The Compleat Theatre— Wyth Gymn Trackke! (long backstory)

[Gurndigarn]

OK, I do arcade games. One of the locations I take care of is a theater with a large arcade. Very large for a theater location... and designed by an idiot. But that's mostly another story. The pertinent detail for this one is the fact that the arcade has a balcony level that runs around three walls, and has games on the upstairs levels.

This theater has a regular family that comes in... Grampa and Gramma with Granddaughter, I believe they are. Very regular customers... and pains, at least Grampa and Gramma. Not the worst ones out there, but "stealth" SCs. Their grandchild, when she comes, mixes up the games she plays. Grandparents, OTOH, play cranes. And complain when they don't win.

"We've really been wanting <cheap stuffed toy>, but it's up against the glass where the claw can't reach it. Can you put it where the claw can grab it?"
"Everything's too tight... can you loosen it up?"
"It's impossible to win... can you make it winnable?"

The stealth part of the SCness is that, when you do a few things for them as part of good customer service, they then expect that you to do it again. And again. And again. You're upstairs with a hot soldering iron and exposed wiring? But this will only take a minute. They're always polite about it. Always asking. Asking. Asking. Oh, and they'll be back next week, too. After a month of help them out once, then saying I couldn't do any more for the rest of the day, I just shut it down. It took them a few months to stop pleading, but they did, eventually. And they mostly avoid me now, since I won't play their game.

OK.... that's the backstory....

I'm at the location, counting tokens, hoping to be able to fix the zillion things that broke sometime today, when I notice them upstairs, heading toward the back set of stairs down. Not a problem.

Then they're heading away from the stairs, around the circuit of the balcony area. Now, I had no idea why they were upstairs. Only video games and air hocky there. No cranes, no other merchandisers, not even the ticket-spitting games (yeah, big arcade for a theater). IE, nothing that they play when granddaughter isn't around.

A minute later, I see them heading to the back stairs... reach the wall, and turn around. At a decent clip. I'm definitely confused... some odd psychological warfare? You won't play our games, so we're going to try to psych you out? Not going to work. With apologies to the Cool and Froody Zaphod Beeblebrox, I see weirder things than you on my game screens.

Back and forth... back and forth... membership to the YMCA went up, obviously, and you need your excercise... back and forth... back and forth... it's been five minutes... now ten... they keep going... until I finish counting tokens in one of the cranes and move on to the next game. You've seen parking lot vultures scream into that spot they've been hovering around? These people did them proud— down from the upper level and on the game before I had gotten the tokens out of the next game. Then they dumped two tokens into the game... lost... got another dollar worth of tokens... played them two at a time... two games, that is, because you get four tokens for a buck... got another dollar worth of tokens... y'know, that thing has a dollar bill acceptor on it... another dollar worth of tokens...

But... I didn't touch the plush inside the crane. So what's magically better about it now?

[PepperElf]

bleh those things are addictive. you should see the ones in japan where, if you play it right (which is pretty hard) you could actually win things like ipods & psps for just a few hundred yen. all it takes is one or two 100-yen coins to play (about 1-2 bucks)



one of the few things i've won... a cube-shaped black pig (monokuro boo). cost me about 1000yen but it was cute and i love it.

[Gurndigarn]

bleh those things are addictive. you should see the ones in japan where, if you play it right (which is pretty hard) you could actually win things like ipods & psps for just a few hundred yen. all it takes is one or two 100-yen coins to play (about 1-2 bucks)

You can find them in North America, too. I have games with Xboxes, Zunes, Kodak photo frames, PSPs, nice digital cameras, and so forth.

Yeah, insanely hard to win. But possible; I've beaten every game I operate at one point or another.

[Geek King]

The funny thing is, there's a trick to most crane games. Skill has less to do with it than most people think, unless it is skill in counting...

[ArcticChicken]

Man, I used to be insanely good at those, I'd win something like four out of five times. Of course, I wouldn't play unless there was something in a position to be grabbed.

[Lingering Grin]

Man, I used to be insanely good at those, I'd win something like four out of five times. Of course, I wouldn't play unless there was something in a position to be grabbed.

Try to go for the stuff near the opening where you drop it in.

You lower the crane slightly behind the object and then pull forward on the stick at the same time.

Occasionally, if the crane arm is heavy enough, this'll cause the crane to push the item into the hole, rather than having to pick it up.

[Gurndigarn]

The funny thing is, there's a trick to most crane games. Skill has less to do with it than most people think, unless it is skill in counting...

Not most of ours. We tend to get ICE cranes (Innovative Concepts in Engineering, not the RPG company), which, while they're autoadjustable, do not, as near as I can tell, do the "winner every X plays" routine. It's closer to a pinball set without a replay boost... if you get a lot of winners, the claw strength drops a hair at a time until you only get a normal amount... and conversely, if you don't get enough winners, it bumps the strength up a bit at a time until you get more.

[Sir Spaniard the 12th]

I got really lucky on one of those in the local mall here a few months back. There were a bunch of Happy Tree Friends plushies in it, which retail (in australia, anyway) at around 20-30 dollars at a guess...

I put 5 dollars in (1 dollar per turn) and walked away with 3 of them. Though I didn't manage to get the one I really wanted, I was still happy.

It also had a second game where you 'won' candy.. so you always got something out of it.

[Arucard]

I remember seeing a video that demonstrated how they work. Essentially, the claw's only programmed to exert enough pressure to actually pick something up one in every X goes. If you stand there and count how many plays there are between winners, you can jump in each time it's going to exert the extra pressure, and win pretty much every time.

Of course, it could have been BS, or just a machine run by disreputable folks, but it seems like a smart system to make sure they at least break even on the toys inside.

[Gurndigarn]

I remember seeing a video that demonstrated how they work. Essentially, the claw's only programmed to exert enough pressure to actually pick something up one in every X goes. If you stand there and count how many plays there are between winners, you can jump in each time it's going to exert the extra pressure, and win pretty much every time.

Depends on the manufacturer, and the age of the game. Very old cranes (10+ years) can have the claw strength adjusted manually, but it always remains constant once adjusted. A few manufacturers (mainly overseas ones, and locals making games with guts designed overseas) do the max the claw strength every X plays. (Whether this is legal in the US varies from state to state, by the way). And my favorite manufacturer does an accrual system: every X games, it calculates winners vs losers, compares it to the percentage desired, and will adjust the claw strength up or down, and will leave it at the adjusted strength until another X games pass, when it will recalculate.

Oh, yes, and there are a few manufacturers that just don't let you adjust the power level, period. That doesn't mean you can't adjust payout, it just means that it's a pain to do so, and hard to do precisely.