makes me 100% sure that unless the SWP industry takes a long hard look at itself, it will be dead in 5 years in its current guise....
For that fiver, i could've been in the same pub and:
-Had more alcohol
-Played 10 games of pool
-Chucked it into a fruit machine (admittedly would've most likely given me the same result)
-Loaded up my iphone and had 5 £1 spins on Rainbow Riches in HD/played a wide range of gambling activities on a reputable online casino
-Spent that £5 on some top quality phone games
-Loaded up the jukebox for a decent period of time with good music
That's just 6 things off the top of my head which in future will be seeing my money before a quiz machine, and there's probably even more.
For the industry to have any chance of survival, it needs to take a long hard look at itself. It looks to me (admittedly most likely ignorant of a few things nowadays) that it's in some sort of self-defeating downward spiral where there's less and less money in the industry, so games designers are spending less and less money developing games, and operators are spending less and mess money actually maintaining and checking the cabinets out there are fit for purpose.
No one is going to complain that the screen calibration is slightly off, and no one is going to complain that the machine is running at 4FPS, instead they'll simply never bother again. Likewise the guy collecting the cash isn't going to be having a punt and reporting back that the cab doesn't work properly, all he'll be doing is reporting that machine hasn't taken a lot, without any context. My best guess is that next time i'm down it just won't be there anymore, it's gone from 4 fruits and 2 quizzers to 1 fruit and 1 quizzer over the time i've been there.
I don't know who's more to blame, but it feels like the whole thing is winding down, and no one really cares or is doing anything proactive to stop it happening, more still making a profit until that's no longer possible and moving on to creating content & machines for other channels, indeed, the best are already jumping ship.
To prove this point, later on that evening i played something from games warehouse which was the "compelling entertainment" which they promise... Yep, i opened up Sky Vegas and had few spins on their massively successful "Gold Strike" slot... Games warehouse have done an excellent job of creating a slot which appeals to players, and has a "feel" to it which isn't available on almost all of our slots which are from the big american and casino based companies who make slots.
I'm not even sure what my point is anymore, but for me it looks like it's fast nearing the point of no return. I see GWHL are making quality content like Pointless & The Chase, but when x% of cabinets feature dross, it's just getting lost in the shake up, & when (probably) the only company left of any stature is planning its escape, it says it all.
Just to clarify, I am not Drpepper despite much of this post reading exactly like one of mine! ;-)
The FatSpanner cabinet you saw is one of the older Open cabinets. I have long thought that they are one of the companies that is beyond saving in terms of SWP provision, for all the reasons you outline. To illustrate, the sum total of 12-18 months' development work for their SWP department in terms of Q&A games appears to be:
- rebranding their version of Pub Quiz with some ludicrous claim that there is now a £25 maximum prize (presumably available after only about 1000 consecutive losing games)
- a 'Rhubarb and Custard' branded clone of Antarctic Adventures, which in itself was a very poor rip-off of Caveman Capers and Hell's Bells
- a minimal updating of Golden Boot
The full list is here: http://www.fatspanner.com/pub/pubpod.html
As you say, there's nothing there with any sort of 'repeat play' potential. It's almost as if they feel they have to make a token effort but no more than that.
The FatSpanner cabinet you saw is one of the older Open cabinets. I have long thought that they are one of the companies that is beyond saving in terms of SWP provision, for all the reasons you outline. To illustrate, the sum total of 12-18 months' development work for their SWP department in terms of Q&A games appears to be:
- rebranding their version of Pub Quiz with some ludicrous claim that there is now a £25 maximum prize (presumably available after only about 1000 consecutive losing games)
- a 'Rhubarb and Custard' branded clone of Antarctic Adventures, which in itself was a very poor rip-off of Caveman Capers and Hell's Bells
- a minimal updating of Golden Boot
The full list is here: http://www.fatspanner.com/pub/pubpod.html
As you say, there's nothing there with any sort of 'repeat play' potential. It's almost as if they feel they have to make a token effort but no more than that.