I actually really interested to know what people consider the difference between Lootboxes and things like CCGs, Kind Eggs etc. This isn't a trolling question, I'm genuinely interested.
Well, for one, I can trade trading cards and other physical objects. Even if a card has no intrinsic value to me, I can at least theoretically exchange it. Most games with lootboxes do not allow this, nor is any in-game currency usually tradeable.
Although it may seem superficial, the dressing also plays a factor. There's not an explosion of lights and color when you open a pack of trading cards with visuals designed to excite the pleasure centers of your brain, tense in anticipation, where when you bust, your brain is primed for another dose of dopamine. This aspect is aggravating because it's one of those 'know it when you see it' things that's difficult to narrow down to exact parameters. There's a reason, however, that slot machines are designed the way they are, and why lootbox systems emulate them.
.
Actually, CCGs most definitely have a 'new card smell' when you open a pack, which in my mind has the same exact effect as the flashing colours, sounds and so forth that occur in the digital version.
I actually really interested to know what people consider the difference between Lootboxes and things like CCGs, Kind Eggs etc. This isn't a trolling question, I'm genuinely interested.
Well, for one, I can trade trading cards and other physical objects. Even if a card has no intrinsic value to me, I can at least theoretically exchange it. Most games with lootboxes do not allow this, nor is any in-game currency usually tradeable.
Although it may seem superficial, the dressing also plays a factor. There's not an explosion of lights and color when you open a pack of trading cards with visuals designed to excite the pleasure centers of your brain, tense in anticipation, where when you bust, your brain is primed for another dose of dopamine. This aspect is aggravating because it's one of those 'know it when you see it' things that's difficult to narrow down to exact parameters. There's a reason, however, that slot machines are designed the way they are, and why lootbox systems emulate them.
.
Actually, CCGs most definitely have a 'new card smell' when you open a pack, which in my mind has the same exact effect as the flashing colours, sounds and so forth that occur in the digital version.
Rosewater wasn't kidding about the addictive ink? Though I can't say I've really noticed anything with MtG packs... can check next time I draft (probably not this week because Xeno)
gambling to me has always implied the possibility of loss; if you go to the casino with $100 you might come out ahead or you might lose it all hitting on 17. If you spend $100 on lootboxes in whatever online game you're guaranteed some quantity of return. It may not be the return you specifically want but it will be a return, especially since many games now seem to normalize returns over large numbers of 'boxes' (streakbreakers, 'pity' counters, whatever.)
This seems a lot less like 'gambling' to me than companies finding artful ways to hide the true amount they are charging for their wares. In hearthstone for example (the microtrans game I'm currently most familiar with) I am sure we could assign a quite reliable dollar value to an entire expansion set. It would be a high number though, which is why blizzard essentially disguise it behind 'random' packs. If Battlefront gave you everything at the start but cost $6400 or whatever probably very few people would buy it, and so on.
So I'd be pretty comfortable with just requiring the lootbox 'formula' to be publicly available.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I like the idea of "vegas legal" being a starting point.
I think it would be great to show the following things somewhere:
- standard distribution rate in a loot box of rares, uncommons and common drops posted publically
- chances of getting an extra rare card (1:30,000 or 1:25, which is it?)
- the actual value of winnings you just gambled for - make it clear you spent 4.99 to get 37 cents of stuff.
- the ability to "cash in" your winnings back into the game for credit. screw the open market and steam trades. Obi Wan Kenobi is a 100 dollar chip? Just give me 100, thanks.
That would much more closely match gambling, expose just how bad the current system is, and skew towards lower prices on loot boxes or better distributions.
I'm not sure "make this more like real gambling to show how it's actually real gambling" is a great argument though.
I remain unconvinced at most of the claims from people who say that this is predatory or encourages addictive behavior. We've had kinder eggs and Magic the gather for 25 years now, and I've not seen any studies that conclusively show those items cause addictive or personally destructive behavior. If they exist, please share. I'm open to shifting on this position.
I think posting the odds is a great idea and is an area of common ground, but I'm on the fence regarding secondary markets. On one hand they'll help curve some of the more excessive behaviors since you can outright buy what you want, on the other it's a movement towards being real gambling since the items have now material value.
