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Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

polygon.com

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Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#51

Post by bredren »

varikin wrote: post #24
barakados wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how you say it’s a guy and not MARK ROBER

Does that matter? Is everyone suppose to be aware of this guy?

I don’t know him by name but the porch pirate glitter bomb project video and subsequent controversy about the legitimacy of some of the footage was sort of front-page-of-the-web stuff for a time.

I also saw the timer arcade beating device prior. It was well done. He makes some cool stuff, but the former nasa thing and sort of YouTube pandering takes away from it for me.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#52

Post by koz1000 »

Something1234 wrote: post #33
koz1000 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on a redemption device a long time ago, one of those "stop the lights" game for a large manufacturer. There were a few jurisdictions, Iowa and New Jersey come to mind, that were already aware of the nature of these machines and required the manufacturers to have their software audited and validated by (state approved) third-party gaming labs identical to what the slot machine companies do when getting code a…

On the same note could you name any of the third party labs? I'm interested in the topic.

GLI was always the go-to company back in my time.

https://gaminglabs.com/

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#53

Post by salamandars »

tracedddd wrote: post #5

The stacker game with the moving blocks always frustrated me, I spent way too much money trying to win that one and got quite good at everything but the last round. I wonder if that one is rigged too.

It's definitely rigged, and even allows the owner to choose how difficult it is just like the one in the article.

Where I grew up there was two places next door to each other which both happened to have stackers. One had junky prizes like cheap earbuds, and the other had great prizes like a gameboy or mp3 player. Sure enough the later was more popular, but no one ever won. Once you got good at the game the one with the junk would 'allow' you to win pretty reliably every dozen or so attempts.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#54

Post by wly_cdgr »

rectang wrote: post #46

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 strang…

The obvious solution is to play only critically acclaimed commercial failures :) There are plenty

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#56

Post by viraptor »

dylan604 wrote: post #37
varikin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that matter? Is everyone suppose to be aware of this guy?

What? You aren't familiar with one random guy on the internet that maybe makes some videos in a very niche market that you may have never even heard of before? What? Do you have some sort of life of something preventing from crawling every single crevice on the interwebs?

Not quite as niche as you describe. He figured out how to fairly consistently hit youtube recommendations / top videos. If you use youtube, there's quite a good chance you've seen one of his videos on the frontpage or seen his name a few times, even if you never watched them or aren't interested in his content.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#58

Post by jtokoph »

This is the best part:

> In 2015, Sega and another angry player reached a class action settlement, but the settlement was rejected by the judge due to administrative reasons, like a high attorney’s fee and failing to identify and paying affected class members.

You can take advantage of people as long as it's impractical to identify them.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#59

Post by Aeolun »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #45
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.

> cheap plastic with flashing lights and sounds

To be fair, kids don’t care about cheap plastic, and they love flashing lights and sounds.

Expensive plastic toys have the same flashing lights and sounds.

Though I’ll admit that even more expensive wooden toys don’t, they generally still try to incorporate play with light and sound into the toy somehow.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#60

Post by rectang »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #54
rectang wrote: post #46

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 strang…

The obvious solution is to play only critically acclaimed commercial failures :) There are plenty

How many of the critics are on the take, though?

Ratings anywhere can't be trusted. The higher the profile of a critic, the more incentive there is to corrupt them, and the more likely it is that their published opinions are just shilling for the commercial entities that own them.

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