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If arcade machines had not existed until today, could they/should they face lawsuit?

F

fireflame

Member
Arcade games are important in the story of video games and many players have fond memories of insertings coins to spend afternoon playing them.

One thing that most of people probably did not know when they were playing them, is that a lot of game mechanis were designed to make the player loose easily and spend more money. This is probably why the arcade version of a game is often harder than its late ports. It is for example known that mortal kombat games on arcade could read inputs when players started pushing buttons, and thus anticipate their moves to counter them.

So i often wonder if arcade machines companies would face lawsuits if they had not existed until today. We often criticize pay to win model in video games, so to some extent, can't we apply the same criticism to arcade games? Recently China forced companies to display drop rates of items, a decision which impacted well known games.
Letting nostalgy aside, would it not be fair to consider arcade machines with the same contempt. If you , as a kid, had explicitly been told that the games you played had articifial difficulty purposefully set to make you spend coins, would you have kept playing? And who would be to blame, arcade makers or pub owners?
 
S

Synth

Member
No, because all difficulty in a video game is artificial. You only ever win in any real-time game against the AI, because it's designed to let you to some extent.
 
tkscz

tkscz

Member
No. While the tactic was shitty, it wasn't illegal as devs were taking a huge risk by pulling that shit. If the games were too hard in order to get quarters, people would eventually stop playing them. There is only so much people are willing to deal with.
 
F

fireflame

Member
Synth said:
No, because all difficulty in a video game is artificial. You only ever win in any real-time game against the AI, because it's designed to let you to some extent.
Click to expand...

But thereis no limit to the amount of money you can spend on an arcade game, while an ordinary game following the buy to play model has a price. Companies selling alcohol have to warn users, the same goes for smoking, so would not it be expected from arcade companies to use disclaimers to warn customers?

Cannot we compare this to a casino where the house is cheating but does not warn you?
 
C

chronic_archaic

Member
No, but yeah, the term "quarter munchers" is a thing for a reason. I always hate console ports of arcade games that only give you a certain amount of credits. The game is probably very hard to begin with, why make it so I can only see the first few levels before getting destroyed? Thankfully most modern collections or conversions do have games set to free play.
 
A

always crazy bacon

Banned
Not before FTP games or loot boxes that really are gambling in some cases. You can watch playthroughs of old arcade games that prove skill is enough to beat the game.
 
E

erlim

yes, that talented of a member
If this was the case, people now should sue mobile game developers for micro transactions.
 
S

Synth

Member
fireflame said:
But thereis no limit to the amount of money you can spend on an arcade game, while an ordinary game following the buy to play model has a price. Companies selling alcohol have to warn users, the same goes for smoking, so would not it be expected from arcade companies to use disclaimers to warn customers?

Cannot we compare this to a casino where the house is cheating but does not warn you?
Click to expand...

I don't think the situation is very comparable to a casino tbh. If we take for example the drop rates in a loot box, that's somewhat similar... no matter what the player does, if the rarity of a given item is 1 in 3, then the player will likely encounter that item in one of every 3 boxes. Adjusting the difficulty in a game isn't the same however, because there's no easily quantifiable metric to measure the new difficulty against. Some people argue that Dark Souls shouldn't have an easy mode (usually because they don't have trouble beating it), whereas my mother can't pass World 1-2 in Super Mario Bros after plenty of failed attempts. Even when you look at legendarily outrageous shit like Mortal Kombat... how many arcade games can't be consistently 1cc'd?
 
F

fireflame

Member
always crazy bacon said:
Not before FTP games or loot boxes that really are gambling in some cases. You can watch playthroughs of old arcade games that prove skill is enough to beat the game.
Click to expand...

The problem is that we do not know how much money is necessary to train an acquire the said skill. I think it is fair to assume that for a decent number of arcade you would easily end up spending above 60 dollars to beat them.
 
S

sphinx

the piano man
it was your choice to introduce a coin in the machine, no one was being forced

the moment you realized it was a quarter muncher, you could stop playing or ask the clerk in the arcade place if they could reduce the difficulty or add more "lifes" per credit or something.
 
H

HeatBoost

Member
Not really, no. Arcade games are either 1) Like movies except you pay in tiny installments or B) A place where you pay for the right to compete with other people in a game. All you are getting in exchange for money is time with the product, there's no promise of persistence or monetary gain the way there is with loot boxes/cards/whatever or actual gambling.

Or at least, that was the case. With how things are now in Japan with customizable outfits and shit... that's a lot more like modern games.