They wouldn’t necessarily even have to be real money secondary markets. Just the ability to trade will create an economy. Or you could alternatively make unopened packs tradable or game currency tradable, so you could offer 25 boosters/funbux for a phrexian ubermencsh or whatever, that the seller could then open or trade.
+1
Options
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
I remain unconvinced at most of the claims from people who say that this is predatory or encourages addictive behavior. We've had kinder eggs and Magic the gather for 25 years now, and I've not seen any studies that conclusively show those items cause addictive or personally destructive behavior. If they exist, please share. I'm open to shifting on this position.
I'm not going to claim to be an expert here, because psychology isn't my field (much less children's psychology). It is the field of several of my co-workers here at the university. I ran a library search over the last 15 minutes or so and found over 1,600 articles since 1922 on relations between trading cards (from baseball to pokemon cards) and impacts of children's psychological behavior. I found 127 peer reviewed studies published between now and 2016 alone, most of which seem to have the same issues of finding statistically significant correlations between gambling behaviors in games and negative psychological findings (from the handful of abstracts).
I don't know what sort of research you have done, but this has been a pretty well discussed topic. I know I've had discussions with our Psych faculty about it going back to 2007 when I was still deep into MtG's clutches. It was part of what helped me get out of it. It looks to be as well published as I have been led to believe by my coworkers.
+4
Options
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Man, there are a ton of statistical studies on gambling and video games, guys. I'm going down the rabbit hole.
Most prevalent is a trend in the early 1990s discussing a problem with a precursor to lootboxes, a type of arcade console called a 'fruit machine' in the Uk which were essentially slot machines targeted at children, which led to a crazy ton of data showing problems. Then Pokemon cards in the early 2000s, then again with cellphone games in the late 2000s, and most recently microtransactions in both tablet and console games.
I actually really interested to know what people consider the difference between Lootboxes and things like CCGs, Kind Eggs etc. This isn't a trolling question, I'm genuinely interested.
lootboxes can't be transferred or reused whereas the others can be sold and are physical property
That's an interesting point that I hadn't considered. Thanks! I've heard some people say that some lootbox games with secondary markets (I think CS GO?) are worse because it becomes more like actual, for cash, gambling.
It becomes exactly like actual gambling, but more tolerable because there's no obligation to participate in the gambling (as you could just use the secondary market), permits trading amongst friends and such and offers an avenue to recoup costs when exiting the game for good
Getting a full Hearthstone collection would cost probably around $1500 or so and has absolutely no way of being converted later on into anything else, except by wholesale selling of a blizzard account
I actually really interested to know what people consider the difference between Lootboxes and things like CCGs, Kind Eggs etc. This isn't a trolling question, I'm genuinely interested.
Well, for one, I can trade trading cards and other physical objects. Even if a card has no intrinsic value to me, I can at least theoretically exchange it. Most games with lootboxes do not allow this, nor is any in-game currency usually tradeable.
Although it may seem superficial, the dressing also plays a factor. There's not an explosion of lights and color when you open a pack of trading cards with visuals designed to excite the pleasure centers of your brain, tense in anticipation, where when you bust, your brain is primed for another dose of dopamine. This aspect is aggravating because it's one of those 'know it when you see it' things that's difficult to narrow down to exact parameters. There's a reason, however, that slot machines are designed the way they are, and why lootbox systems emulate them.
.
Actually, CCGs most definitely have a 'new card smell' when you open a pack, which in my mind has the same exact effect as the flashing colours, sounds and so forth that occur in the digital version.
Rosewater wasn't kidding about the addictive ink? Though I can't say I've really noticed anything with MtG packs... can check next time I draft (probably not this week because Xeno)
I found it noticeable in MtG, Pokemon, My Little Pony...
That card on foil scent as you opened it could give me goosebumps.
And I'm pretty certain I've seen reported that it's a manufactured scent that they apply into the pack to keep you opening them. This was in a context of 'we needed to iterate to get the smell perfect'.
A kinder egg isn't playing flashing lights and musical chords as you're opening it to mimic what a slot machine does.
