How We Arcade ;D (Or, The Answer – Part III)

“When you are stumped, open your mind to opposites.. – Dr Niven, The Answer 

Besides, there comes a time when the soaring heights of PhD-authored self help books begin to flounder in producing inspiration, instead inducing altitude sickness, for which one must repair to the motivational equivalent of the chip shop at base.

Haha not really. But we’re talkin’ amusement arcades, baby.

The (Frivolous) Problem: Arcades can be a real black hole for spending money.

Now, arcades probably had an even worse rep in Malaysia than say, Hong Kong or Singapore, when I was growing up – you could get suspended from school for being seen in school uniform at an arcade. Arcades were for “latch-key kids,” loitering there ‘cos no one cared where they were after school…

In his book, Dr Niven mentions Walter Mischel’s “Marshmallow Experiment” – a study of 4 year olds left in a room alone with a marshmallow, promised an additional marshmallow if instead of eating the one in front of them they left it alone until the researcher returned. How many little kids d’you think went for the marshmallow in hand? About 70%. And when they pulled SAT scores of the same 4 year olds as teens, those who had managed to wait it out with the marshmallow at aged 4 scored on average 210 points better, “the difference between being admitted to Yale and New York State at Binghamton”.

The correlation in that one was between test scores and the ability to delay gratification. Beyond test scores, little kids able to see beyond the immediate marshmallow also grew into more resilient, stress-resistant young adults, who could see projects through to completion. (That’s actually quite logical, right?)

So arcade <soaring, inspirational music comes to screeching halt>. We’ve been going to Jumpin’ Gym USA (misleading – this is a local company holding 90% of the relevant kiddie amusement park market share in HK according to Wiki, “USA” is purely in name only) for some years now and at press time neither of my kids has popped over any 7-11s. It was a nice combination of saving up points-chalked-up-from-playing-games for a points-redemption scheme for toys (didn’t want the “prize” to be a piece of candy – it’s not about the actual consumption of one little piece of junk food, it’s about looking at junk food as the reward you were holding out for..), and well, a little case study in stretching their spending money/ earning tickets for toy redemptions.

For each ball game, you get 20-40 paper tickets. That’s not that much on its own – a rare (ie very difficult to purchase outside) small-ish Friends Lego set is about 5000 tickets/points. That’s 100 – 200 games bowling, shooting baskets or throwing a rubber ball at targets BUT a) there are games that yield more tickets (right along with ones that give you none, mostly claw machines for soft toys, dolls, paperweights, key chains etc etc) – Rockstar once checked out the Youtubes of how claw machines work. It seems the claw can be adjusted to some varying degree of “strength”. (We’ve all played machines where the claw can’t grab anything, right? 🙂 ) Most of the claw machines cost 10-12 tokens a try. That’s the real black hole – you get no paper tickets for redemptions, you can blow about a try a minute – HKD 10-12 a minute – with nothing to show for it..

…and b) Fun Delayed Gratification exercise. The kids played for a couple years before even getting close to the points available for redemption. They were aware of all the redemptions, kinda “never thought they’d make it,” one day they realised they could now afford a lot more redemptions and suddenly that made the redemptions sweeter….. and then they decided to continue saving and couldn’t bring themselves to redeem much. Don’t think I could’ve done it if instead of ball games that was say, Kumon exercises 😀

At least some of the toys are not carried in stores, I once tried to buy one of the bigger claw machine prizes (Cars disposable camera) for Rockstar, walked around the toy stores and couldn’t find it, went back to the arcade to try and buy it, and learned you can only get it from playing this one game. YES, CLAW MACHINE. Tried it couple times, decided I wasn’t going to be able to get the toy in a reasonable number of tries (fine, it was NEAR IMPOSSIBLE), walked away. I suppose it is now safe for Rockstar to read that I once didn’t get him a Cars disposable camera unavailable anywhere else.

One day we passed the Jumpin’ Gym in Causeway Bay, full of local families inputting piles and piles of paper tickets into their cards. I asked one mum, whose card reader indicated in excess of 30,000 points, what they were saving up for and she said: –

– they wanted to refresh the kitchen and were looking out for the “good stuff” that occasionally came up for grabs. (I remember also seeing a small microwave oven at 15,000+ points in one of their catalogues. I. KNOW. Microwave oven cheaper than dolls’ house! I wish I had a little microwave in my dorm room growing up, all the idiots who would bang on my door at freaking 3am to go out for “supper” after cramming.) There’s also lunchboxes, backpacks, various other school supplies – relatively “lower-hanging fruit” redemptions 🙂

Anyway, we thought we’d try the ticket thing –

The two machines behind Rockstar are some of the cheapest games to play, about 2 tokens or HKD 2-4 a try. As in:

HKD 1000 gets you 990 game tokens. HKD 200 however would get you m-aybe 100, possibly less (they regularly change this a bit). Roughly however, you’re paying close to double a game by converting “only” what you need for one session. I agree it’s uncomfortable to appear to blow so much money on one token conversion BUT that would make me extra careful, put more effort into restraint… as opposed to feeling good about only converting a much smaller amount…. and then feeling it’s ok to top up a bit – at double the cost per token. 

