I just read the quoted post below on Pinside and it got me thinking , anyone here set their games on pay to play at home ?
This guy doesn't charge people , read the post, but some of his reasoning for using coins makes sense. You play differently when paying, you can slowly save money if you happily throw spare pocket change into it etc
For the record I never have. When playing arcade games on my MAME setup I certainly feel that infinite 'buy in' credits can ruin a decent arcade game at home, as you can give up really trying and can spoil it for yourself by seeing the entire game in one mad 'buy in' session
...I try to control that impulse.
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Laugh all you want. But there's no free play set on any of my games. I set all of my games to whatever the dominant pricing scheme of their day was.
Now before anyone thinks I actually charge people to play my games, let me emphatically say that I DO *NOT*. I always provide my own coins and bills for guests to coin up my games. But I also don't just give them a handful of quarters and turn them loose* for the evening. Instead, when a guest wants to play, they decide what their "session" will be for their chosen game of the moment. So for example if they want to play 1 game of Terminator 2, I'll give them two quarters, but if they want to play 3 games I'll give them 4 quarters. Then I watch them coin the game. When they're ready to play more games or move to another game, they just ask me for an amount to cover their desired session on that game. This keeps their play (and my audits) consistent with my own play.
I run my games coin-op for several reasons. In no particular order:
1. The game comes with coin mechs that I paid for; might as well use them.
2. It completely duplicates the experience of playing a pinball machine that I grew up with:
- I always had a limited amount of money to play in those days, so I had to make it last as long as I could
- Thus I had to (learn to) play well, and earn extra balls and replays if I wanted longer sessions
3. I approach my games with that same notion of a session in mind: the minute I'm out of credits on one game, I use all of my willpower NOT to play that game again until I've played at least one session on all my other games first (and when my willpower is not so strong, I may set the metric at at least one game on one of my other games.
)
4. I do my best to only play with "new money" i.e., money in my pockets when I get home for the day - and not keep opening the games and recycling the money. That also puts "real" pressure on me to play seriously and play well as I sometimes only have a handful of change or a single or two. And yes: I will recycle the money if I want to keep playing - but only after I've emptied my pockets into the game first. This makes earning replays in particular far more satisfying and real to me. Otherwise it's like when I earn a replay on Pinball Arcade games on my phone and iPad: big deal - every game is free anyway; the replay I earned means nothing.
5. This also essentially turns my pins into the best damned change jars I could ever ask for. After my pins have been played for a reasonable number of days, I'll periodically collect most of the money and deposit it into a little savings account I keep expressly for my pins (you have to keep a few coins and bills around for those emergency gotta-play-it-NOW! moments.)
6. I then tap those accumulated savings when I need to buy parts or other pinball-related items - and if I've been able to let it grow big enough, I might even be able to raid it for a couple hundred bucks to put toward buying another game.
So that's the way I do it and why I choose to do it that way. It's just my preference. And I am NOT dissing anyone who prefers to set their games on free play. If I had kids, I'd have all my games on free play. Then again, maybe I'd just increase their allowances to cover a reasonable number of games per week ... in turn motivating them to take playing the games seriously and develop their pinball skills too. Hmmmmm ...
This guy doesn't charge people , read the post, but some of his reasoning for using coins makes sense. You play differently when paying, you can slowly save money if you happily throw spare pocket change into it etc
For the record I never have. When playing arcade games on my MAME setup I certainly feel that infinite 'buy in' credits can ruin a decent arcade game at home, as you can give up really trying and can spoil it for yourself by seeing the entire game in one mad 'buy in' session
...I try to control that impulse.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Laugh all you want. But there's no free play set on any of my games. I set all of my games to whatever the dominant pricing scheme of their day was.
Now before anyone thinks I actually charge people to play my games, let me emphatically say that I DO *NOT*. I always provide my own coins and bills for guests to coin up my games. But I also don't just give them a handful of quarters and turn them loose* for the evening. Instead, when a guest wants to play, they decide what their "session" will be for their chosen game of the moment. So for example if they want to play 1 game of Terminator 2, I'll give them two quarters, but if they want to play 3 games I'll give them 4 quarters. Then I watch them coin the game. When they're ready to play more games or move to another game, they just ask me for an amount to cover their desired session on that game. This keeps their play (and my audits) consistent with my own play.
I run my games coin-op for several reasons. In no particular order:
1. The game comes with coin mechs that I paid for; might as well use them.
2. It completely duplicates the experience of playing a pinball machine that I grew up with:
- I always had a limited amount of money to play in those days, so I had to make it last as long as I could
- Thus I had to (learn to) play well, and earn extra balls and replays if I wanted longer sessions
3. I approach my games with that same notion of a session in mind: the minute I'm out of credits on one game, I use all of my willpower NOT to play that game again until I've played at least one session on all my other games first (and when my willpower is not so strong, I may set the metric at at least one game on one of my other games.
)4. I do my best to only play with "new money" i.e., money in my pockets when I get home for the day - and not keep opening the games and recycling the money. That also puts "real" pressure on me to play seriously and play well as I sometimes only have a handful of change or a single or two. And yes: I will recycle the money if I want to keep playing - but only after I've emptied my pockets into the game first. This makes earning replays in particular far more satisfying and real to me. Otherwise it's like when I earn a replay on Pinball Arcade games on my phone and iPad: big deal - every game is free anyway; the replay I earned means nothing.
5. This also essentially turns my pins into the best damned change jars I could ever ask for. After my pins have been played for a reasonable number of days, I'll periodically collect most of the money and deposit it into a little savings account I keep expressly for my pins (you have to keep a few coins and bills around for those emergency gotta-play-it-NOW! moments.)
6. I then tap those accumulated savings when I need to buy parts or other pinball-related items - and if I've been able to let it grow big enough, I might even be able to raid it for a couple hundred bucks to put toward buying another game.
So that's the way I do it and why I choose to do it that way. It's just my preference. And I am NOT dissing anyone who prefers to set their games on free play. If I had kids, I'd have all my games on free play. Then again, maybe I'd just increase their allowances to cover a reasonable number of games per week ... in turn motivating them to take playing the games seriously and develop their pinball skills too. Hmmmmm ...
