FROM THE EDITOR
In sizing up today's market, one can't help but
consider the effect of the novelty game market.
While pinball continues to soar, and phonographs
and table games are at least remaining stable
novelty games, especially video games, seem to be
slipping. The once well known names of Chicago
Coin, Fun Games, Nutting, PMC, Digital, Electro-
motion and hoards of other not so well known names
are no longer with us and stand as living . . . or ...
dead testimony to the pitfalls of the novelty game
business.
The few manufacturers who have survived did so
on account of their abilities to produce a minimum of
dud games. Even the biggest and best producers of
video games will admit to their share of losers. But
attention to player and operator demands has
enabled those manufacturers to produce far more
winners than losers. And herein lies the ultimate
success or failure of any game manufacturer.
What can be done about the duds? Certainly
every effort should be made to make sure a dud is
caught before it goes into production. Proper field
testing is one answer to the problem. But what new
games manufacturer has the capital necessary to
forestall production on a potentially good game for
site testing. Then too, it seems, there is the real
chance that the game will be seen on location by the
competition who might perhaps copy it and even
beat the originator to the market.
Engineering costs are another consideration. A
manufacturer sinks a pile of money " into an R&D
effort and comes with a dud. Somebody's going to
have to eat those engineering costs: should it be the
manufacturer, distributor or the operator? I say
nobody should have to foot the bill for a dud.
Perhaps part of the answer here lies in the
consumer market. Diversifying into the consumer
market, engineering costs can be spread over two
product lines. If a coin-op game turns out to be a dud,
the logic could then be put into a consumer
game - one that may offer a choice of several
different games. It may not be the most popular
game of the ones that could be selected, but at least
the manufacturer will have gotten some additional
mileage out of his engineering dollar.
Of course, the best thing is to somehow avoid
producing a dud altogether. I doubt this can be done,
but perhaps a step towards its accomplishment could
be found in some new system of licensing. Instead of
each and every video game manufacturer having his
own private R&D department, why not have
several privately and separately held engineering
firms that would conduct market research, dream up
new games, build and test prototypes and offer them
for sale on a bid basis to the various manufacturers.
It could be spelled out in terms of the final agreement
as to just who can produce what [exclusively or
otherwise] and ceilings or limits of production would
be imposed to protect the resale value of the games.
In this way, all manufacturers would have to do is
select and bid on a game that they are impressed
with, pay a fair amount of royalty or license fee to the
engineering firm, and start in production with zero
engineering costs and zero time lost in testing. The
engineering firms would have to operate in almost
total secrecy and independence. Facts concerning
earnings of prototype games and all pertinent
information concerning the games testing should be
endorsed by yet another independent agency such as
a reputable national accounting firm, consumer
testing laboratory or the like.
This may not be the answer. But it just seems to
me that there are an awful lot of mediocre games
that are produced. And we do see a lot of copying
going on. This all indicates to me a severe lack of
engineering talent within the existing framework of
the business.
What I am getting at is that perhaps we should
move toward a system of specia1ization where one
agency would design, one would manufacture, and
one would handle the distribution.
We have devoted this issue to zeroing in on the
market. Elsewhere I have discussed the ways the
manufacturer can make a better market for himself
today - by considering the operator and the player.
Coinman Joe Robbins discusses today's market from
a distributor's point of view. J.W. Sedlak writes
about buying used equipment on today's market.
And Dick Welu "explains" [in his own way] the
phenomenal success of Sea Wolf.
All this and more. Enjoy.
Sincerely,
;;z(,~
Ralph . Lally II ,
Publi "he r & Editor
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