Also, and this is just a personal experience now, whenever I got a kinder egg or gave one, I thought it was relatively clear the "big ticket" item here was the chocolate to eat, not the toy. The toy was just a simple bonus "oh and you can have this I guess to build as a time waster while you eat".
Also, is there some big market or desire for the cheap toy inside a kinder egg? Have the toys sharply risen in quality since I was a kid? They were the cheap simple plastic toy that would hold a 5 year old's attention at best. Anybody older is going to want a real toy.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
+5
Options
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Guys, Fable 2 is infamous in academic circles for developing abusive gambling behaviors in children ages 9-10 (apparently there are, like, a dozen solid statistical surveys with thousands of children over several years). It looks like there was an actual casino in that game that used in-game money, but apparently it (along with the original Pokemon's casino where you get Porygon) both have statistically strong correlations with increases in gambling later in life.
<_<
Pokemon's gambling was not proper chance though?
Like you would be able to consistently hit 777 by watching the tumblers and then you would keep picking different machines until you found one that didn't 'jostle' the last 7 off the winning line.
I suppose that sets up some sort of bad expectation that you can beat the house though.
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
An hour and 15 minutes into this this, and I'm far from an expert, but I suspect it is more the gamification of gambling behaviors than the inherent odds of the games themselves.
Game developers (and their financiers) are using tactics that casinos have used for a long time to keep people putting quarters in the slot.
Whether it's gambling or not isn't the issue- the problem is there's a lot of money to be made by psychologically manipulating people into continuing to spend money chasing dopamine squirts, unable to stop (withdrawal from this is a real thing).
This doesn't affect 90% of people that much- these fuckers prey on the small percent that are wired to compulsively respond by turning over all the money they can get their hands on.
Makes me think of the Borderlands 2 actual slot machines...
Those didn't take real money though!
BL series is a bit odd in that their actual game currency is nearly worthless
I think the slot machines are literally the most useful thing you can do with it.
Yup, they are. The stores quickly become useless (except maaaaybe selling you some rare ammo)
I am a hoarder in most games (I will microoptimize my loot in skyrim to less than a unit going through a dungeon) but in BL I barely even bother selling old weaapons
I stopped playing Guild Wars due to how they changed the PrettyPrettyPrincess mechanics. I played (in a large part) to have my custom outfit and color systems and played with the colorations probably as much as I played the actual goddamn game.
Then they changed it so to transmog/recolor items you needed a microtransaction item, which while plentiful did require grinding. Sensing how much money I was likely to spend to play with the customizer, I quit the week it came out.
Because fuck that shit. You don't give me a pretty princess game and then take away that mechanic behind a paywall. I will shout "Fuck Guild Wars II" for eternity because of that.
I know its from a few pages ago but GW2 hasn't been like that since the beginning. Dyes are unlocked account wide, so are outfits and armor pieces. While yes you do need a transmutation stone (or whatever it is called now) to change the physical look of an item, you can change colors as much as you want. I have close to 200 of them and I have never bought them ever, only have acquired them by playing the game. Of course if you are changing your outfit every day then yea I could see you running out.
Not an endorsement to for you to jump in, its a terrible terrible monkey on my shoulder and it eats time that I could be spent... playing other games
darkmayo on
Switch SW-6182-1526-0041
+1
Options
IlpalaJust this guy, y'knowTexasRegistered Userregular
<_<
Pokemon's gambling was not proper chance though?
Like you would be able to consistently hit 777 by watching the tumblers and then you would keep picking different machines until you found one that didn't 'jostle' the last 7 off the winning line.
I suppose that sets up some sort of bad expectation that you can beat the house though.
Yea, everyone knew that /s
Fuck, I didn't know that.
FF XIV - Qih'to Furishu (on Siren), Battle.Net - Ilpala#1975
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
Xenosaga's slot machine is probably the most skill based you could make the game
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I don't really understand why there wouldn't be a trading system or marketplace in a new game; I thought that has been a standard practice for like fifteen years.
Also, I quit playing D3 before the real money auction house (RMAH) was removed, but how does that fit into this discussion?