If you lose your game card, it costs you HKD 10 – as in, you “lose” nothing else except the physical plastic card. All your accumulated points and token money you put in are tied to your HKID, so as long as you produce identification, they re-code the new card chip with the same information – money you’ve put in, redemption points you’ve already accumulated. I might also add that we’ve been in the Tai Koo Shing outlet during seriously peak hours and noticed things like Star Wars Lego sets purchased from Toys R Us next door (in mint condition and with proof of payment tape still on it)…. and it lies there for the entire time at one of the machines and no one takes it. People move it aside to play the machine, and then put it back on the machine. 90 mins later when we leave, it’s still there. Just…. don’t try to cut queue though, I’ve also seen parents snap at each other “Queue. Up.” 🙂

Now to the two games behind Rockstar in the pic:

“Timing,” the game on the left, allows you a chance at substantially more tickets if you press the button at the right time when the ball drops, in similar fashion to HN’s Feed The Chicken game (that means, with practice you can seriously improve your odds – in fact for HN’s favourite game there’s no spin, little is left to chance, you just time when to press the button and have the chicken peck up a ping pong ball), pushing it into one of the higher payout windows or an additional spin for a jackpot that pays out 1/5 times, a 20% chance. I… need to ask Rockstar what the Jackpot is on this one, he got quite a lot out of it 🙂

“Horsin’ Around” however, the game on the right, is my favourite. For 2 tokens, you pull a pinball-esque ball release for chances to win tickets.

Now, that “probability” is a bit misleading in the sense that the coloured “ball drops” that pay out more than 3 tickets are slightly raised. So you do not have an equal 1/10 chance for each “outcome.” The only way to figure that without taking the machine apart – calculating how fast that carousel spins, how high the coloured ball drops are raised, and then having to make assumptions about how hard the player pulls back the pinball-esque ball launch to send the ball spinning into the carousel…………..

….is to make assumptions. That’s both the key AND the rub, it’s the same for any hairy complicated investment product. Ditto the concept of correlation. Because garbage in garbage out So let’s look at it another way:

Just by buying 1000 tokens, ie at ~HKD 1 a token, this game costs ~HKD 2 (2 tokens) to play, but will always pay out AT LEAST 3 tickets 😀  Compare that to a claw machine at HKD 10-12 (if you weren’t topping up your card HKD 1000 at a time, that’s HKD 20-24!) a try and which pays nuthin’ … That’s how much more playing a claw machine really costs…

The “Jackpot” starts at 100 tickets, and increases by 5 tickets for every game played, until it’s won. Then it resets to 100 tickets.

Given all the unknowns, let’s just do this quick and dirty:

On average, the Jackpot reaches roughly 215 tickets before we manage to clear it. So let’s do a rough check of whether we like our odds (come on, this is fun and it pays).. Recall when you started playing, the Jackpot typically begins at 100 tickets and increases by 5 tickets at a time. If the kids on average add 215 – 100 = 115 tickets before they manage to hit the jackpot, then it’s taking them an average of 115/5 = 23 tries. At ~HKD 2 game, that’s about HKD 2 x 23 = HKD 46 spent to get 215 tickets from the Jackpot. 

But that’s not all the tickets we can get because there are also chances to win 10, 20, 30, 40 tickets, and of course the default 3 tickets per try. The Jackpot accumulation depends only on how many times you play the machine, however winning the minor prizes of 10, 20, 30, or 40 tickets does not affect whether you win the Jackpot. I love this – no correlation adversely affecting your chances at tickets.

Now, both kids do not leave this game until they’ve either run out of budgeted spending money or managed to empty their jackpots out into physical tickets. It’s not uncommon for them to empty their jackpots several times and not want to play much else.

In all the times we’ve played, they’ve run out of money and had to walk away maybe twice ever. The rule is, leave when you have run down your budget, or not be allowed back. I’ve mentioned how hedging a trade is a necessary precaution that nonetheless also cuts your profits. This is my OCD talking I wanted the kids to erm, be able to “walk away” from an ALMOST!! Jackpot <sheepish> because I do feel that not being able to walk away is exactly how you end up killing yourself at say, a gambling table someday not knowing how to quit when you’re ahead. Or at least not heavily owing the House.

