No worries, all’s cool people-wise. But we just got the latest update from Gov. KnewSome (ButNotEnough). Arcades here won’t reopen until at least November, and that would take some really fast decline in virus cases. His new scheme out today has 4 tiers, and you can only improve to the next tier after a minimum of 3 weeks in your current one, plus having both case numbers and positivity rates drop below specific levels. Arcades are shut down until tier 4; we’re now in tier 1. Some of the places I go already went out of business, others are hanging on but in various levels of pain. Poor Jim’s an operator, but with no place to operate games at present nor for a while to come. We haven’t given up on Indisc yet, but each week the case counts stay high, the odds get worse.
Not sure why Expo isn’t cancelled yet. Illinois phase rules show no gatherings of that type before phase 5 when a vaccine and or highly effective treatment is widely available or there are no new cases for “a prolonged period.” The IL site doesn’t show the status of “family entertainment facilities” like arcades, just movies and such, but the wording suggests some may be open with restrictions and capacity limits. Anything open there yet? If so, how tight is it?
This is roughly equivalent to football or baseball chat in the “off season.” Talk doesn’t vanish since people still like to do it, it just drops in volume and the content changes focus.
I was getting bored with the basketball and “if your quarterback was a sandwich, what kind of sandwich would he be?” type conversation in one of my football trash talking groups this off-season, so I threw in a pinball post. The reactions were decidedly mixed.
Can you give us a general overview? Maybe a count of “permanently closed” locations? General idea of the changes - are locations that are still open keeping the same number of games?
I don’t think the data will be meaningful at this point, due to the fact that “permanently closed” is still largely unknown. I mean, we know some spots here and there that have closed. But we’re not really going to know until things open up more. I can take a look at the data, but I have a feeling it won’t be that notable at this point. The most notable changes are that general edits decreased by a LOT, then they creeped back up, and now they’ve shot up. And we’re now getting lots of new locations submitted.
I know I didn’t give any numbers here… but, life is busy.
Does this include ap usage at all? I go to the web page a few times a month, but go to the ap more often for smaller things like checking dates or random pieces of info.
I did see that I dropped over 100 places recently. Must have been a Pinburgh event decaying.
