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Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

polygon.com

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Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#221

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

dogorman wrote: post #141
rootsudo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, it's called probability and statistics. Doesn't mean kids care. Or teachers, or parents.

> By the time they reach high school: Every kid should know [statistics] Maybe things have changed. But when I was in highschool in America in the early 00s, statistics was an optional math class offered to juniors. Nobody had taken stats before reaching highschool, which is what the GP calls for, and kids in the "artistic track" weren't required to take stats at all.

I'm a 90s kid and probability and statistics were like a one day throw away lesson.

I've unironically thought the same thing as the top post. Unless you're going into STEM you probably don't need more than the most basic conceptual understanding of calc or trig. But understanding how probabilities work is a huge benefit in every day life.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#222

Post by danans »

gryson wrote: post #117
danans wrote: post #20

As an aside, I had no idea Sega were still making "old fashioned" mechanical games, which is how they started with slot machines and jukeboxes in the 1940s. I thought they had long since become a mobile game and IP licensing company (i.e. Sonic the Hedgehog)

Are you familiar with the Yakuza series, Persona series, or Puyo Puyo series of video games (among many others)? Sega is one of the top publishers of video games in the world. In 2020, they were ranked #1 publisher by metacritic based on average game score: https://www.metacritic.com/feature/2021-game-publisher-ranki... They were also #1 in 2016, and are usually in the top 5. It's a running meme on social media that…

I'm not familiar with those games. My personal Sega saga began in the 80s with the Master System, and ended with the Genesis and Game Gear (which I still own!), and which I credit with sparking my original interest in computing technology.

I did of course play plenty of Sega arcade games, but I didn't know until much later that they started out supplying coin-op slot machines and amusements to military bases in the 1940s and 1950s.

It seems like the company went through 3 or 4 lifespans before they entered my awareness in the 80s.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#223

Post by Larrikin »

psyc wrote: post #167
TeMPOraL wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 e…

Is random claw machines a recent scam? 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 w…

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.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#224

Post by viraptor »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #220
viraptor wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try reading with a stronger interpretation. Of course I know recommendations are per-person - consider why I wrote that comment anyway. There's also a few videos digging into why Mark Robber's videos are consistently winning the popularity contest while others aren't.

I've been on youtube since the first day. I have no clue who Mark Roper is and have never watched one of his videos, never had them suggested to me. My feed is almost entirely cooking videos. The rest is random electronica. You are picking a really dumb fight to be frank. It's ok if people have no clue who this Mark person is or what he does.

It's good that I'm not picking that fight then. I wrote "there's quite a good chance you've seen one of his videos". If you haven't, that's not unexpected and it doesn't change that he's a widely recognisable person in current zeitgeist.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#226

Post by nkrisc »

Caylio wrote: post #210
HarryHirsch wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moat losers will have made an equally skillful shot, and the ratio of losers to winners is >> 100 : 1 because that's what the device has been programmed to do.

Nobody said that skill was sufficient to win, I am simply pointing out the obvious fact that it's still required (in response to nkrisc who claimed that no skill was required at all, only luck).

My point is the skill component doesn’t matter if it’s ultimately down to luck.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#227

Post by Aeolun »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #76
Aeolun wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> To be fair, kids don’t care about cheap plastic, and they love flashing lights and sounds. People love all kinds shit that is objectively bad for them... sugar, heroin, gambling, cryptocurrency. > Expensive plastic toys have the same flashing lights and sounds. The cheap adjective was unnecessary.

> The cheap adjective was unnecessary.

Huh, no it was. I wanted to distinguish between cheap <$5 plastic toys and brand name $10+ (expensive) ones.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#228

Post by fomine3 »

suction wrote: post #165
danans wrote: post #20

As an aside, I had no idea Sega were still making "old fashioned" mechanical games, which is how they started with slot machines and jukeboxes in the 1940s. I thought they had long since become a mobile game and IP licensing company (i.e. Sonic the Hedgehog)

Sega also runs Sega-branded arcades in Japan. They even have virtual horse-racing games where the patrons can game real money and watch the "races" on a huge screen. Actual video games are about 50% of all the machines in there, the rest is all gambling-related, like electronic versions of slot machines and also the ubiquitous rigged "UFO-Catcher" games (where you move an arm to grab a prize). But here's the thing: O…

There were some shady arcades in over a decade ago, but now usually not shady (unless you choose shady area like where massage parlours and hooker bars exists, arcades are ubiquitous). Every young people visit there to play games, get items, and shot photos.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#229

Post by MikeUt »

Uberphallus wrote: post #131
TeMPOraL wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why class action lawsuit then. Shouldn't this be prosecuted as a crime?

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.

> 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.

Re: Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

#230

Post by pfundstein »

jeltz wrote: post #191
baseballdork wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not allowed to be rigged I guess I don't understand what "rigged" means in this context. I thought slot machines could essentially be "tuned" for payout by the owner (e.g. pay out 0.96x of what's put in on average), much like these toy machines.

Rigged in my mind means that the game cares about previous wins and losses. Slot machines do not, the 0.96 us just the statistical average and not something the game tries to enforce.

Do you work on slot machine software? How do you know they don't increase the odds of an early win to entice the user to keep feeding it?
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