Xenosaga's slot machine is probably the most skill based you could make the game
Super Mario 2 (I think?) extra lives for skilled slot machine skills. I think I ended that game with 60ish lives...
I thought real slot machines worked like SMB2 for the longest time growing up... Then I actually saw one in real life as a teen and was very disappointed I couldnt use my perfect timing to get rich.
Honestly I think what bugs me about loot boxes is it's totally unnecessary. We've seen that Candy Crush and League of Legends can make billions of dollars by exploiting peoples need for rewards/cosmetics through microtransactions. It just adds a layer of obfuscation to the monetary value of the reward. It's like having the weirdest borderline unethical system to separate people from dollars by threading them through a system that allows you to stop thinking of it in terms of real currency and using funbucks wasn't quite evil enough...
This really is a situation where we can effect change by just not buying this stuff anymore. We'll lose some games but simply avoiding the casino, as a community, will work.
+12
Options
38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
I'm not sure what that would take to accomplish. I had a moment of weakness where I spent more than I wanted on a gacha mobile game and after turning my money into literal and digital garbage I swore off it forever. I'm worried what would have happened if I had gotten what I wanted. Since then I haven't put money into any similar systems but getting burned only works for some people. The backlash against ea is pretty big but I bet they already made a profit and will likely repeat. There was that story on how candy crush directly copied another game that was programmed to raise money for the guys sick parents if I recall correctly and that didn't impact candy crush very hard. What would rally enough people to make an impact on these companies and programmers making this stuff?
This really is a situation where we can effect change by just not buying this stuff anymore. We'll lose some games but simply avoiding the casino, as a community, will work.
That probably won't work. Flare ups like Battlefront will be forgotten soon enough. The only real answer is regulation.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
This really is a situation where we can effect change by just not buying this stuff anymore. We'll lose some games but simply avoiding the casino, as a community, will work.
As a temporary solution sure, but any social movement is never going to send any kind of permanent message. Methods will get tweaked, PR will change, they'll adjust only as much as they need to in order to obtain the same result with as little resistance as possible.
We're at a point in capitalism where you can never leverage enough as a consumer to force an industry to reinvent itself. Best you can hope for is they rebrand what they're already doing.
This really is a situation where we can effect change by just not buying this stuff anymore. We'll lose some games but simply avoiding the casino, as a community, will work.
That probably won't work. Flare ups like Battlefront will be forgotten soon enough. The only real answer is regulation.
We got here by buying the stuff. It's like this because we made it like this.
This really is a situation where we can effect change by just not buying this stuff anymore. We'll lose some games but simply avoiding the casino, as a community, will work.
I agree, but you can't treat someone as a free willed customer if they have a compulsive behavior issue. Especially if you start considering some of it is bordering on addiction. The hope that for example, people will one day just stop buying cigarettes.
I'm not sure what the solution is. If a solution is even something people care about.
Edit: I know way too many people who hate HATE buying micro-content and quality of life DLC... but they can either give up their hobby or suck it up.
This really is a situation where we can effect change by just not buying this stuff anymore. We'll lose some games but simply avoiding the casino, as a community, will work.
That probably won't work. Flare ups like Battlefront will be forgotten soon enough. The only real answer is regulation.
We got here by buying the stuff. It's like this because we made it like this.
This really is a situation where we can effect change by just not buying this stuff anymore. We'll lose some games but simply avoiding the casino, as a community, will work.
I agree, but you can't treat someone as a free willed customer if they have a compulsive behavior issue. Especially if you start considering some of it is bordering on addiction. The hope that for example, people will one day just stop buying cigarettes.
I'm not sure what the solution is. If a solution is even something people care about.
Edit: I know way too many people who hate HATE buying micro-content and quality of life DLC... but they can either give up their hobby or suck it up.
It's not like there aren't games without micro transactions
There are also numerous games with microtransactions that you can play with out buying the latest skin
Makes me think of the Borderlands 2 actual slot machines...
Those didn't take real money though!
BL series is a bit odd in that their actual game currency is nearly worthless
I think the slot machines are literally the most useful thing you can do with it.