Try it when you think you’re “almost there!” on some game that nonetheless still relies “too” much on chance (hence the needing to walk away). It hurts. That’s also exactly why we practice it. Once, an auntie immediately (and apologetically) took over the machine to keep playing for the Jackpot we’d accumulated. It had reached over 300 tickets. (But we already had a fairly good number as well.)

 

Besides, easy(ish) come, easy(ish) go… What is worth even more is the extent to which people who aren’t “collecting” let strangers who are have their tickets/ consolation plastic gem prizes/ basically stuff they don’t need but someone else might. 

Y’know, that old adage whereby if you have “free food” (or extra redemption points), do you blow it all on something you don’t really need or do you “save it,” put it to good use by sharing and making a friend? Which would you rather have, a white elephant/ the metaphorical free food when you’re not hungry and that’ll go bad, or a friend who might return the favour when they have extra tickets they’re not collecting? 

It hasn’t been uncommon on quieter days for local uniformed kids to hand HN their paper tickets before leaving to their extra-curriculars. The random validation that “niceness” exists, by an older child – especially someone we don’t know and never see again – is priceless. I once tried to treat them to an extra basketball game, and they politely declined saying they were going to be late for activity, “Bye-bye, girl! <waving to HN>”. It’s happened 2-3 times and since we never see them again and I don’t want to be Random Stalking Woman Of Local Girls In School Uniform, all I can do is blog it. (OMG. Just read that back. That sounds soooooo creepy.)

While some counter staff are aunties, virtually all the patrolling staff appear to be in their late teens or early 20s, and probably a good number of them are students, wearing earpieces, breaking out screwdrivers to fix/ reset etc game machines, on one occasion quick to politely put an end to annoying poll surveyors (adults) with no other reason to be there except to get parents to answer their survey, refusing CNY lai see on principle despite having spent the last 30 minutes patiently unscrewing components and jiggling the wires so the card reader of the particular station we want to play can be used… even as all around them constant cacophony reigns.

WHY don’t swankier places like Bel Air hire more of these kids? They’d slay the clubhouse fees calculations and what not…. I can think of one reason though – no big arcade and mall attached, not sure those kids want to work there either 🙂

Ends

Epilogue:

Because people ask me so often how “these two” get along….

Rockstar, 4.5 years older, works way harder at chalking up redemption points. He’ll look for Youtubes, he’ll try and figure how hard the machines are…. HN redeems way more of their shared arcade points than Rockstar does. There’s a lot more stuff she likes – Friends Legos, shiny plastic paperweights etc etc…. On the other hand, HN rarely spends much of her cash gifts – last year’s “shopping spree after CNY” HN gave Rockstar her remaining cash – more than half of what she started with – because she didn’t see anything else she wanted and Rockstar had something he needed more cash to buy.

YES THAT FREAKED ME OUT. First time she did it, I was quite worried HN would later regret it and we would have an Armageddon. (But she never did, and Rockstar lets her play with most of the stuff he gets. That ALSO FREAKS ME OUT but she’s yet to actually break something truly valuable of his. (Touch wood. Will wonders never cease 😀 ))

So anyway, when the kids go shopping, rather than “I wish I had that,” it’s “I wish I found something I wanted, that would’ve made me as happy.”

HANG ON –

The kids may not fight about money or even belongings very much, but THEY FIGHT ABOUT THE STUPIDEST STUFF. Whether one is secretly mocking the other – the most benign (to anyone else) sentence, word or yes, look can be heatedly contended for the presence of sarcasm. Who Disrespectin’ Whom.

Newsflash kids, we do not live in Da Hood.

Only a Parent Of Little Children Who Fight will understand the incredibly niggling “phantom pain”, or Itch In A Place You Can’t Scratch. Why no, we don’t play “favourites,” kids.  Like in Brad Pitt’s Fight Club, WE DO NOT SPEAK OF THIS BECAUSE FAVOURITES DON’T EXIST 😀 . But club is good. Or, more accurately, support group is good.

“Hi, I’m Aileen. My kids fight about Really Stupid Stuff.” (All around the group, murmuring “Hi Aileen”.) “I can’t wait for the legalisation of sedation for bickering children. Does this make me a Bad Parent?”

Epilogue II

At the meal table one day…

HN: Mommy? D’you…… love some family members more than others?

Me: No darling, of course not.

HN: Really?

Me: I have two kids. <wide-eyed, HN begins nodding earnestly as Kings and Rockstar half listen, both immersed in their tech after the meal>No parent should express favourites, kids should be equally loved and know it <HN nods encouragingly >, that’s how you really have a chance to grow to love each other as well <HN’s still nodding>. It’s very important for a family –

HN: SO – what you’re saying is… you don’t love me more? (grins) 

Rockstar: <GIANT SNORT>