[FSPA] Testing the waters for possible PINCADE in Herndon

[ethan at 757.org]

> I've always thought a hybrid would be ideal....  Have a small monthly 
> membership to keep that legal specification and have a certain amount of 
> steady income but still also have coin drop.....  Having a membership 
> makes you want to use it more which would hopefully produce more coin 
> drop while also helping prevent people hogging a free play machine like 
> you see set magfest.

Coin drop is a pain. Coin mechs jam up, you have to move quarters around. 
You have to buy the coin mechs for all your machines (A lot of the home 
games don't have them in place.) If you go tokens then you need different 
sized coin mechs and then buy the tokens (they're not cheap new) or 
recycle them (your tokens might say chuck e cheese but hey, 2 cents each 
versus 27 cents for new.)

For the fairfax arcade a friend had pretty much drafted (perhaps based on 
my design and our discussions) a card based system similar to that at the 
big chains. Advatange is tracking popularity of machines, and being able 
to flip games from a card access to free. But that takes time to install 
on machines and capital, and hope that there is a way to affix it without 
drilling holes. Flat rate just makes it easier and that way you 
know people on the floor are interested in the games on the floor, versus 
coming in to cause trouble or just hang out.

> I personally couldn't see myself spending $30 a month to be a member but 
> i could see myself spending $8 a month to be a member while dropping 
> $30+ coin drops most months in addition to the $8..... It may not make 
> sense logically but it's more than likely exactly what I would do.

Yea, I actually polled about this on reddit and found that the common 
people wanted a bar/food. The only people that really responded well was 
the music game kids (think Pump and DDR.) I don't know if they would drop 
$15 a night to play all night or what. I know that Save Point in 
Wesminister MD has a flat rate arcade in the mall with some pins (t2, 
fire, others) and some pretty decent music games (Jubeats, a deluse Pump 
cab, Pop'N.) Not sure what the traffic is like there -- need to take 
another trip up there, and continue on to Round One in PA.

Just visited 5-6 arcades in MD and 2 in Chicago, will write up about it!!

In my case, there are a lot of games that belong to a few people that 
could sit on a floor running -- but most of it isn't pinball.


--
Ethan O'Toole