Play Meter

Alvin Gottlieb and Tom Herrick with
Gottlieb 's Charlie's Angels .
Carol Mart [left) and Tom Nieman
with Bally 's Playboy .
Steve Kordek of Williams with the
four ·player pingame . Phoenix .
Harry Williams and Steve Kaufman
beside Stern 's Wild Fyre.
10
what he suggested operators do :
should they file their location lists or
not?
Allen responded , "My advice to
you is obey the law . I can 't tell you
anything else ." When further
pressed, Allen suggested that opera-
tors send in their location lists "under
protest. " But this hardly met with
favor from at least one New York
operator who said that all his
experience with filing things " under
protest didn't mean a damn thing! "
The seminar had already run long
overtime , but Chairman Garrett had
troubles trying to draw the session to
a close . Requests were made to have
the whole three-hour session , de -
voted to the Copyright topic , and
then to have emergency meetings
during the show on the topic so that
operators could decide what course
of action to take . This , however , did
not materialize .
Another operator took to the
microphone and drew Aramayo back
into the fray . He asked what was the
government's "take" in all these
royalty collections . Aramayo was
ready
with the figures : The
Copyright Office , she said , collected
$1 , 124,000 from operators in 1978.
But before that money is given to the
performing rights societies , she add -
ed , the government must take out its
operating expenses . For her office ,
that came to $150,000 in 1978.
This , however , was somewhat mis-
leading to many operators , since
Aramayo forgot to add that the CRT
still has to deduct its operating
expenses from the collections too .
The fiery meeting ran about a
half-hour overtime, thus abbreviating
the second panel discussion which
had as its topic , arcades .
Chairing the second seminar was
operator Norman Pink , who posed
questions to the three panel mem -
bers : Nolan Bushnell , chairman of
the board of Atari; Jules Millman ,
president of Aladdin 's Castle ; and
Fred Pollack , vice president of
marketing for Araven .
The questions , though somewhat
abbreviated (because the previous
session ran overtime) , were nonethe-
less meaty , and some of the answers
were revealing , though the speakers
usually did not elaborate .
Interestingly, when Bushnell was
asked the first question of the
seminar session -" How can we
make more money with existing
eqUipment?" - he showed that he
would have preferred to have been a
panel member on the first session
rather than on the second . He said
that before getting into the subject of
arcades , he wanted to express his
own feelings about the copyright law .
He said that regulations such as the
location list requirements , if let to
stand , would hurt the games industry
too . He eventually said if the
government got away with this , there
was no telling what other regulations.
they would go after , including
metering the machines .
After that departure , Bushnell
answered that the thought tokens
may be the best way to make more
money with existing equipment
because a game may be able to earn
more on a discount. And Millman
suggested that operators play with
their score settings .
Another question which elicited
some response was on the question
of what is a good mixture of
equipment. Bushnell said that de-
pends upon the type of location . If
policing is a problem , then perhaps
video games are the way to go . If
there is good policing in the area , the
ratio should be around fifty -fifty
(pins to arcade pieces) . In college
areas . he said, the majority of the
pieces should be pins .
Millman said that when Aladdin 's
Castle opened up , he went very light
on pins at first (ten to fifteen)
percent) . But since then , he said , he
found that pins weren 't causing any
problems, so it's up to about
fifty -fifty . The advantage of pin -
games, he said is that they have a
high resale value . Foosball and other
table games , he added , have some-
thing going against them in that they
take up too much space .
When asked their attitudes about
running tournaments . Millman went
into detail on the Bally SuperS hooter
contest which was held this past year.
"It got us a tremendous amount of
publicity ," he said . "And not one
article was unfavorable ." He also
pointed out that the eventual champ-
ion , Ken Lunceford , in promotions
afterwards , won on the average , 24
out of every 25 games he played .
This , Millman said , seems to indicate
that pinball is indeed a game of skill.
Millman said that they planned te
have other tournaments , and that
these would be open to other games
manufacturers .
Bushnell , however , said that he
hasn 't found a lot of acceptance
among operators as far as promo-
tions of this sort . When asked for a
PLAY METER , December, 1978