The Good Ole Days
We all remember going to the arcade, or playing arcade games at our local pizza shop or bowling alley. The games at the arcades are classic; there’s Pinball, and Pac-Man, and Air Hockey. Not to mention some racing games, coin pushers, and the plethora of other arcade machines with games like Galaga, Space Invaders, Street Fighter, and much more! Oh, and claw machines. And Skee-Ball. And did I mention Pinball?
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The Bad New Days
But, those days are now behind us. Arcades have become a cash-grab. We go there even though we are just getting suckered into giving tons and tons of money, overpaying for games of chance, or games that are offering you tickets.
Tickets
Tickets. Yes, I said tickets 3 times in a row just now. Tickets are what games have now become about. It’s no longer about the enjoyment of playing the game anymore. It’s just about accumulating tickets to redeem at the ticket shop, which is overpriced and ridiculous. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
The Problem
So the main problem that arcades have today is how they are designed. It’s anti-fun. And it’s pro-$$$. There is just so much wrong with modern day arcades. Let’s go through some of them:
Games are pretty much gambling for kids.
From the coin pushers, to the big wheel spin for tickets (image below), it’s all about giving kids (and adults, let’s be honest) the feeling of winning something for the money they put in. It’s no longer about having fun anymore. Or at least fun isn’t the main focus any longer.
Machines are WAY overpriced.
So I recently went to an arcade with all-digital credits. So you no longer use coins to pay for a game, rather you just swipe a card that you bought credits on. Anyway, they don’t tell you how much money each credit is worth. Each game costs 8 credits, or 16 credits… But how much am I paying per game, in cash?
Well, after running the numbers, some basic experiences at the arcade, such as the coin pushers, which were going for like 8 credits, were really costing maybe $2-3 per swipe! Each swipe gave you about 12 coins to play with! If it mentioned the price of each swipe to play, many people wouldn’t play the games. It’s intentionally deceptive in how they convert your money to credits, so they can charge more for games that are supposed to be cheap, without you realizing.
It used to be that you walked over to a change machine, put in, say $10, and the machine spit out $10 worth of tokens, or quarters. Each game costed between $0.25 to $1.00, and you had a blast! There wasn’t any currency exchange; each token felt and pretty much was worth a quarter.
But not these days. These days you’re swiping a card, which scientifically makes you not as sensitive to swiping compared to dealing with cash, and the card converts your cash to credits, which at no point are you provided with a clear understanding of how much a credit is worth.
The games are terrible.
The games aren’t even fun! There was a fidget spinner game where I had to spin the spinner exactly at 500rpm. But it never shows you how fast that is! So is it super fast, moderately fast? I don’t know! You need to play a few times to get a feel for it, but that means you’d be spending $10-15 just to feel for it before you even have a chance to win at it! And what do you win? 1,000 tickets. But if you don’t hit 500rpm, which is near impossible, you earn like 15 tickets.
There are games like the wheel spin for tickets aren’t even games (image above)! Instead they are a massive cash grab! So many people swipe their cards in the hopes of getting 1,000 tickets, but they usually end up hitting the 20-80 ticket marks instead. What does that buy you at the ticket counter? Half of a single temporary tattoo, or a finger puppet. When you probably spent $2-3 per swipe on the machine?!
Claw machines have been around a while, but I don’t like how they’re intentionally designed to deceit its players by rigging the game to only win when enough money was put into the machine first. That’s just horrible in my personal opinion. They should remove the rig factor and make them honest in how players can win. Or make it so that you pay more, but you play until you win. That way you can enjoy the game for a few minutes, and you’re not there all day going “Just one more time, I got it.” Rather you play until you win, which, if the game is designed honestly, will only take you a few tries.
The fun games are no longer available
And this here lies my main point in making this article today. The games I would want to play don’t even exist in the modern arcades. Games like Pinball, or Pac-Man, Skee-Ball, Air Hockey, Galaga, Space Invaders… They’re not even available in the arcade! These need to be in arcades! Pinball is one of the most enjoyable games that have been invented! Have you tried Pinball? It’s an amazing game! What about Pac-Man? Did you know there’s skill involved in Pac-Man? How about Galaga? That one’s a classic! And how about good ole Air Hockey? It’s an amazing 2 player game, perfect for the arcades.
But you want to know why these games aren’t in the arcades anymore? It’s because players don’t win tickets from them. They’re intended for fun. Not for winning. So they removed them.
And that’s a problem. It’s sad that we’ve come to a point where it is monetized in a way that it’s no longer for fun, but rather it’s intended for people to feel the urge to put in more and more and more money in an attempt to get the satisfaction of winning something, even though anything you actually win will be a loss. Because these days, the fun + cost equation doesn’t = worth it anymore.
What can be done?
Not much. It would need to go so far that no one plays them anymore due to the costs, and the awareness of the blatant deception.
Play your favorite games at home. Buy the toys and games you’d buy at the ticket shop from Amazon. This would cheapen your experiences, and offer you a better time overall.
But if you’re with friends or family, and end up at an arcade, be wise with the kinds of games you play, and how much money you’re spending for each experience. Don’t fall prey to the odds stacked against you at certain games. The wheel spins, the coin pushers, the claw machines, and the plethora of other games that are designed to get you to feel like a loser, unless you try once more in an attempt to win. There are games in arcades that are designed for you to have fun, and not for tickets. Go play those. Trust me, they’re the more social experiences anyway. The basketball hoops, or again, Air Hockey, or Skee-Ball. Find a Pinball machine and have a blast. With just 1 play, you can be there for an hour, with the way that Pinball machines keep giving you bonuses for hitting certain targets, and providing more balls throughout your run. (If you haven’t realized, Pinball is my absolute favorite!)
Don’t play the games that do the opposite; the ones that offer a 30 second experience, just to give you a feeling of disappointment, enough for you to want to try again, in the hopes of actually winning something. Again, this is just gambling with extra steps, and you’re falling prey to the scheme.
Yes, arcades are designed to be a profitable business, and owners have a right to do what they’re doing, it’s technically legal, and ultimately fine. But as consumers, we need to see through that, and know what to do at an arcade to not get suckered into the scheme. In the long term, this would correct arcades to have the right prices and machines that consumers would accept.
In Closing
I am saddened when I enter these new arcades. Arcades used to be awesome. But now, as many of us live lives of digital microtransactions and Gacha mechanics, it feels like that simply blended with the arcade world. We now have mobile games-turned arcade machines, like Flappy Bird, Piano Tiles, 100 Balls, and many more. Sure, these are some of the more fun experiences you can get at an arcade these days, as they aren’t necessarily the ticket machines we previously discussed, but the experience isn’t exclusive to an arcade. I can go home and play these games anyway. Games like Pinball, and Air Hockey are very difficult to have in your home, and aren’t the same digitally. Those are the kinds of games one would want out of an arcade experience. Not mobile game remakes that are just much larger at the arcade.
However, there are still many retro arcades out there, those that do offer the great games of the past, and that are as good in the present day as they ever were. Go support those arcades, and give yourself an affordable good time with no guilt.
But for me, modern arcades are a cash grab. It’s not an evolution to the arcade world. Rather it’s a gimmick to take as much money as possible from people uneducated in how arcades take your money. Only time will tell what the future of arcades are, but I don’t want the future to be a continuation of what we have going on now at the arcade. It needs to change.
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