They're certainly scummy but, I mean, this isn't any different from the claw crane machines that are usually exempted from gambling laws under certain conditions (win chance, prize value, where they're located, etc); machines that nobody expects to be fair.
I for sure did. In fact, on my long list of "someday/maybe" projects, there was this one entry sitting for some 15 years now: build a little machine for the claw crane game, that would time a button press perfectly. I just saw the video where Mark Rober does this to another arcade game[0], so I won't bother anymore - I can already guess the outcome.
I also don't know anyone else in my circles who thought the claw crane was a game of chance. It looks like a game of skill, it behaves like one. And sure, maybe the crane wasn't oiled in a while, but nobody tells you that in the end, it also rolls a dice to determine whether to allow you to win.
It's a big deal to me, and I think it should be a big deal for everyone. It's yet another violation of trust in society. Yet another seemingly legit business out there to scam you.
When I grew up, we saw arcades as fun places to be with friends, and if we lost on what looked like a game of chance, we assumed we just sucked and need to keep playing to get better (or rather, until all our sources of coin money go dry). We didn't know the cake was a lie.
When my kid grows older and I take her to an arcade, I'm going to tell her up front - you can have fun here, but these games and these people are out there to scam you. Your joy is your own - you have to take it in spite of, not thanks to, this place. I don't want to be telling her such things. I would like for her to live in a world where she can default to trusting businesses and taking their offers as good-spirited attempts of mutually beneficial transactions - not to be constantly on the guard from technically legitimate businesses trying to scam her.
So, I'd very much like to see every single one of these arcades to be investigated, dragged to court for selling illegal gambling services to children, and the entire industry to be beaten up with criminal code, until every such game is either banned or has its exact rules posted on it, in a clear and unambiguous form. Fuck caveat emptor - the measure of civilization is in the things you don't have to actively worry about.
> I also don't know anyone else in my circles who thought the claw crane was a game of chance.
Maybe it's cultural/regional? Everyone around me gets explained they're rigged as a kid (I'm late 30s), maybe in your country they prefer to feed the excitement/illusion of kids?
I'm Spanish, and we have a saying that goes "fallar más que una escopeta de feria", roughly translated to "failing (to work properly) even more than a gun from a fair", as said guns are popularly known to be purposely misaligned, or to use pellets of lower caliber than the barrel to make them lose accuracy. So generally very few people, and almost exclusively kids, show any trust towards fair/arcade games with prizes. They may still play for fun or to burn unwanted change, though.
On the other hand, many people around me needed to reach adulthood to start suspecting WWE fights aren't real.
There is a difference between a game of skill that is rigged to be much harder to win than it appears and a game of chance. To use your carnival guns as an example, it is one thing for the sights to be misaligned. It is another thing to find out that the guns don’t actually fire pellets most of the time, and only allow a pellet to be fired based on some formula of how long it has been since anyone won the game. The same with the claw games. It is one thing to know that the claws are intentionally weak and lack grip and swing around to dislodge things. it is another thing to know the claw will not pick anything up until a set number of attempts. You can overcome a rigged game of skill by being more skilled. Hell, that is part of the appeal for some people. To figure out how a game is deceptively difficult, and to compensate for it. You can’t overcome of a game of “chance” that forces a certain number of plays.
> "failing (to work properly) even more than a gun from a fair"
Born in the 80s, in the US, I understood that carnival games are rigged in some way, but that arcade games were skilled based.
Only as an adult did I start to learn that the 'games of skill' in arcades were worse than carnival games.
I should have known arcade video games were rigged, given the cheap deaths/impossible to dodge attacks, but there's no reason I should have known the crane and other physical 'skill' based games were, for the reasons already mentioned by the GP comment.
Edit: reading further down, it looks like this may have been a recent change with the crane games. That makes me feel better about the arcades I used to frequent as a kid (mall and skating rink).
They were crappy, but I know people won stuff from them. But the usage rate was also quite high, given how popular arcades were back then.
I always thought the games were made more difficult than they appear, or that elements of randomness were introduced to games of skill, such as using inaccurate guns for shooting galleries.
I did not think that apparent games of skill would be rigged so as to be impossible to win when played perfectly until a certain number of losses had occurred. I expected that kind of behavior to be regulated as gambling, and probably outright banned most places that have sophisticated regulations about gambling.
