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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shutyertrap" data-source="post: 286580" data-attributes="member: 134">There's a clear advantage to having an entry fee and then everything set to free play; you don't have to worry about theft from the machines. I worked at an arcade in the early 90's, and that was a legitimate concern. Most of the games had those ugly steel bars across the coin doors, and people would further damage the cabinet trying to get those open. Most of the games we had were owned by the arcade, but the latest and greatest were always from a route operator. We didn't have keys to those games and it was up to them to come and collect the coins out of them. We had a Street Fighter II come in, no steel bar. Crazy busy weekend, tons of people packing the arcade, I walk by the cabinet and see the coin door just swinging open. Someone had jimmied the lock and made off with around $200 in coins.The problem with offering 1 hour passes is policing it. You now have to have an employee at the entrance selling the color coded wristbands (?) and another walking the floor checking to see that people aren't overstaying their allotted time, essentially being a bouncer. A high tech solution would be to have those rubber bracelets that have made their way into amusement parks that can store very basic data to unlock lockers or hold place in line. If you were able to have each machine read the bracelet so that it knew to work or not based on if their time was still valid, that'd be awesome. Except for the expense involved making it all work!$5 for 1 hour seems low. Here's where all those prices in free to play apps come into effect. Charge $7 for 1 hour, but $10 for 2. All day pass for $20. The psychology of handing over a 10 versus having a 5 and 2 bills, it just is. I'd also set the machines up to be a bit friendly, encouraging longer game times. You don't want someone to be balling out every 2 minutes and then hopping on another machine, because if they can hop on every machine inside that hour, why would they want to be there longer? If instead they had some decent play times and only hit 5 machines in that hour, they'd wanna go longer or feel the need to come back again for more. The object of the arcade owner in this situation is to have the customer not get $7 worth of play in that hour compared to if they were sinking coins in. It'd also ensure more even utilization of all machines, as why would you stand around waiting to play if you can just hop on to an open machine in the meantime? I would think running 'happy hours' at noon and maybe 5pm would be a good idea, dropping the price for 1 hour of play to $5 on the weekdays. I'd certainly offer a discount to league night players, but having them buy a bulk pack of events.</blockquote>

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