This is probably just nostalgia talking, but having artificial difficulty as a means of encouraging quarter dumping is delightful tactic in terms of what it meant for game design (i.e. games had to be either REALLY good or REALLY flashy) VS the shit we have today where you have companies sticking microtransactions onto games that are mediocre crap in hopes that enough people will bite to justify their subpar creative endeavor
 
K

klaushm

Member
I think it should be as Illegal as shooting with an modified air gun to win a prize. You can learn how to beat it after spending a lot of time, and money, practicing.

At least here, if someone discovers that it was modified to not be fair, the person responsible for it would be arrested.

So... Yeah. I agree with you OP. It's not gambling, but I consider this a shade act. Can't say it is illegal, but wish it was.
 
M

Marcel

Member
Skill-based games and gambling games aren't the same thing. It's always possible to triumph over SNK hard if you're good enough.
 
S

Synth

Member
PaladinXII said:
"Incredibly blatant" is perception and doesn't equal "verified fact."
Click to expand...

Well ok... it's objective fact that the game can read your buttons, as it's responsible for both characters.

I'm not sure whether or not the developers themselves have stated that "yes, the AI is reading your shit and counteracting it"... but these kinds of "perceptions" aren't very difficult for a player to confirm for themselves. If literally every time I ever throw a projectile at Jade in MK3 she breaks out into a projectile-invincible run across the screen (on the very next frame), followed by a combo.. then it's more than just perception.. it's repeatedly verifiable, and Is pretty much you also controlling the character that's beating on you in effect.
 
S

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Frankly, I'm tired of listening to twenty-somethings prattle on about the evils of "quarter munchers" that I'm quite certain they never actually played.

Traditional arcade games never even had the pretense that you could "win" anything from them in the first place. The only thing you were paying for was time on the machine, with the extra incentive that you'd get more time out of it as you played better.
 
S

Synth

Member
Neptonic said:
You can't Get Gud at a slot machine
Click to expand...

Yea, this is basically the distinction for me, along with the promise of potentially leaving with more money then you entered with. When you put your money into an arcade game, it's gone.. you know this before you put it in. When you put your money into a slot machine, not only are you hoping to get that money (and more) back, but when you lose, it's simply because the machine has chosen for you to, with nothing you could have done to prevent it.
 
M

MutFox

Banned
Some arcade games I could finish on 1 credit.
It depends on your skill level.
They're not like slot machines,
which are luck based.
 
D

duckroll

Member
I'm not sure what the logic is here, but I'll keep the thread open for a bit in good faith.

So, the premise is that there's something different about "today" as opposed to "bygone days", with regards to amusement regulations and consumer base? I don't think this really suggests what you think it does. If anything, people today are MORE inclined to go to an amusement parlor and literally gamble at machines for prizes. I don't think there is any indication that consumers today are even interested in launching lawsuits regarding artificial difficulty or having to pay to progress in games. It actually feels like that has become much more of the culture than before.

So.... how does the premise of the thread work?
 
P

Pepboy

Member
fireflame said:
The problem is that we do not know how much money is necessary to train an acquire the said skill. I think it is fair to assume that for a decent number of arcade you would easily end up spending above 60 dollars to beat them.
Click to expand...

Why is that a problem? There is no promise that a game can even be beaten at all. I have bought versions of tetris which literally cannot be beaten.

It's only an issue if there is false advertising. If the game advertised "beat with one quarter!" But it was programmed so the boss deterministically beat you no matter what you did, then you'd have a very meager class action lawsuit on your hands (since damages would be measured in quarters for a game that probably quickly got a bad rep).

But no arcade games I know of ever make such a promise, implicit or explicit, in their advertising. Plus common experience would tell you its tough to beat an arcade game on one quarter. So the whole thing is a non issue.
 
Shifty

Shifty

Member
Does caveat emptor apply here? Given the low buy-in I'd think it would be considered the player's problem if they start quarter-feeding to finish a game that's artificially difficult.

I'm not saying I agree with the practice, but if straight up gambling can operate legally (albeit with legislated restrictions) then I doubt arcade owners/publishers would be liable for something like this.
 
R

Rookhelm

Member
slot machines and casino games are different, because there's an expectation to receive some return in exchange (to win something back).

Arcade games have no such expectation (except for the carnival style games where you win tickets).
 
