Thoughts on "Arcade games are designed to steal your money"?

[Steven]

I sometimes see people say this sort of thing online and it pisses me off and makes me think it's just an excuse for being bad, but then I think of stuff like Geese, Rugal, Parace L'sia, Inbachi, and the entirety of games like Same! Same! Same! 1P.

I've only been playing arcade games semi-seriously for about a year and half now and I don't have that many arcade 1CCs, so I don't know. What do you think?

[cfx]

When I read that type of comment, it always comes across as dismissive of a style of game they don't like and know nothing about really, probably never played an arcade game seriously, if at all, and only like typical western "AAA" games.

OTOH, said in a less derogatory way, isn't that really just the definition of any game that's meant to be a game in the sense of actually challenging you? It starts out at some difficulty level, and the longer you play the more difficult it gets until eventually you fail and the game ends.

I'd also say that especially earlier arcade games were mostly designed that way; they often just get faster, not really changing patterns to any great degree or changing difficulty in other ways. This can apply even to games considered classics; Pac-Man or Space Invaders for example.

There are certainly games that were poorly designed as well, so whether the intent was to make the game unfair or just the developers weren't that skilled at making a game would be an open question.

So it's both, I think. It's fair to be pissed at those comments because those making them most likely don't know any of the games well enough to be doing anything but just dismissing something they see as too difficult.

[Bassa-Bassa]

stuff like Geese, Rugal, Parace L'sia, Inbachi, and the entirety of games like Same! Same! Same! 1P.

Even if those didn't also have their own public (which they do), how many in the whole list are like them, though?

Arcade games need to "steal" your money to survive, I think that's obvious. Can that be achieved in the long term by cheaply make the game hard without any actual design which lets you enjoy the ride with some sense and makes you learn the game to find out a clear is reasonably possible? Hardly. And they succeeded for 40 years.

[BIL]

There are examples of shitty arcade game design, just like there are of shitty console game design. It's no great insight to say "arcade game stealin muh quarters" any more than "AAA walking sim grindanthon II: the next grindan robbed muh next $65."

[Jeneki]

There are dev interviews that go in both directions. There are examples of games being made harder to appease arcade operators, and examples of games being made accessible to a wider audience (I seem to recall a video about Raiden DX's different modes being created for this).

Also this argument can go both ways, "Console games were designed so you couldn't beat them over a rental."

[Air Master Burst]

For every well-designed arcade game there were like 15 shitty ones that absolutely had no purpose beyond swindling kids out of quarters.

That's not even getting into the really predatory shit like Dragon's Lair or Double Dragon 3.

ETA:

Also this argument can go both ways, "Console games were designed so you couldn't beat them over a rental."

I don't think most of them were designed this way, most of them made those changes when they were localized. So many 16-bit titles are way easier on the JP version for this very reason.

[Jeneki]

Sorry I should have worded that "bad generalizations can go both ways".

[BareKnuckleRoo]

For every well-designed arcade game there were like 15 shitty ones that absolutely had no purpose beyond swindling kids out of quarters.

Konami was especially guilty of tweaking games like this outside of Japan. A lot of their western releases were changed to give fewer resources, or make health drain over time instead of using a proper lifebar in their beat em ups. I think there were enough unfair games that the public perception of arcade games as quarter munchers was sadly inevitable.

[Bassa-Bassa]

There are examples of games being made harder to appease arcade operators, and examples of games being made accessible to a wider audience (I seem to recall a video about Raiden DX's different modes being created for this).

That's a false dichotomy, I believe. A hard game didn't appease operators if it's poorly designed because it didn't make any money. And, as samples like Final Fight showed, if the game's brutally hard but it's well-enough designed, the audience can be the widest ever.

For every well-designed arcade game there were like 15 shitty ones

Lol, nope.

[Steven]

stuff like Geese, Rugal, Parace L'sia, Inbachi, and the entirety of games like Same! Same! Same! 1P.

Even if those didn't also have their own public (which they do), how many in the whole list are like them, though?

I don't know, which is why I am asking lol

For every well-designed arcade game there were like 15 shitty ones that absolutely had no purpose beyond swindling kids out of quarters.

Konami was especially guilty of tweaking games like this outside of Japan. A lot of their western releases were changed to give fewer resources, or make health drain over time instead of using a proper lifebar in their beat em ups.

Poor Xexex got murdered.

[Bassa-Bassa]

stuff like Geese, Rugal, Parace L'sia, Inbachi, and the entirety of games like Same! Same! Same! 1P.

Even if those didn't also have their own public (which they do), how many in the whole list are like them, though?

