A native app might enable discovery if both devices are on the same network segment, and in the case of wifi, the access point permits clients to speak to each other.
A significantly more reliable mechanism would be to use the device location api to discover and display nearby machines – again something equally doable with just a webapp.
Regarding payments, “Stern Pay” would almost certainly only be permitted in a webapp, as Apple has pretty strict requirements around in-app payments, and would require Apple Pay be used on their platform. Can you imagine the bloody murder operators would scream over Apple taking their 30% cut, never mind whatever Stern tacks on?
I will guarantee that Stern won’t become a payments processor (no one wants to deal with that compliance). I will guarantee that a Stern Wallet (using Stripe or similar as the payments processor) is as good as inevitable. If I could earn interest by holding your quarters for you between games I would do so too, no question about it.
yep, i also expect this this to happen. obviates most of the issues associated with having to use physical currency to start a game. many operators would probably welcome it for the same reasons.
payrange has an advantage of being manufacturer agnostic, but insider connected will come pre-installed on all stern games. There’s certainly a possibility of Stern taking a cut though it would likely be a single fee as opposed to broken down by processor and stern. I’m not sure why you assume Payrange’s 5.25% would be less than Stern could manage. in the end the value proposition is the same: not being limited by cash/coins on hand nor jammed/broken/full bill/coin acceptors.
As a hobby operator in Norway, I would absolutely be interested in a built-in Stripe based payment solution. PayRange is not available here, and the payment solutions that are available require both expensive card readers, a fixed monthly fee and a cut of the payment. It’s cost prohibitive enough that I so far only operate games at a bar where the barkeepers can sell tokens. With a simple, built-in payment option I would be much more likely deploy more games out in the public, on smaller, unmanned locations.
not sure what the current options are for owners/operators using Insider Connected, but I’d love to see the ability to set all machines in a location to tournament play and then back to “casual” play.
Yeah this is coming. People with operator accounts will be able to change settings remotely and even have them on a timer. So on tournament play during your tournaments, not during normal times.
I’d be happy if I could get some granular stats other than “today” and “7 days” for coin drops. I can’t seem to figure out when “today” begins and ends either, I just know it’s definitely not at midnight local time or midnight in Chicago.
Are there any worthwhile IC audits? Seems like ops would like to know what percentage of players are signing in. I don’t have any games out any more, but if I did, I’d like to see which signed in players are dropping the most quarters. Tell me (by handle, not real name) who my best customers are.
There’s currently nothing meaningful for operators in the stats other than a daily, weekly and 4 week play count. Without being able to compare today to yesterday, or this week to last week, and with no control over when that day begins and ends, there’s not really any useful data to work with.
There’s also code version, and time since last played and last connected, which is somewhat useful. But yeah, it’s pretty sparse at the moment and I’m really looking forward to more features.
On the other hand, the trend data is really accurate: Our weekly plays are currently down 93.7179341010147%
i’m really struggling these days to see what the benefit of having an app even is (versus building a good mobile website). There’s nothing you can do in an app that you can’t do with a web app, and the web app is easier to maintain, has a single unified codebase, and Stern wouldn’t have to dance for or pay fees to Apple or any other storefront, or worry about it suddenly going obsolete or unusable due to an OS upgrade.
but then i don’t see why Stern should be messing around with all this idiotic optical reader hardware on every game either, so what do i know.
