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Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

polygon.com

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Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#43

Post by cwillu »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #15
sunshineforever wrote: post #9

You know the horribly irony is that wagering machines that are 100% skill based are illegal. The only exception, I've seen "The Fishing Game" in a texas bar. It's a 2D game where you shoot fish in a pool table like screen. Bullets cost money, fish death pays out.

Are they illegal or just uncommon because they could be abusable? As if they were illegal wouldn't things like rewards for a hole in one, or "guess" how many the beans in a jar would be illegal? Plus aren't most carnival games technically 100% skill?

"Abusable" is an interesting word choice.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#44

Post by bnycum »

I went to an arcade this month for the first time in years and it shocked me just how many games of “luck” they had. It was easily the majority of games there. Felt like I was in a kids casino with no regulations. Also felt like a sucker because you had to pre-pay for a card with credits, and there wasn’t any games that took more than a minute to play so I ended up playing them.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#45

Post by BrissyCoder »

bnycum wrote: post #44

I went to an arcade this month for the first time in years and it shocked me just how many games of “luck” they had. It was easily the majority of games there. Felt like I was in a kids casino with no regulations. Also felt like a sucker because you had to pre-pay for a card with credits, and there wasn’t any games that took more than a minute to play so I ended up playing them.

I had pretty much the exact same experience recently.

What also annoyed me when our child was much younger was how many of the toys people bought him were cheap plastic with flashing lights and sounds and how much these reminded me of slot machines.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#46

Post by rectang »

At this point, I just assume any commercially successful software game is optimized to extract every last cent out of the target audience through subtle psychological brutalization.

Surely there are exceptions, but it's like buying from Amazon: it takes too much work to sort through the ripoffs. The fun is spoiled because it requires constant vigilance and active resistance to avoid spending too much money.

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." — War Games (1983)

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#47

Post by spike021 »

At least in Japan for their UFO Catcher and similar games, it's still pretty fun because you tend to be able to get childhood memory goods (pokemon/digimon/etc. stuffed animals).

Plus while there can be a rigged factor to the machines, you can still pick up some mechanics that help you shortcut to getting the item to drop. Of course it costs money and you don't always "win" but if you can pick up the pattern, it does become a bit of a fun challenge.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#48

Post by garethsaxby »

I remember a long time ago in the UK, around 2003 or so, there was a similar problem with Fruit Machines (Slot machines found in UK bars and pubs).

Through dumping the ROMs and emulating the machines, it was found that the machines were effectively forcing losses at certain points in gameplay; from the same memory state, you bet high and the machine goes low, or you bet low and the machine goes high, giving you zero chance of winning.

There was a campaign called Fairplay that I believe resulted in a fairly small print label being placed on the machines stating that they would at times give no chance of winning; not a great win, but at least it was being said somewhere - http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/fairplay/fruit/bre...

The FairPlay site by Stuart Campbell is actually still up, although I remember first reading about it back in PC Zone personally. There's details on there about replicating the findings, but unfortunately the links are broken; http://www.worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/fairplay/fruit...

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#49

Post by Someone1234 »

Here's a video where someone buys one ($3500 used) and goes through the setup experience:

https://youtu.be/FSLu--j2ooo?t=730

Setup experience begins at 12:10. If you want to skip to win-threshold setup then 12:50. You can configure it per zone (up to 5,000 per win).

While interesting, I'd imagine this lawsuit also requires showing less clear-cut issues like if consumers were misled, and if they were misled if that is legally permissible.

The technicals on this one are maybe less interest than the legal/consumer rights/labelling side. Purely in terms of how the machine works it is a "gambling" machine with skill required to even give you the opportunity to gamble against the win-threshold/rng.

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