An article from Atlas Obscura about claw machine games:
My main continued point of curiosity: these claw machine shops never seem all that popular to me. Is it just a late night thing, and I’m never around late at night? I have no doubt there’s a craze for opening the places - but I’ve seen very little evidence of a craze for people actually going to them.
Yeah, me too; I’ve never seen more than a couple of people inside, even when I’ve driven by late at night.
I dunno, maybe the random guy that dumps his kid’s tuition into the machines is all it takes to make the places profitable?
I think they depend on the one addict in a hundred people principle just like you said…
There’s a high density of population here.
Most Taiwanese I know are really just the “make money at any cost” type of person.
If there weren’t laws against selling drugs they would do it.
Never met any Taiwanese who did something because they love it even if they could be making more money doing something else.
I think it was Warren Buffet who explained that when he was young, he dreamed up squemes to become a millionaire and one of them, based on the principle of compound interest, was weight machines. You know, the ones where you put a coin and it tells you your weight. So he calculated how many machines he would need to have one million the fastest.
You would do that with the last coin in your pocket.
Possibly used for money laundering?
That remains my guess (and it’s been discussed quite a bit way upthread). Based on how empty the shops seem to be, it just doesn’t make sense that they’re lucrative otherwise, unless the profits from the tiny minority of gambling addicts are insanely high.
It’s possible I watched two guys shove over $1,000 in two machines in less than 30 minutes one night waiting for a friend.
A two-year addiction to claw machines has landed a man in Changhua County’s Tianjhong Township (田中) with a NT$150,000 monthly salary repairing the games.
Not the only thing that’s used for laundering money.
“Winning a prize comes down to “whether or not you understand this machine’s personality,” Wu said, adding that he typically can determine whether a machine is “worth playing” after 40 to 50 tries.” … so, that’s 500 NT$ to decide if you’re gone win or lose your money?
“Now, Wu earns NT$150,000 a month tuning (read: manipulate) and repairing claw machines.”
The claw machine arcades are a great place to park your scooter and hook up to the available and free electrical outlets. That’s the way to do it!
It’s like how the casinos hire card counters and cheats.
How’s that game called? Grab the pussy?
Eh there is a law against putting living things in those contraptions. And I mean the kitty.
I was going to say I’ve never seen them turn over the unused tiles before.
It seems obvious that no one is regulating this.
Actually it seems many things are either unregulated or under regulated here including buxibans and food safety
Taiwan is changing but some issues seem to be more difficult than others to change
Yeah I always feel like these places are ghost towns whenever I walk by or even toss a couple coins at them, even late at night. I am sure if the police figured out a way to track how much money went into each machine at a location, and compared that number to the amount of money that location is claiming to make, there would likely be huge discrepancies. Definitely a thinly-veiled front, but I don’t think the authorities care enough to do anything about it. That, or a darker theory that I doubt is true.
