It's a classic park manager game's trope. I remember it all the way from Bullfrog's original Theme Park game.
I believe every Theme Park and RCT game has it,
every magazine reviewer wrote about it in their game reviews, and I've seen it mentioned more than once in the comments across multiple game websites already covering Planet Coaster previews already,
I believe everybody who played these games knows about it and probably tried it (at least once) :
When your visitors are hungry, sell them French fries and add extra salt on top of the already very salty fries to make your visitors thirsty... very thirsty.
They'll then rush across the street to buy you lots of overpriced beverages.
Part of me believes this is a must have trope, and that no park sim would be complete without it.
But part of me also believe this is a very dumb thing to do for multiple reasons :
-in real parks people just don't buy fries at a fries store and then drinks at the drinks store : almost every food store in parks I've ever seen also sell drinks. And there are strong price incentives to buy full menus including both food and drinks at the same time (the trope just makes no sense)
-I have seen more than once people asking for non salted fries which the store clerk would happily provide.
-if the fries are too salty, few people come back to the store and complain, they just throw it away, most of the people I know who want low-salt fries or non salted fries just don't buy fries.
-for the few people who do complain, remember this is 2016, people have cell phones and social media. They'll tweet about it, instagram pictures of the over-salty fries, etc... oversalting as a general policy will backfire.
-I don't like to eat French Fries when they are too salty (my personal taste), I like them when they're a little salty but not too much : I want the dosage to be just right, and I think most of my visitors would feel the same, so I don't do that over-salty thing.
-Over-salting is unhealthy, please don't do it, and don't push others to do it.
-from my experience at parks most visitor groups have at least one person carrying bottled water in their backpack, so they don't rush to a drinks store just because they're thirsty.
-In the civilized world, right next to the restaurant are restroom taps providing free drinking water. Many groups refill their bottles there multiple times throughout the day, so there is very little point in trying to make people artificially super thirsty.
So should Planet Coaster really have it ? Or should the game put this trope to rest ?
Come on it's 2016 ! The salty fries is an outdated Bullfrog joke, do we really want to play Theme Park or do we want a more realistic sim ?
I believe every Theme Park and RCT game has it,
every magazine reviewer wrote about it in their game reviews, and I've seen it mentioned more than once in the comments across multiple game websites already covering Planet Coaster previews already,
I believe everybody who played these games knows about it and probably tried it (at least once) :
When your visitors are hungry, sell them French fries and add extra salt on top of the already very salty fries to make your visitors thirsty... very thirsty.
They'll then rush across the street to buy you lots of overpriced beverages.
Part of me believes this is a must have trope, and that no park sim would be complete without it.
But part of me also believe this is a very dumb thing to do for multiple reasons :
-in real parks people just don't buy fries at a fries store and then drinks at the drinks store : almost every food store in parks I've ever seen also sell drinks. And there are strong price incentives to buy full menus including both food and drinks at the same time (the trope just makes no sense)
-I have seen more than once people asking for non salted fries which the store clerk would happily provide.
-if the fries are too salty, few people come back to the store and complain, they just throw it away, most of the people I know who want low-salt fries or non salted fries just don't buy fries.
-for the few people who do complain, remember this is 2016, people have cell phones and social media. They'll tweet about it, instagram pictures of the over-salty fries, etc... oversalting as a general policy will backfire.
-I don't like to eat French Fries when they are too salty (my personal taste), I like them when they're a little salty but not too much : I want the dosage to be just right, and I think most of my visitors would feel the same, so I don't do that over-salty thing.
-Over-salting is unhealthy, please don't do it, and don't push others to do it.
-from my experience at parks most visitor groups have at least one person carrying bottled water in their backpack, so they don't rush to a drinks store just because they're thirsty.
-In the civilized world, right next to the restaurant are restroom taps providing free drinking water. Many groups refill their bottles there multiple times throughout the day, so there is very little point in trying to make people artificially super thirsty.
So should Planet Coaster really have it ? Or should the game put this trope to rest ?
Come on it's 2016 ! The salty fries is an outdated Bullfrog joke, do we really want to play Theme Park or do we want a more realistic sim ?