G

Gotchaye

Member
I have no idea what such a lawsuit would be based on. My understanding is that the requirement that gacha games in Japan and China publish drop rates is itself not even the result of a lawsuit but is due to legislation passed in response to the games' popularity.

fireflame said:
One thing that most of people probably did not know when they were playing them, is that a lot of game mechanis were designed to make the player loose easily and spend more money. This is probably why the arcade version of a game is often harder than its late ports. It is for example known that mortal kombat games on arcade could read inputs when players started pushing buttons, and thus anticipate their moves to counter them.
Click to expand...
Absolutely everyone knew that these games had mechanics designed to get players to spend money. That is literally the whole point of giving players limited numbers of lives and then letting them pay to get more. It doesn't get much more artificial than that. Later console ports would often just give players infinite continues. Your particular complaint is just bizarre. Why is that an objectionable mechanic? Also, yes, everyone knew that computer opponents in fighting games did not play in the same way as humans and were difficult to beat for different reasons. No one expected them to play the same as humans. Because they were very simple programs and it was the 90s. People would have been very annoyed if games' difficulty changed when spending money -- like a boss is very hard on your first go-round but if you lose and then put in another quarter it's much easier to beat -- but I don't know if this was common. And I still have no idea what you'd sue them for.
 
P

Peltz

Member
Under what cause of action? Lawsuits have to be based on an actual theory of liability. It can't just be "I don't like thing X so I'm going to sue."
 
F

fireflame

Member
duckroll said:
I'm not sure what the logic is here, but I'll keep the thread open for a bit in good faith.

So, the premise is that there's something different about "today" as opposed to "bygone days", with regards to amusement regulations and consumer base? I don't think this really suggests what you think it does. If anything, people today are MORE inclined to go to an amusement parlor and literally gamble at machines for prizes. I don't think there is any indication that consumers today are even interested in launching lawsuits regarding artificial difficulty or having to pay to progress in games. It actually feels like that has become much more of the culture than before.

So.... how does the premise of the thread work?
Click to expand...

I have the feeling that today, people are much more combative in general when it is about the relationship between a company and the ctustomer. In the past there was no internet to act as magnifying glass, but now, when a companies adopts a tactic that is considered to be deceptive, people seem to be much more reactive.Maybe this is more pregnant in usa,with the good and the bad sides of the phenomenon.

My feeling was that the customers were not that well informed about the difficulty and mechanics about those arcade games. Maybe there were some hardcore fans that knew a lot about them and how game mechanics actually worked, but for exmaple, i am not sure that kids were able to guess that. There was no explicit message in the start menu saying "this game has been designed with the intent of making you spend as much money as possible and may include artificial difficulty spikes. Spend your money cautiously". As a kid i would not make a difference between that nice game on an arcade machine, and gamesi could play on the familial microcomputer at home. There would be a differenc ein graphics and speed maybe, but it would not be easy to guess.

I would also assume that when you play a game, you do not expect to win automatically, but you expect a "rather" fair" chance to win. If you play chess against a computer, you know that the computer maight beat you a lot, but you know that both sides are playing by the rules.
The artificial difficulty spikes, read input mechanics could be seen as elements tainting the experience of the game and making it "unfair".

The ground for such lawsuit would be some sort of "deceptive and misleading practice relying on elements the customer has not been clearly and explicitly warned about". I think that to demonstrate this, one could use the history not nly about video games, but games in egeneral, and prove the fact that games generally tend to establish clear rules defining the nature of the game, conditions to win, especially when money is involved. By providing a service without warning the users, the company warps the nature of the experience expected when you pay for it.
 
M

MrChocolate

Member
I was playing Super Sidekicks 3 earlier and after I read OP I couldn't stop laughing.
Yeah, the game is fucking unfair. The teams run faster and faster with every match won. They injure your better player, and it isn't even a foul.
So, while I agree with your statement OP, I think that it is part of mastering the game. I mean, I don't think anyone expected to use 100 quarters to beat a game. They expected you to watch other people play, analize how are they playing and so on. Much like a fighting game.
 
F

feint_ruled

Member
Synth said:
Well ok... it's objective fact that the game can read your buttons, as it's responsible for both characters.

I'm not sure whether or not the developers themselves have stated that "yes, the AI is reading your shit and counteracting it"... but these kinds of "perceptions" aren't very difficult for a player to confirm for themselves. If literally every time I ever throw a projectile at Jade in MK3 she breaks out into a projectile-invincible run across the screen (on the very next frame), followed by a combo.. then it's more than just perception.. it's repeatedly verifiable, and Is pretty much you also controlling the character that's beating on you in effect.
Click to expand...

