Fruit Machine Chat

pool tables take plenty compared to a quiz machine!

Yep, many no doubt do but very few of them will take more than the same floor area (remembering it's not just the table itself but all the space needed around it) filled with drinkers or, more relevantly these days, a few tables with people eating. That's the point I was making - pubs have to balance the different requirements for space but most have plenty of spare room to utilise for much of the 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week they are usually open.

Nil Satis wrote:I guess the fundamental reason is that SWP games offer a lot more playing time for each credit, so they need to take a much higher percentage of the stake to be worthwhile. A fruit machine will use up most credits in a second or two, whereas any decent SWP game should provide a minimum of a minute's play.

The key point for me about SWPs is that for pubs they have never been wholly about making money - I have always classed them alongside things like pool tables and dart boards in that they are social facilities. If you have a pub that isn't very big and is likely to be busy most nights, a pool table or dart board is going to take up a lot of space that could otherwise be filled with tables or simply people standing to drink. However in the majority of pubs where that isn't the case, having these additional facilities is a way of getting people through the doors in the first place and then keeping them there. A decent SWP game should be like that - it should, at least in theory, be sociable in that it provides a group of people the opportunity for each one to contribute something.

Disagree on why they need to be 40% though. I know you anaraks (no offence to parker jackets ) can pay well showing how dumb the sheep are (dont wanna wake up Ahmad) but why 40% - surely 78% could still manage to make (maybe more?) money - not like people are queuing up to play the potential jukeboxes of tommorow

why turn them into vending machines or install a 3d printer and sell keyrings.. but they just sit there doing fuckall!!!!

Nil Satis wrote:I guess the fundamental reason is that SWP games offer a lot more playing time for each credit, so they need to take a much higher percentage of the stake to be worthwhile. A fruit machine will use up most credits in a second or two, whereas any decent SWP game should provide a minimum of a minute's play.

This is part of the problem - manufacturers conflate enjoyment and value for money with length of time played. Just because you get 5 minutes + play out of By Any? Means doesn't mean you have had 5 minutes of entertainment or fun.

I think people would be quite happy with a minute's gameplay if they felt they actually had a chance of winning a prize.

quiz machines are no longer relevant, just let go because it is done now. THE END.

all your over thinking and hoping for a turnaround only results in prolonging your suffering!

like i suggested before, you have to make it happen yourself or convince a potential investor (hard with minimal, if any profit)

maybe 90" hd screens with great music and sounds (think x factor ish) and popular subjects that can capture people and make it a truly entertaining experience with the odd random mega win, say 50 to a thousand pounds and maybe the idea could be resurrected. alot of marketing required and a big loss initially but who knows?!

It's not quite the end yet,bubbles though to borrow from a previous quotation,we may well have gone past the beginning of the end some time ago.I,like cool,still think some sort of renaissance is possible.When I walk into Wetherspoons and the like and see 6,7 or bandits that all essentially do the same thing I wonder if that is really the way to maximise machine revenue? Quizzes seem just as popular as they ever were,is there not some sort of market there? Your idea sounds quite interesting actually.
On the subject of fruit machines,do you think you've gone past the beginning of the end for them as well? (I mean for a pro player).

wires74 wrote:cheers muddle think another game that has gone is the one with Frankenstein and Dracula on it cant think what the game is called but it is pants

Yes,you're right wires,Dead Rich has gone.How will we possibly manage?

If it's the end Bubbles why don't you float off!

I obv don't play quizzies, apart from to put a pound or 2 in if i'm somewhere that i don't want to leave 2 seconds after catching the last coin out of the fruit!

Fruits go in cycles, there could be fantastic opportunities ahead or barren nothingness! when the hundreds came out it was doom and gloom, yet a grand a week was easy on part time hours. Clues come out where 5k+ in a week was commonplace.

now obv quiz machines are not my forte (emptied a fair few tho!) and i can see when there were loads and the jackpots were worth more back in the day that good money was to be made but it must be pretty hard going to even scratch 1500 a month on em now? which is well below the average wage, especially as alot of you believe you are "clever", something that is debatable for sure...

paragoon wrote:Nah, it was a machine that definitely had it on before. Maybe I just didn't see it on the second page?! Anyway, apologies to one and all, seems I jumped the gun!

