Racing Dog
Newbie member
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2018
- Location
- England
When I was young I used to play all sorts of mechanical games in the UK penny arcades. When I was older I would be a regular on the pub slot machine, when such machines were still a novel idea! Yeah I'm ancient. I still play vintage machines when the opportunity arises, but I haven't played the pub machines in decades. Why? Basically they just became too damn complicated. Being of a cautious nature I didn't fancy trying to figure out what the confusing array of lights was all about without some sort user guide, and you never get user guides. Why did I think that? Well if I'm learning I'm making mistakes and if I'm making mistakes I'm losing money. No thanks.
So is it just me? I think it may not be just me because I can sit in any one of several local pubs and whilst I'm there see absolutely no one play the machine! Presumably somebody plays these things, but I rarely see them. I was recently on a long week end at a holiday camp where there were five machines in the corridor between the main bar and the ballroom. In the entire weekend I saw nobody play any of them once, despite them being frequently in view. Given that when these machines first appeared in pubs the were so popular it was difficult to get a go on them what is different now to how it was?
I can think of two things. Firstly, because the potential individual payouts are now much higher relative to the stake, the machines must perforce payout less frequently which means the player is faced with long periods of losing mitigated by only the occasional minor payout. That is just tedious, boring and depressing, in other words a complete turn off.
The second is the percentage return. If one can play machines on line that payout 90% or more, and one can even play them on ones phone, why would anyone want to play a greedy 75% machine.
Where did it start to go wrong? Well the switch from electro-mechanical to electronic machines is pretty much the break point. That is also more or less the point where machines stopped being random. I never really understood that either. I mean, if you want a 75% machine, how incompetent do you have to be as a designer that you can't make the machine behave like that as a random chance machine? It is just about calculating the odds is it not? And if you've really designed a game that is too complicated for maths, are you also incapable of running several million computer simulations instead?
All of which leads me to a final question. There is plenty on the web with respect to vintage mechanical machines, which sometimes references early electro-mechanical machines; and there is plenty on the web about electronic machines. But I'm damned if I can find anything about the electro-mechanicals in general and I'm at an age where nostalgia has kicked in! Are there any such specific resources? I'm a bit old for ferreting through general forums looking for occasional threads, at this age one tends to be concerned about burning up the short time left!
Cheers.
So is it just me? I think it may not be just me because I can sit in any one of several local pubs and whilst I'm there see absolutely no one play the machine! Presumably somebody plays these things, but I rarely see them. I was recently on a long week end at a holiday camp where there were five machines in the corridor between the main bar and the ballroom. In the entire weekend I saw nobody play any of them once, despite them being frequently in view. Given that when these machines first appeared in pubs the were so popular it was difficult to get a go on them what is different now to how it was?
I can think of two things. Firstly, because the potential individual payouts are now much higher relative to the stake, the machines must perforce payout less frequently which means the player is faced with long periods of losing mitigated by only the occasional minor payout. That is just tedious, boring and depressing, in other words a complete turn off.
The second is the percentage return. If one can play machines on line that payout 90% or more, and one can even play them on ones phone, why would anyone want to play a greedy 75% machine.
Where did it start to go wrong? Well the switch from electro-mechanical to electronic machines is pretty much the break point. That is also more or less the point where machines stopped being random. I never really understood that either. I mean, if you want a 75% machine, how incompetent do you have to be as a designer that you can't make the machine behave like that as a random chance machine? It is just about calculating the odds is it not? And if you've really designed a game that is too complicated for maths, are you also incapable of running several million computer simulations instead?
All of which leads me to a final question. There is plenty on the web with respect to vintage mechanical machines, which sometimes references early electro-mechanical machines; and there is plenty on the web about electronic machines. But I'm damned if I can find anything about the electro-mechanicals in general and I'm at an age where nostalgia has kicked in! Are there any such specific resources? I'm a bit old for ferreting through general forums looking for occasional threads, at this age one tends to be concerned about burning up the short time left!
Cheers.