That's not true at all. The most efficient way to farm legendaries was to check the vendors in the main city hub and possibly one or two other fast travel spots, then quit and restart. You needed cash for that.
Of course, this is just a different, more advanced form of gambling.
An hour and 15 minutes into this this, and I'm far from an expert, but I suspect it is more the gamification of gambling behaviors than the inherent odds of the games themselves.
So, getting far afield, but the slot machines in Pokemon have made me less likely to gamble, just because it taught me to pick up on the shit that the machines do to prevent a win.
When the screen blanked and your last slot didn't stop on a 7 it was time to switch to another slot.
And so now when there's that slight input delay on the STACK'EM machine that prevents a major prize, or the claw doesn't have any power to pick up the plush toy, that's not a call to put in another credit, that's a call to walk away.
And I expect the same happens on proper casino machines.
Posts
Actually, CCGs most definitely have a 'new card smell' when you open a pack, which in my mind has the same exact effect as the flashing colours, sounds and so forth that occur in the digital version.
Rosewater wasn't kidding about the addictive ink? Though I can't say I've really noticed anything with MtG packs... can check next time I draft (probably not this week because Xeno)
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
This seems a lot less like 'gambling' to me than companies finding artful ways to hide the true amount they are charging for their wares. In hearthstone for example (the microtrans game I'm currently most familiar with) I am sure we could assign a quite reliable dollar value to an entire expansion set. It would be a high number though, which is why blizzard essentially disguise it behind 'random' packs. If Battlefront gave you everything at the start but cost $6400 or whatever probably very few people would buy it, and so on.
So I'd be pretty comfortable with just requiring the lootbox 'formula' to be publicly available.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
They wouldn’t necessarily even have to be real money secondary markets. Just the ability to trade will create an economy. Or you could alternatively make unopened packs tradable or game currency tradable, so you could offer 25 boosters/funbux for a phrexian ubermencsh or whatever, that the seller could then open or trade.
I'm not going to claim to be an expert here, because psychology isn't my field (much less children's psychology). It is the field of several of my co-workers here at the university. I ran a library search over the last 15 minutes or so and found over 1,600 articles since 1922 on relations between trading cards (from baseball to pokemon cards) and impacts of children's psychological behavior. I found 127 peer reviewed studies published between now and 2016 alone, most of which seem to have the same issues of finding statistically significant correlations between gambling behaviors in games and negative psychological findings (from the handful of abstracts).
I don't know what sort of research you have done, but this has been a pretty well discussed topic. I know I've had discussions with our Psych faculty about it going back to 2007 when I was still deep into MtG's clutches. It was part of what helped me get out of it. It looks to be as well published as I have been led to believe by my coworkers.
Most prevalent is a trend in the early 1990s discussing a problem with a precursor to lootboxes, a type of arcade console called a 'fruit machine' in the Uk which were essentially slot machines targeted at children, which led to a crazy ton of data showing problems. Then Pokemon cards in the early 2000s, then again with cellphone games in the late 2000s, and most recently microtransactions in both tablet and console games.
It becomes exactly like actual gambling, but more tolerable because there's no obligation to participate in the gambling (as you could just use the secondary market), permits trading amongst friends and such and offers an avenue to recoup costs when exiting the game for good
Getting a full Hearthstone collection would cost probably around $1500 or so and has absolutely no way of being converted later on into anything else, except by wholesale selling of a blizzard account
I found it noticeable in MtG, Pokemon, My Little Pony...
That card on foil scent as you opened it could give me goosebumps.
And I'm pretty certain I've seen reported that it's a manufactured scent that they apply into the pack to keep you opening them. This was in a context of 'we needed to iterate to get the smell perfect'.
Also, and this is just a personal experience now, whenever I got a kinder egg or gave one, I thought it was relatively clear the "big ticket" item here was the chocolate to eat, not the toy. The toy was just a simple bonus "oh and you can have this I guess to build as a time waster while you eat".
Also, is there some big market or desire for the cheap toy inside a kinder egg? Have the toys sharply risen in quality since I was a kid? They were the cheap simple plastic toy that would hold a 5 year old's attention at best. Anybody older is going to want a real toy.