Any Youtube vids showing this? Not saying it ain't so, but it would be nice to see it without having to buy the game and follow your reproduction method.

One verified example of such tomfoolery was discovered, on Fruit Machines (aka Slot Machines) that would wait for the user to select High or Low then ensure the opposite result came out.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...scam-cheats-fruit-machine-gamblers-96035.html
 
D

danmaku

Member
When you play an arcade game you pay to have fun for a few minutes, not to beat the game. Some arcade games are unbeatable (like Pac Man or Space Invaders) and people played them anyway.
 
S

Synth

Member
fireflame said:
I have the feeling that today, people are much more combative in general when it is about the relationship between a company and the ctustomer. In the past there was no internet to act as magnifying glass, but now, when a companies adopts a tactic that is considered to be deceptive, people seem to be much more reactive.Maybe this is more pregnant in usa,with the good and the bad sides of the phenomenon.

My feeling was that the customers were not that well informed about the difficulty and mechanics about those arcade games. Maybe there were some hardcore fans that knew a lot about them and how game mechanics actually worked, but for exmaple, i am not sure that kids were able to guess that. There was no explicit message in the start menu saying "this game has been designed with the intent of making you spend as much money as possible and may include artificial difficulty spikes. Spend your money cautiously". As a kid i would not make a difference between that nice game on an arcade machine, and gamesi could play on the familial microcomputer at home. There would be a differenc ein graphics and speed maybe, but it would not be easy to guess.

I would also assume that when you play a game, you do not expect to win automatically, but you expect a "rather" fair" chance to win. If you play chess against a computer, you know that the computer maight beat you a lot, but you know that both sides are playing by the rules.
The artificial difficulty spikes, read input mechanics could be seen as elements tainting the experience of the game and making it "unfair".

The ground for such lawsuit would be some sort of "deceptive and misleading practice relying on elements the customer has not been clearly and explicitly warned about"
Click to expand...

Any difficult in games is artificial difficulty. The speed any enemies moves, then number of hits it takes to kill, the amount of health you have, how large your hitbox is... literally everything about a game's design artificially adjusts the difficulty for the player.

"This game contains artificial difficulty spikes" would be a meaningless statement, that would effectively apply to any game with boss characters for example. A game that didn't fall foul of this, would likely be shit anyway.

feint_ruled said:
Any Youtube vids showing this? Not saying it ain't so, but it would be nice to see it without having to buy the game and follow your reproduction method.

One verified example of such tomfoolery was discovered, on Fruit Machines (aka Slot Machines) that would wait for the user to select High or Low then ensure the opposite result came out.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...scam-cheats-fruit-machine-gamblers-96035.html
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if there's anything on YouTube that goes into stuff like this in detail tbh (it's hardly even specific to Mortal Kombat really). This video here should give you an idea of what I'm referring to however, as there's a point where he clearly demonstrates the AI's instant response to his projectile input[/URL]. Jade isn't the only character that does this (another famous one if Nigghtwolf), but she's the most infamous as her response consistently leads to the player getting their ass beat for using the move.
 
S

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
fireflame said:
My feeling was that the customers were not that well informed about the difficulty and mechanics about those arcade games. Maybe there were some hardcore fans that knew a lot about them and how game mechanics actually worked, but for exmaple, i am not sure that kids were able to guess that. There was no explicit message in the start menu saying "this game has been designed with the intent of making you spend as much money as possible and may include artificial difficulty spikes. Spend your money cautiously". As a kid i would not make a difference between that nice game on an arcade machine, and gamesi could play on the familial microcomputer at home. There would be a differenc ein graphics and speed maybe, but it would not be easy to guess.
Click to expand...

How old are you, really?

When a child of the '80s or '90s was dropped off at the mall arcade to kill time while his mother spent the next 1 to 2 hours shopping, he tended to learn real quick how to maximize the $2 that he was given for the afternoon, and more so for each subsequent trip. You'd survey the whole room and get a feel for what looked worthwhile based on what other people were playing or what you'd have already picked up from experience and word of mouth, and if something failed to impress you on your first credit then you weren't likely to spend another on the same machine. I'd go so far as to say that such players might have been the most financially discerning gamers of any type. They had to be in order to feel like they hadn't wasted what limited disposable income that they had.

