Would you consider old school coin operated arcades as something that should be banned?
Just curious.
Just curious.
- You sometimes win a bit along the way, but eventually you lose everything.
- The jackpot prizes are only there to lure you in, and you never win them. Towards the middle of the shelf are things like £20 notes. We noticed that one of them was getting quite near the edge, and might actually become winnable, but then the following morning its position had been reset to the back of the shelf.
- It's still fun as long as you're just playing with money you don't mind losing, and not expecting to come out ahead.
They even learned something about company scrip, from the tickets that come out of the machines and the ridiculous exchange rate between tickets and the actual rewards at the prize shop.
I asked my son on the way home if he'd put all his Christmas money and savings into the machine if I let him, and the answer was hell no - maybe a pound, but he didn't want to lose all of his money. Valuable lessons all round.
Depending on how old is “old school” for you, every game in an arcade might be fine.
If we’re talking 90’s Chuck E. Cheese, maybe half the games would be potentially interesting to play without a token payout. The others round to “roll the dice,” where there is no payoff other than a gambler’s variable reward.
I think this also covers whether skill is involved. Like for me, beating my buddy at basketball shots is mildly rewarding, but smashing a button at the right time is not very interesting even if it requires a lot of skill.
Other types of partly fake skill games surely should be banned from kids. Like crane games where there is some hidden variable. And well anything in same category.