That's bonkers to me.
Pokemon's gambling was not proper chance though?
Like you would be able to consistently hit 777 by watching the tumblers and then you would keep picking different machines until you found one that didn't 'jostle' the last 7 off the winning line.
I suppose that sets up some sort of bad expectation that you can beat the house though.
Those didn't take real money though!
Game developers (and their financiers) are using tactics that casinos have used for a long time to keep people putting quarters in the slot.
Whether it's gambling or not isn't the issue- the problem is there's a lot of money to be made by psychologically manipulating people into continuing to spend money chasing dopamine squirts, unable to stop (withdrawal from this is a real thing).
This doesn't affect 90% of people that much- these fuckers prey on the small percent that are wired to compulsively respond by turning over all the money they can get their hands on.
It's creating and exploiting addicts.
I'm not sure RL slot machines would be better or worse if they occasionally threw live grenades at you.
That said the loot system is many RPGs, BL included, hits some of the same notes as gambling. Just less so.
BL series is a bit odd in that their actual game currency is nearly worthless
I think the slot machines are literally the most useful thing you can do with it.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Yup, they are. The stores quickly become useless (except maaaaybe selling you some rare ammo)
I am a hoarder in most games (I will microoptimize my loot in skyrim to less than a unit going through a dungeon) but in BL I barely even bother selling old weaapons
I know its from a few pages ago but GW2 hasn't been like that since the beginning. Dyes are unlocked account wide, so are outfits and armor pieces. While yes you do need a transmutation stone (or whatever it is called now) to change the physical look of an item, you can change colors as much as you want. I have close to 200 of them and I have never bought them ever, only have acquired them by playing the game. Of course if you are changing your outfit every day then yea I could see you running out.
Not an endorsement to for you to jump in, its a terrible terrible monkey on my shoulder and it eats time that I could be spent... playing other games
Yea, everyone knew that /s
Fuck, I didn't know that.
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Super Mario 2 (I think?) extra lives for skilled slot machine skills. I think I ended that game with 60ish lives...
That's right. Lobbyists.
Steam: pazython
Also, I quit playing D3 before the real money auction house (RMAH) was removed, but how does that fit into this discussion?
I thought real slot machines worked like SMB2 for the longest time growing up... Then I actually saw one in real life as a teen and was very disappointed I couldnt use my perfect timing to get rich.
That probably won't work. Flare ups like Battlefront will be forgotten soon enough. The only real answer is regulation.
As a temporary solution sure, but any social movement is never going to send any kind of permanent message. Methods will get tweaked, PR will change, they'll adjust only as much as they need to in order to obtain the same result with as little resistance as possible.
We're at a point in capitalism where you can never leverage enough as a consumer to force an industry to reinvent itself. Best you can hope for is they rebrand what they're already doing.
We got here by buying the stuff. It's like this because we made it like this.
Make it not like this.
I agree, but you can't treat someone as a free willed customer if they have a compulsive behavior issue. Especially if you start considering some of it is bordering on addiction. The hope that for example, people will one day just stop buying cigarettes.
I'm not sure what the solution is. If a solution is even something people care about.
Edit: I know way too many people who hate HATE buying micro-content and quality of life DLC... but they can either give up their hobby or suck it up.
Way ahead of you
It's not like there aren't games without micro transactions
There are also numerous games with microtransactions that you can play with out buying the latest skin
That's not true at all. The most efficient way to farm legendaries was to check the vendors in the main city hub and possibly one or two other fast travel spots, then quit and restart. You needed cash for that.
Of course, this is just a different, more advanced form of gambling.
You should charge them 25 SOTARbucks for every time they need to boil something
No they have to buy booster packs and get the card that lets them use it for 2 hours. Each pack is 5 bucks.
When the screen blanked and your last slot didn't stop on a 7 it was time to switch to another slot.
And so now when there's that slight input delay on the STACK'EM machine that prevents a major prize, or the claw doesn't have any power to pick up the plush toy, that's not a call to put in another credit, that's a call to walk away.
And I expect the same happens on proper casino machines.