And most of them were tuned for profit too, so it's not like this is a new concept. It does feel like a lot of the mobile and F2P monetization folks are the same ones that enjoyed profiting from arcade games and see them as being similar to slot machines (except better, because they only pay out in neurochemicals, not money!).
There's been a quiet war for decades between people who want to design games as art, and people who want to design them as a predictable recurring revenue stream. I'm not sure what iteration we're up to now.
Comparing arcade machines to gambling is a sore spot, especially for pinball. Ostensibly arcade machines are skill based. They are not random. You may be able to win an award or prize but that will be based on some objective measure of performance with little to no randomization. This is important because arcades operate where gambling is illegal, so suggesting they are anything like gambling threatens the security of those businesses.
Roger Sharpe [1] saved pinball by demonstrating it is a game of skill.
RE: art vs profit I think there is room for both. Games are probably the best example of that. Game designers are very much artists but they are also engineers and business people.
You are factually correct, but the intentions are a bit murkier. The explosion of video arcades in the 70s and 80s was due to how lucrative the machines were as an investment, not due to any passion on the part of the owners. The value proposition for arcades at the time was basically like gambling, but not illegal. While arcade games have always been skill-based, that's not the same as "fair," at least in the modern game design sense.
Yes, with repetition, you can eventually learn to beat Ghosts and Goblins on a single quarter, but the game is not going to just let you do that on the first try. Games of that era are designed to lure you in, then kill you with something completely out of nowhere after your 3 minutes are up and it's time for the next person in line to put in their money. This self-reinforced when you saw someone who had put in the reps getting really far on one credit, so you would think you can do that. But no, you can't. You die at the end of the first stage like everyone else.
It's not gambling, but it's still designed to extract money as efficiently as possible.
>> While arcade games have always been skill-based, that's not the same as "fair," at least in the modern game design sense.
Well sure the games tend to be skill based, but arcade machines were also novelties, like the little peep-show movie clips where you turned the crank and looked inside, or the "fortune teller" and some others. Skill games seem better because there is more replay value though.
It's not gambling simply because there is no possible way you can come out ahead, therefore you are just paying for entertainment. Nobody ever got quarter out of a PacMan machine, no matter how well they played.
But games with persistent inventory like World of Warcraft are different than PacMan machines, because you could sell your items for real money.
Not really a counterpoint, but a neat aside: pinball machines used to be actual gambling machines, back when they took nickels. They were common in pool halls my father frequented.
That's also a slippery slope of an argument. Poker players claim that they are not gambling. Early stage addicts claim they are not addicts and can stop any time. Gaming, whether the player is earning money or points, all keys in on the same addictive traits of their players. Some game devs go all in on that because it is fish in a barrel stakes for making money.
Not sure why that matters to be honest. Gambling is a form of addiction. GaveDevs are tapping into that rush. That's how it breaks down for me. It may not be an illegal/scheduled substance that they are pushing, but they are pushing a product specifically made to trigger addictive behavior. It's no different than social media algorithms in my book either. They all are designing their product to be consumed by an addict to ensure they continue using their product as much as possible. We've just been dealing with drugs/alcohol/etc for much longer and society is much more aware of the addict problem in these cases. Social media/gaming addiction is a much less understood and/or acknowledged.
It matters because gambling specifically is regulated differently than general behaviors that might be addictive. There are more bars in the world than casinos. As I already outlined arcades specifically exist in their current form because they were re-classified as containing games of skill, not chance.
The difference matters a lot to someone who owns a bar or arcade or frequents one.
Further, conflating the meaning of words in general is just not a useful approach to learning or building consensus. Words have meaning. By respecting the meaning of words we can convey complex ideas with simple language.
Saying alcoholics are basically gamblers because "what's the difference" is about as useful (read: not) as arguing that FAANG should be broken up because "monopoly". The words matter and when you use the wrong ones the merit of your argument can be easily dismissed on the semantics. It's just not persuasive.
I don't know where you're trying to take this, but it's not in a direction I'm going.
I never equated alcoholic are gamblers. I said they are forms of addiction. I'm beating the drum that some game devs are targeting addicts. That's the direction I will continue this conversation as. Where ever you're going with I will no longer follow
My pinball machines actually track average ball times in the audits. It’s a KPI for operators. Machine setups will be changed to increase difficulty if necessary.
Have any pinball machines ever been designed to change the difficulty during game play. Some sort of algo to make the bumpers less bumpery, restrict the movement of the flippers, adjust the angles of things, etc?
Not to my knowledge. It would be antithetical to the game. Games do scale difficulty based on progress but this is the same for everyone. Some games do reverse flipper sides or direction but again, it is based on progress, not a more complex playtime targeting algorithm.
An example of this is multiballs. The first one (per player) can start with say three shots. The next one might require six and then the third nine. This is oversimplified but the point is the progress is consistent.
The only dynamically-scaling feature I am aware of is the replay score which (can) set a starting score based on recent plays but will also scale up rapidly when it is reached (say, +50%) until it isn’t reached, at which point it resets to the starting score. But this has no actual in-game effect.
