Play Meter

fROM THE EDITOR I'm cheering for the rope! R emember being involved in various activities at school? One of my favorite sports events was the tug-of-war. I recall one particular tug-of-war that pitted the cheerleaders and drill team against the football team. It seemed an unfair contest, since we were rather weak compared to the bruisers on the football team. Being girls, I think we expected them to feel pity and give us a break. However, as each side tried to pull the other toward the inevitable "mud hole" in the middle, it wasn't long before we figured out that those guys meant business. The heck with the fact that we were girls or that it would be a cold day in you-know-where before we dated them again if they actually pulled us into that mud. These guys had full intentions of seeing us splattered into that murky hole. Once we realized that we could not depend on them to go easy, we got tough. Chipping a nail or smudging our lipstick were minor consequences when we thought of the stakes. I can still feel the blisters I developed from pulling for all I was worth! While the spectators chose their favorite side, no one thought much about the rope. The rope? Sure. No one realized that the rope was taking the most pressure of all. It was the rope, being tugged from two determined sides, that was right in thf) middle. That rope had to be strong or everyone lost in the long run. Sound like a familiar position? Then you must be a distributor. In the coin-op tug-of-war the distributor is the rope. He has contact with two sides--operators who trust him explicitly and manufacturers who count on him to sell--and each one IO PLAY METER/July 1990 wants his undivided loyalty. Operators fully expect to get honest assessments of new games and a fair deal on all purchases. Manufacturers anticipate and expect that their distributors will buy whatever they introduce. I'm not naive enough to believe that those two expectations always go hand in hand. We all know that many games are never hits or earn a good return on investment. It's a tough fence to straddle when you are expected to sell a game that you know is not going to do very well to people who trust your opinion. There are also the times that a manufacturer has introduced a game in dedicated form only. Of course, he assured his distributors that it would never come out as a kit. SURPRISE! I can't imagine what it must be like to invest big bucks in games only to see the manufacturer offering the kit for hundreds less. But the worst part is trying to explain it to the customers who believed in you. Then finally comes a game that everybody, I mean everybody, wants. The distributor calls to order his games, happy that he will finally be buying something he knows he can sell. SURPRISE! Production has not been as speedy as the manufacturer was hoping and it will be awhile before the distributor can get any games. The distributor makes the proper excuses to the operator, then bugs the manufacturer to please get some games. In the meantime, the operator has the privilege of buying the game anywhere he can get one. Ofcourse, if a distributor has been supportive of the manufacturer when luke warm games were introduced, doesn't it stand to reason that he will get priority treatment when a hot game comes along? But that brings us to a very sticky dilemma. This industry has seen the rise and fall of many manufacturers. They are hot one year and may be out of the running the next. No one has any idea which company will have the really hot product. But distributors who are handling virtually all of the major manufacturers are affected the most. They can't drop lines in case that company has the next hot game. Operators, on the other hand, are not locked into one particular distributor. While most operators do have their loyalties, getting the latest must-have game is a matter of survival. Operators also have the luxury of not buying. Operators today are not so willing to take a chance on games that are not proven. Many distributors also operate. While other operators may complain that it is unfair competition, I think they would be surprised to know that games they wouldn't buy end up on their distributor's route. In fact, some distributors I've talked to actually get complaints from their own route managers that they are the last in line to get hot games! I think in digesting the role distributors play in our industry, it's much easier to understand the position the rope was in during our tug-of-war. If only it could talk! Since it can't, we' ll talk with some distributors instead! D Valerie Cognevich Editor