I would also assume that when you play a game, you do not expect to win automatically, but you expect a "rather" fair" chance to win. If you play chess against a computer, you know that the computer maight beat you a lot, but you know that both sides are playing by the rules.
Click to expand...

In the 1980's, there was absolutely no pretense that games were supposed to be beaten in the first place.

Even putting the arcade aside, most NES gamers never saw the endings to half the games in their home libraries.
 
G

Glowsquid

Member
I would also assume that when you play a game, you do not expect to win automatically, but you expect a "rather" fair" chance to win..
Click to expand...

The expectation when you put quarters in an arcade machine is that it lets you play the game. Period.

"This game didn't spell out to me it's Very Difficult and it has artificial difficulty spikes" is a laughably broad and vague claim and would get laughed out of any courts.
 
SUPARSTARX

SUPARSTARX

Member
Might as well sue crane machine makers. They don't really grip anything for you until the machines take up enough money per item anyway.
 
D

dallow_bg

nods at old men
Sixfortyfive said:
How old are you, really?

When a child of the '80s or '90s was dropped off at the mall arcade to kill time while his mother spent the next 1 to 2 hours shopping, he tended to learn real quick how to maximize the $2 that he was given for the afternoon, and more so for each subsequent trip. You'd survey the whole room and get a feel for what looked worthwhile based on what other people were playing or what you'd have already picked up from experience and word of mouth, and if something failed to impress you on your first credit then you weren't likely to spend another on the same machine. I'd go so far as to say that such players might have been the most financially discerning gamers of any type. They had to be in order to feel like they hadn't wasted what limited disposable income that they had.
Click to expand...

Ha that was me.
I spent those limited funds VERY carefully.
 
Lynd7

Lynd7

Member
Games are mostly fair because you could win if you were good, plus you don't have to play.

What grinds my gears is the prize games like Stacker. Those machines are generally setup to not even allow people to win the top prize. It has to be up to a certain number of plays before it will even make it possible to win, so you have to be good enough and also be lucky enough..
 
Futaleufu

Futaleufu

Member
I don't like this modern narrative where arcade games are perceived as "unfair" "too hard" or "quarter munchers". 90% of the games can be completed in one coin by skill or by exploiting CPU patterns.

I also don't like the narrative where console gaming of the 80s and 90s is today perceived as the superior experience.
 
S

Synth

Member
Sixfortyfive said:
How old are you, really?

When a child of the '80s or '90s was dropped off at the mall arcade to kill time while his mother spent the next 1 to 2 hours shopping, he tended to learn real quick how to maximize the $2 that he was given for the afternoon, and more so for each subsequent trip. You'd survey the whole room and get a feel for what looked worthwhile based on what other people were playing or what you'd have already picked up from experience and word of mouth, and if something failed to impress you on your first credit then you weren't likely to spend another on the same machine. I'd go so far as to say that such players might have been the most financially discerning gamers of any type. They had to be in order to feel like they hadn't wasted what limited disposable income that they had.
Click to expand...

Yup. For example, as a kid, when I was sent to the arcade with a limited amount of money, I knew exactly what to avoid if I wanted to play for a reasonable length of time. First things first... FUCK CONTINUES lol. There was no way, even at the age of 10 years old, if a boss slapped me down in 10 seconds, I was putting in more money for the same boss to slap me down in 10 seconds again... nope... I was starting from the beginning, and playing for the 10 minutes it took to reach that boss. Eventually I'd learn to beat him and each coin was going to last longer from that point onwards.
 
V

VariantX

Member
Synth said:
Any difficult in games is artificial difficulty. The speed any enemies moves, then number of hits it takes to kill, the amount of health you have, how large your hitbox is... literally everything about a game's design artificially adjusts the difficulty for the player.

"This game contains artificial difficulty spikes" would be a meaningless statement, that would effectively apply to any game with boss characters for example. A game that didn't fall foul of this, would likely be shit anyway.



I'm not sure if there's anything on YouTube that goes into stuff like this in detail tbh (it's hardly even specific to Mortal Kombat really). This video here should give you an idea of what I'm referring to however, as there's a point where he clearly demonstrates the AI's instant response to his projectile input[/URL]. Jade isn't the only character that does this (another famous one if Nigghtwolf), but she's the most infamous as her response consistently leads to the player getting their ass beat for using the move.
Click to expand...


I don't know if it was you, or someone else that told me on a thread about a similar subject, (cpu jade being complete bullshit) but cpu controlled characters in umk3 can apparently do the same combo as you but theirs does more damage than yours.
 
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