I don't know, which is why I am asking lol

And there you can easily figure out my own answer in the succeeding paragraph, I believe, for what it's worth.

[Jeneki]

That's a false dichotomy, I believe. A hard game didn't appease operators if it's poorly designed because it didn't make any money.

I didn't say it was always financially successful just that it happened.

As an example, there's a Gauntlet revision with less food (and eventually removes food completely if the player lives too long) which was specifically created because a Japanese player figured out how to play too long. An example of difficulty tweaking backfiring (as you mentined) was an Asteroids revision. Source for both of these: GDC12 panel with the game designer Ed Logg.

[Air Master Burst]

Lol, nope.

Take a look through the MAME romset sometime, there's a truly staggering selection of absolute shovelware that was pushed out into arcades in the 80s and 90s. Even nominally competent games were guilty of it! I'm pretty sure Turtles In Time arcade is literally impossible to 1CC because of unavoidable damage and lack of pizzas.

Maybe you were lucky enough to grow up in like New York or London or somewhere with a legit arcade; but most early 90s arcades had like 3 good games with huge lines, a handful of more niche games with dedicated fans, and a WHOLE BUNCH of bullshit. That's not even counting the arcades where the owner cranked the difficulty up so high on everything that proper practice was prohibitively expensive.

[drauch]

Pretty lengthy discussion from, let's see, fuck, 10 years ago :

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.p ... tokentaker

[BryanM]

Take a look through the MAME romset sometime, there's a truly staggering selection of absolute shovelware that was pushed out into arcades in the 80s and 90s

There's a real survivor's bias there, where only good/successful things get remembered. It's like only remembering the good times with an old ex.

That original Alien game, or Meikyuu Hunter G/"Ghostbusters"? Not especially great games. But if you laid out every single game available at the time from your least to most favorite... they'd at least be average. Alien probably being a little above average.

We were just dissing Cyber Police Cop: Dr.Pepper Thief Exterminator Squad the other day. But that game wasn't especially bad; it was the average fare for the time. Make something young males thought looked cool, get them to put quarters in your box until they credit feed to the end, they might replay it again once or twice at most, and that's the grift. (The whole thing we do where we might play a single game once a day for an entire month, like we're training in a dojo.... that's obviously not how the average person engages with games. We're fuckin' weird man, we're weird.)

The current mobile game market is pretty comparable to the arcade scene back in the day - in sheer quantity and churn of product. Only around ~100 to 200 games are able to continue to exist. People only ever talk about the top ~20 or so. Every year, a minimum of around 40 are released (more if you're extremely generous toward the games with a budget under $600,000) ~38 of them die. Maybe five of them have anything memorable about them. (Like this S-tier cringe ad+game.)

There is only a fixed pool of customers with a limited amount of attention and time. Versus tons of people who want to get their money. If you can't win through quality or reputation (and by definition only a few companies can. Shit's expensive yo. Genshin: one of the highest costing games to make of all time.), quantity is a strategy.

Konami was especially guilty of tweaking games like this outside of Japan. A lot of their western releases were changed to give fewer resources, or make health drain over time instead of using a proper lifebar in their beat em ups.

Argh, that game where you kick crocodiles in the nuts in the swamp >_<

A perfectly normal if forgettable affair in Japan. A dreadful slow slog in USA.

The worst way to pad: Just imagine if they had decided to give us three times as many crocodiles to kick in the nuts, instead of having to kick the same crocodile in the nuts fives times as long for four minutes.

[Rastan78]

Of course it's impossible to to argue that arcade games aren't designed to gobble up coins. That's the whole business model. I was looking at an interview where the OG Darius II devs said one of the things they did from loke tests was gather data about average play time and increase the difficulty after each test to shorten play times. There was pressure from the sales division to do this.

Also there was the knowledge of how extreme the skill level of the player base was. They were worried about too many hardcore players just clearing the game in an hour and moving on. There were players that snuck in loke tests early and basically hid in the shadows before things even got started so they could be first. Then they'd stand there taking notes. That's how intense certain players were. The question they wondered about was "what if there are guys like this all over Japan?"

Side note, superplayer Yusemi SWY said the most he ever spent in one day practicing was 20000 yen. It's hard to even run up a bar tab that big in one day, at least without ending up in the hospital.

So yeah arcade games are meant to suck up money, but I think the problem only comes in when people are too quick to assume that means they are simple, only winnable by credit feeding and badly designed. Made to earn money and made to be a swindle are two different things.