About 30 years ago, my siblings and I went through a claw machine mania phase. We sampled every machine in a 30 mile radius, and found that the ones that slipped, always slipped. And the ones that gripped, gripped pretty frequently. Once we figured out which claws would actually grab, we won constantly. We collected around 50 stuffed animals over the course of a year.
Or maybe we were being superstitious. At any rate, we felt quite claw-machine-rich.
I’d assume so. Back in primary school I got a friend who was pretty much perfect at claw machines (and at Tekken). Later I’ve noticed they made it more difficult (shorter timelimit, limited number of moves, etc.), but never expected they would turn this into a vulgar scam.
Most machines I've seen can be configured at least on 3 parameters (names might be diferent):
-Base grip power
-Improved grip power
-Probability of improved grip.
Some have two actuators with different powers, some actually introduce a delay in the grip with a single actuator, and so on, so it might be not exactly like that.
What I mean, they're set up according to the wishes of the operator. Sometimes it's the same as the owner of the venue, sometimes the venue rents the space to the operator.
So it's totally normal to find some that are more skill-based than others, even within the same manufacturer and model.
Story time: a friend worked in an arcade/bowling venue in the early 2000s, they had 3 machines, and changed the settings weekly to extract more money. Basically one of the machines had higher probabilities just at the level of breaking even, but that was enough to have someone stick around for longer and attract other customers to the other two. The week after those who had "luck" that came back would stick to the same to show off (and fail). Occasionally short queues for certain machines appeared.
Seeing this as a kid/teenager who spent a lot of time in arcades between 1985-2000 or so was really eye-opening.
My uncle managed the local Aladdin's Castle and was constantly tweaking the claws when people would win too much. Also the games where a light spins and you stop it- I saw many times where it landed square on jackpot and stalled a half second then moved to the next slot, and this was just for tickets and $.10 plush toys.
Now as an adult having seen this and having been in software so long, I knew instantly these new 'fish games' were totally rigged. People play quarters on a table top arcade game that shoots at fish,like a top down Duck Hunt. I have some family members/friends for whom this is super addicting. They spend hundreds/thousands over time but don't see it because of that time they won $200.
When I try to explain how weights work, how video slot machine games are rigged too...they never believe me.
Why?
It would be illegal if they did that, so I must clearly be wrong.
Last time we went to vegas my friends got mad that I only played a few hands of blackjack for the experience. To me it's all just giving money away.
I was told the machines are programmed with a certain value above which they'll pay out, (e.g. once the machine has taken £200, allow a win, then repeat).
If the machine is not ready to pay out then the claw just releases on the way back up to make it look like you came close to winning.
Likewise block-stacking machines - it's a little harder to tell with those though as you need to get all the way to the top before you'll know. The block very clearly jumps to the next space on the top row if you time it correctly and it's not ready to pay out.
In America I've never actually won anything from a claw machine I'd ever want and always just thought the arms were purposefully under powered so you can't actually win.
In Japan the items in the game are placed in such a way where they're basically impossible to get on the first try but if you feed in enough yen you can nudge the item and eventually get it, if you're skilled it takes less chances. Literally the first time I ever got a prize I actually wanted (stuffed Pokemon back when the Japan pretty much ignored the massive market of kids who wanted video game and anime branded memorabilia). It left feeling the arcade happy and brought back a few other people who also got items.
I assume the US machines aren't setup in such a way because they just don't want to have attendants. The bigger stuffed animal machines were constantly being refilled by employees after a prize was won. Better to rig the machine, never have to buy new toys nor hire anyone else. Who cares if the kids are happy and want to come back. Another reason arcades work in Japan and not the US.
Even with a parent, the draw is just too attractive for kids. I tried desperately to explain to my kid that these games were rigged against him. He didn't believe me, didn't care, told me all his friends said they won, got angry at me for trying to take away his fun... He gets it now at 15, but at 6 there was no convincing him.
At least the carnival midway games these days have mostly switched from rigged against the kids to everybody wins a crappy prize. But these arcade game types are straight up gambling for children.
I think there's a difference between a a game with a skill element and a random chance element that are always consistent, and one where the game arbitrarily decides that because someone won 200 tries ago nobody playing now is allowed to win.
I understand that with the claw machine the claw is unreliable, but the same claw is always equally unreliable and each time I play I could actually win, and my skill does affect that chance. With these games most of the time when you play there is a zero chance you could win, no mater how well you play.
> machines that are usually exempted from gambling laws
But that's besides the point. You don't need gambling laws to see that this is fraud, deceiving customers to pay in the expectation that the game is fair.
