Play Meter

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down time for those machines.
GETTLE: It is a tremendous amount of down time,
but normally those pieces produce a large amount of
income.
PLAY METER: And the charge to you is what?
GETTLE: $15.00/ hour plus parts.
PLAY METER: The regular repair service charge,
plu you have the cost of trucking.
GETTLE: We're already going down there and
we're coming back, so realistically there is no
trucking cost.
PLAY METER: Do you think $15/ hour is out of line
for repair costs?
GETTLE: No sir, not at all. Because we're getting
more solid - tate equipment all the time, we're
taking steps toward doing our own servicing. Dan
and Ron are now taking a correspondence course in
solid -state repair. When they are done with the
cour e, they will go to a two- or three-day school.
We'll purchase the necessary equipment and we'll
do our own solid-state repair at that time. We'll
have business sufficient to warrant that and if I
were to then charge someone to bring in their
equipment for repair, I'd charge $I5/ hour. My
inve tment would warrant that.
CARSON: It's still a problem though. I have
probably spent the last six months trying to find
schooling that will teach a pinball mechanic how to
work on solid-state machines. The industry does
not provide any. The only thing that is available is a
correspondence course; plus Kurz-Kasch Instru-
ment Co. does sponsor a three-day seminar. But as
far as actual schooling, like Cal's Coin College, a
place where you can send a man to educate him in
solid-state repair, there is none. What the industry
ha n't caught up to yet is that there ~re operators
and distributors that need education for their
pinball mechanics to get them into the solid state
era.
GETTLE: Right. The industry has grown by such
leap and bounds that its engineering just hasn't
kept up with its imagination.
.
CARSON: Service in general is an area-oat least
according to what I've seen since I've been in the
indu try--that the industry is just now waking up
to. And service is really the backbone of each and
every operation, whether you make it or go broke.
That' where we need to put our emphasis right
now .
PLAY METER: So we've got a number of fun
centers set up: we've got locations, we've got leases
on tho e locations, we've got equipment in them
and we've got people to manage them and
omebody to repair that equipment. The next issue
I want to raise is a more general one, and that has
to do with image. What sort of image do your
arcade or fun center --do you dislike the term
arcade?
GETTLE: Yes.
PLAY METER: Why?
GETTLE: Becau e "arcades" is synonymous with
~ the old penny arcade of 15 or 20 year ago, and the
~ type of busine
that we are running now is
completely unlike that of 15 or 20 years ago.
zl PLAY METER: But back to my original question:
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what ort of image do you want to project for your
fun centers?
GETTLE: That it' the in -place to be for the kids,
that if you want to find almost anyone in the
community, the football team, the cheerleaders, the
honor tudent, you'll find him or her sometime
during that weekend at one of the fun centers.
PLAY METER: How do you go about projecting
that sort of image? How do you get those kids in
there?
GETTLE: By first of all having an adult as a
manager, one that likes the kids, that associates
with the kids, not one that just sits behind a counter
and makes change, but one that gets in a very short
period of time to learn the kids by name, to listen to
their problems, and, if it becomes necessary, to
discipline them. And in many cases we have one
thing that no one else has and that's the right not to
let them in our place of business unless they
conduct themselve like young ladies and gentle-
men.
PLA Y METER: When you open a new location or
when the need ari e in an existing center, how do
you advertise? What do you do to promote play in
that center?
GETTLE: When we started in the business, we did
do some newspaper and some radio advertising. We
feel that it wa a mistake, and we don't do any
advertising of any kind when we open now. a
well-run fun center is the best advertising. Kids
have a tremendous grapevine, and whether it' in
the wintertime when school's in session or in the
ummertime with the pool and other recreation
areas where the kid congregate; within a very few
days after a new fun center opens, every kid in the
trade area will know you're open.
PLAY METER: How about promoting play in the
fun center them elves? Are there any specific
methods you recommend to your managers:
tournaments, for example, or high score incentives?
GET TLE: We u e tournaments, but we try not to
wear out tournaments. You can run too many
tournaments to the point that the kids get tired of
it. We run very few tournaments in the summer-
time. W dO.lZive away T-shirts with our name "The
Good Times," on them. We'll take a pinball machine
and put a ign on it: the high score of the week will
receive a free T- hirt with the name on the back of
it.
PLAY METER: A few nut and bolt questions ,
question about day -to-day operation: What's the
pricing structure for pin , foo ball, the arcade
game and pool?
GETTLE: All of our pins at the present time are set
up on two game for a quarter, three balls per
game. Foosball is 35 cents as is the pool. The
arcade with very few exception are 25 cent .
orne of the older arcade are two games for a
quarter .
PLAY METER: I guess we've been mentioning
throughout that your patron are mo tly kids. Ther
average age would be ...
GETTLE: The average age would be 16 or 17 in
mo t location. In your mall locations, however,
you'll have many adults in on the weekends.
Parent come in with their kid or they'll be waiting