Video arcades were preceded by old school midway carnival games which were full of rigged contests of skill made to rip off the country rubes. You hit a milk bottle with a baseball only to find out it's made of cement. Some form of that is probably as old as humanity, so I get where the suspicion comes from. The difference is those type of cons don't hold up to scrutiny and are fun only as long as the participants are ignorant or willing to play along with the gag.

[BryanM]

The entire scene's changed a lot since our days. I mean, it only continues to exist in Japan and barcades now so...

Like $1 for ten guaranteed minutes of play. Selectable stages tuned to skill levels from baby games journalist to deranged games addict.

I don't think it would have made a difference to CAVE if they went that route... but sometimes Ongeki makes me wonder, what if they just made one final(ish) game and kept adding new courses to it. Instead of having DeathSmiles 2 being their answer to them falling behind the times. Their mobile shm'up is the only shmmupping they're making any more, right?

[qmish]

I feel like shmups might have been the most "honest" genre where ability to do an 1CC was kinda guaranteed.

What I sometimes couldn't say about beatemups etc.

(subjectively)

Funny thing, when I was young, the whole "put credits into machine" was one of reasons I never touched arcades (also doesn't help that we never had "arcade culture" in my region/city, so it was already ~dead during those times), especially considering my gaming route was Megadrive > PS1 > PC in early 00s, and I only returned to consoles and/or japanese gaming overall in early 2010s. Lol, during school years I thought arcades were part of casino bullshit (and casino is something I hate with passion, so go figure).

Guess you can thank iOS version of Futari to making me interested in arcade games and what not, lol. And here I am now, talking with a friend about getting a PCB.

[WelshMegalodon]

They are, but so are lootboxes and microtransactions.

Do people think game developers magically stopped being predatory fucks after arcades died out?

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

It depends on the game. I really can't think of that many offhand that are really blatant. Maybe some old Midway games like Sinistar or Smash TV.

[null1024]

The goofiest thing is that like, Smash TV is obnoxious, but doesn't really do anything other than be hard as balls for way too long. There are games that aren't just "give me your money", but more "you literally cannot beat this game on one credit".
I'm pretty sure Jurassic Park and Rail Chase count [afaik, you outright need to die once in JP because of the fucking T-Rex but I could be misremembering, the rest of the game is doable if hard; I can't remember the details about Rail Chase but fuck me, it's something else].

For every well-designed arcade game there were like 15 shitty ones that absolutely had no purpose beyond swindling kids out of quarters.

Konami was especially guilty of tweaking games like this outside of Japan. A lot of their western releases were changed to give fewer resources, or make health drain over time instead of using a proper lifebar in their beat em ups. I think there were enough unfair games that the public perception of arcade games as quarter munchers was sadly inevitable.

I genuinely cannot get over how bad Konami's export sets could be. Deliberately bad game design everywhere.
Metamorphic Force is completely fucked up.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I genuinely cannot get over how bad Konami's export sets could be. Deliberately bad game design everywhere.
Metamorphic Force is completely fucked up.

Want to hear the best music? Gotta play one of the credit munchy versions with the boss rush that'll eat your lives (as if ms. randomly gets super armor isn't difficult enough to deal with)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENymPooqLko

The only Konami USA version I've encountered that wasn't completely butchered was Moo Mesa. The defaults are deliberately lame (1 less life, no level select, infinite looping instead of 2 loops, slight early game difficulty adjustment), but these can be adjusted and the game will play more or less like the AA / EA versions, aside from the hitboxes of crawling enemies that show up on like 3 stages (+1 in the loop). In the AA / EA version you could duck to hit them, in the UA version you have to jump and fire diagonally downward to shoot low enough to hit them. It's a little weird, but not unmanageable.

[BrianC]

I like how Metamorphic Force has "Panther MacGuyver" as a playable character.

[Durandal]

From a Western perspective it isn't entirely unfounded, especially if you see how Japanese publishers would rebalance their games in international versions (especially Konami games, as mentioned in this thread). As for why they did that, it's most likely because in overseas arcades players would only visit arcades once every so often rather than every day. In America's case the reason for that maybe had to do with public infrastructure. Arcade halls there were usually far away and only accessible by car, whereas in denser Japanese cities they could be within walking distance, which made daily pilgrimages to the arcade halls a more feasible thing to do.