Yes,I've seen one now where Pointless has disappeared post-update.A bit sloppy really given that Pointless is possibly the most popular game around.

The reason why so many fruity players could empty quizzers at certain points was that there were contacts within the companies that were undoubtedly divulging the information for a price. I met a guy who was from Bristol who was paying a mole within a company £5k a year (and that was more than ten years ago) for inside info on fruities. I don't believe fruity players worked it out for themselves, likewise an SWP player wouldn't have a hope of finding an emptier on a fruity. Fruity players I'm positive made/make far more money than quiz machine players but are far more likely to spunk it from my experience of them and I've met quite a few.

bubbles wrote:I obv don't play quizzies, apart from to put a pound or 2 in if i'm somewhere that i don't want to leave 2 seconds after catching the last coin out of the fruit!

Fruits go in cycles, there could be fantastic opportunities ahead or barren nothingness! when the hundreds came out it was doom and gloom, yet a grand a week was easy on part time hours. Clues come out where 5k+ in a week was commonplace.

now obv quiz machines are not my forte (emptied a fair few tho!) and i can see when there were loads and the jackpots were worth more back in the day that good money was to be made but it must be pretty hard going to even scratch 1500 a month on em now? which is well below the average wage, especially as alot of you believe you are "clever", something that is debatable for sure...

Having a little smile at the old 'I'll just have a little go on the quizzy to try and disguise the fact I've fleeced the bandit' trick - I know a couple of bandit players and they do the same thing.The quiz machine world tends to be neither fantastic opportunities nor barren nothingness.Your estimate of the money that can be made is sadly heading that way for me but that's more down to paucity of machines rather than the difficulty of extracting money from a single machine.Pro rata,it's still quite ok.I started to do it because simply I could and also because of the stressless and flexible nature to it.At least part of the decline,in my opinion,is due to the industry itself;when I first started posting on here it was simply to point out problems and possible improvements in the perhaps vain hope someone would take note.I don't think any quizzy player on here thinks that they are 'clever' or indeed are into self-aggrandisement.I'd have to say I was above average when it comes to my general knowledge and puzzle-solving - the latter is doubtless true of you too if you're playing fruities for a living.I don't know that much about the fruit machine world,but years ago I remember my mates showing me how to win on one machine that involved a long series of nudges and thinking that that was quite clever.I've bumped into a few fruity players on my travels that I've had a pleasant conversation with but also seen near fights break out amongst rivals and also encountered one bloke effing and blinding loudly on his mobile in a Brewers Fayre in the early afternoon.
The emptiers on quizzies,most of which I either became aware of afterwards or never sussed,are irritating to quizzy pros as it's another knock to the industry.I obviously understand why you would exploit it though,I suspect another aspect that you don't have to consider is 'if I win too much the machine will disappear'.

What I would say though are fruity players have balls of steel re the big stakes. SWP players wouldn't enjoy the ride of a fruity, like knowing straight away the likelihood of winning.

Quite like the who wants to win a tenner game....with a bit of practice winning a quid should be a reasonable realistic occurrence (certainly on a par if not more likely than attempting to do it on Pub Quiz).

Be interested if occasiningly it has an easier version...you get this with PMP every so often when the easier categories continue even after you pass the £1 pint.

A decent effort though....

cool wrote:What I would say though are fruity players have balls of steel re the big stakes. SWP players wouldn't enjoy the ride of a fruity, like knowing straight away the likelihood of winning.

I take your point but I think we'd all like to play for bigger stakes.The who wants to win a tenner game congratulates itself on 'only' having to answer 16 questions to win a tenner.At the turn of the century on Millionaire,you had to answer 15 questions to win 20 quid or even 40.Allowing for inflation,that would be over 30 and 60 quid now.I would like to see a quiz game come out which encouraged you to chase the jackpot - no offering rubbish prizes,just a decent jackpot in a game that got demonstrably easier the more money that it had taken.