Card systems - hate em? Love em?

roothorick

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Just wondering what the general temperature of the community is on debit card systems (Embed, Intercard, etc). We're in the process of installing Embed at Badger, and it's been stressful, but I can already tell this is going to make my life a lot easier. I can see the argument against them though -- we've drilled a lot of holes to mount the swipers, and I'm not sure how easy those are to fill. And oh, the wiring I have butchered!

What do you think?
 
When I see them on games, I won't play. Puts too much effort into simply playing the game.
 
they are gay and take away a huge part of the arcade feel. listening to the coin drop and having to fight with it when it doesnt is a huge part of that experience.
 
Eh, I love coins much more than cards. While cards may technically be more "efficient," it just does not seem right. Arcade machines were made for coins.
 
they are gay and take away a huge part of the arcade feel. listening to the coin drop and having to fight with it when it doesnt is a huge part of that experience.

I agree, got to hear the coins drop. Even when doing a gaming get-together at the house we use quarters to coin everything up. It's just as big of a part of the arcade experience as the other game sounds, dim lights, etc.

-JM
 
Man you can hear the wheelchairs and breathing machines around here sometimes....

I'll take the card systems any day.

Getting a card is as easy as getting coins from the machine. Easier actually since you can use your debit/credit card and get the exact amount you want on the card...No more 'damn, I only have a $20, gotta go to the counter and have them break it'...
 
It CAN have customer benefits.

"Midnight Madness" - all games are a penny after midnight for 30 min

"VIP Club" - these customers get a better rate

----
Additional operator benefits:

Management can get real-time statistics on hot new games or test pieces.

All forms of currency are away from the games. Nothing to steal,
not even tokens.

MOST customers will leave a balance on their card and often
never redeem it. This is called WALK OFF and adds profit to the bottom line.


Personally I hate them.
You're crapping on your customer base, adding hassle to their experience
and [often] confusing them with purposely unclear pricing schemes.
($10=2500 Points, a game of Daytona is 380 points, etc)
 
MOST customers will leave a balance on their card and often
never redeem it. This is called WALK OFF and adds profit to the bottom line.

This has to be the underlying reason places are switching over, it's like charging the upfront fee to get into an arcade, but all games are on Freeplay. No matter what, they atleast make XX instead of X. And when the kids run out of time but there is still an amount left on it? Oh I'm sure places are loving that. Free donations.
 
"Midnight Madness" - all games are a penny after midnight for 30 min
our favorite arcade on the local boardwalk uses the cards or coins, my card has half a credit on it from when we were there late one night last year playing the indy pin.

I don't mind the cards, they are less hassle than a pocket full of quarters. and, the kid knows, when the card is empty, it is time to go.
 
I only have experience with the Embed system.

The company I used to work for installed this system in a game room at a bowling center.

The Pros:
No Coin Jams!
No Token replacement costs.
No Change Machine bank holding up company funds.
Quick price changes and displayed on the reader.
Quick calculation of commission payments / revenue by game.

The Cons:
Computer goes down, so does your whole game room.
Card readers are very easy to break.
Because of the daisy-chain wiring, one cable disconnected from a kid running behind machines will knock out all games after that connection.
The wireless transceivers loose signal and take down all games on that channel.
Kiosk goes down no more sales.

The company I worked for also charged the customers .50 for each new card and that did not go over too well. Sales actually dropped 40% at this location in a year.

The other observation is that this system was installed in a very low-income area and many customers were confused on the purchasing & reloading of the cards.
 
Just wondering what the general temperature of the community is on debit card systems (Embed, Intercard, etc). We're in the process of installing Embed at Badger, and it's been stressful, but I can already tell this is going to make my life a lot easier. I can see the argument against them though -- we've drilled a lot of holes to mount the swipers, and I'm not sure how easy those are to fill. And oh, the wiring I have butchered!

What do you think?

I dislike any system that hides the amount I'm paying per game. Every time I've seen a card system, it's always '$10 dollars for X points' where X is a number like 900, but then the games are set to various weird values like '380' or '120'. Makes it REALLY hard to know how much a given game costs to play. And then, of course, I always end up with some points on the card that's too few to play anything, so I've lost some money.

If you set it up sensibly (i.e. the card just has MONEY on it), and you play the games for increments of 25 cents, then I wouldn't mind it, because I'd be able to see what's going on.

Unfortunately, it's normally used to confuse the user and trick them into playing things that they'd probably reject if they knew what they were spending. And I find that unforgivable.
 
Personally I hate the card systems. They make it difficult to know how much is left on the cards, so you almost always leave with money left on the table. They also mess things up if you are playing a "continue" type of game and your card runs out of cash. With quarters you always know how much you have left.

On the plus side (for the operators), they don't have to collect all the coins/tokens and coint them. There is no incentive to try to break into the machines. It's harder for the kid behind the counter to skim quarters. Because their is no collections involved, they need fewer people. And people will inevitably leave with money still left on the card (free money for the op).

I would rather see a hybrid system that allows coins/tokens or cards.

ken
 
well I guess Jenkinson's just does the card system the right way. all the games can take cash or card, and the card reader tells you how many credits are left on the card after each swipe. 1 credit = $.25, but $20 on the card gets you 100 credits.
 
well I guess Jenkinson's just does the card system the right way. all the games can take cash or card, and the card reader tells you how many credits are left on the card after each swipe. 1 credit = $.25, but $20 on the card gets you 100 credits.

See, assuming that there are 1 credit games in the place, that's cool, because you can always use up the entire value of the card, AND because the credits are a reasonable value, you can easily figure out how many games you can play.

Yea, I'd call that 'doing it right'.
 
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