Whatever the actual reasons, the sales divisions must've figured that the only way to turn a profit off (overseas) players that visit only occasionally is to dramatically increase the difficulty in order to extract more credits per visit. Culturally this then resulted in the view of arcade machines as theme park rides where you keep feeding it coins until you see the ending, rather than a game to be mastered. In a Japanese environment where players are more likely to visit often, obvious money-grubbing measures would only frustrate players and have them move to another cabinet. Moreover if repeat visits were more likely, trying to forcibly extract more credits per run wasn't necessary anyways. It also helped that feeding credits in Japanese arcades while there was a line behind you was considered a major faux pas, so chasing the creditfeeder audience in Japan wouldn't have worked out that well anyways.

[Steven]

Prices are also significantly higher in Japan than in the USA; 100 yen per credit was and still is the standard, although you will sometimes find 50 or 200 yen per credit. I don't know about European prices.

[Austin]

The saying exists for a reason, and Western arcade designers in particular will tell you straight up that arcade games are meant to take your money. They are money making machines first and foremost, and the faster you get booted off the cabinet, the more potential revenue the operator can make. A game where a single person occupies it for 30 minutes and up in a single session is not a game that makes a lot of money, and thus is not ideal for operators. This is especially true today where the average new machine or kit costs not hundreds, but thousands of dollars.

Japanese arcade game design philosophy always came off to me like they cared a little more for the player, often times easing you in and making their games less prone to massively abusive AI, more so a fair sort of "hard". That said, there's also a reason crane and redemption games occupy the fronts of Japanese arcades--they make money, unlike the games a lot of us would prefer to play.

In the States, the '90s were a boon for operators, where multiplayer cabinets blew up and became the norm, from the early fighting game boom to the rise of three and four player sports games like NBA Jam and NFL Blitz. An average round, match or quarter would be about two minutes, then at least one or more players would be booted off and would have to put more money in to play again (and they did). They were big money makers because of that. Of course, in slow times someone could sit on a MK or KI cabinet, learn and exploit the AI and make it to the end of the game, but during busy hours players were coming and going constantly in head to head matches, and that was the ideal scenario for operators.

That short game time carries into modern arcade games as well. Play a round of Cruis'n Blast, and you're going to be off of it in about two minutes flat, even if you get 1st. I remember in the '90s that if you were on a driving cab, you would often have the opportunity to continue on the same credit if you did the best, but that doesn't even seem to be much of a thing anymore. Then again, when a machine costs $10,000 and you are an operator, I guess you have to pay it off somehow.

[Air Master Burst]

Play a round of Cruis'n Blast, and you're going to be off of it in about two minutes flat, even if you get 1st.

What the actual fuck is this bullshittery

[Austin]

Play a round of Cruis'n Blast, and you're going to be off of it in about two minutes flat, even if you get 1st.

What the actual fuck is this bullshittery

It's called "Being a Modern Arcade Operator" and "Making Money". I don't like it, but with the cost of things, it's what these games have evolved to.

[BryanM]

I guess it makes sense in the barcade setting, where you're just killing a few minutes waiting for your beer+chicken wings to show up. A ten to thirty minute long play session would be antithetical to that; it's supposed to be a social event for entire families, or college-aged kids. It's not any different from playing a short round of Pac-Man/Bust a Move/Street Fighter at the local pizza joint back in the day.

Still, I was relieved that such heathenism was only released in North America, as I couldn't possibly believe such a thing could touch an actual arcade. There's a whole little niche of games like that; a Pac-Man remix, the Rampage game, etc. (I think there might have even been a freakin' Flappy Bird one??) Disposable, but with a lot of work put into looking flashy and cool.

You know, like an arcade game. Older carny arcade games. Standards are higher now. Like I said, ~10 minutes of Ongeki and the like is a bit different; games meant to last a little longer in someone's life.

.... playing a fake Rampage game to win tickets to buy a neon plastic slinky.... it's so impure

[velo]

The goofiest thing is that like, Smash TV is obnoxious, but doesn't really do anything other than be hard as balls for way too long. There are games that aren't just "give me your money", but more "you literally cannot beat this game on one credit".

I don't think Smash TV AC has actually been 1cc'd by a human or even close. The fact that it gaslights you into thinking you just need to get better is almost worse than straight up killing you.

Side note, superplayer Yusemi SWY said the most he ever spent in one day practicing was 20000 yen. It's hard to even run up a bar tab that big in one day, at least without ending up in the hospital.

~$150? For hanging around an arcade for 8+ hours that doesn't sound totally nuts. Check some mobile game IAPs and see what $150 will get you.

I'm pretty sure Turtles In Time arcade is literally impossible to 1CC because of unavoidable damage and lack of pizzas.

There are some on youtube that don't look fake. I think rank manipulation and other tricks are involved. Konami weren't as devious as Midway even when they were trying to be.