Been to a carnival? Good. Now, if you felt carnival games are a little scammy. Well, the good news is, you are not wrong. I mean, seriously, you didn’t think that could have it this easy, did you? Paying some loose change and you’d get guarantee yourself a big-ass plushy to impress your girl? That would be too easy. Usually you had to drop more than a few loose coins because the truth is, it will take more than a few times to actually ‘win’ – that’s if you even can win. And the event that you did win, you’d be overpaying for the perceived “expensive” plushy.
More often than not, those plushies cost just a few cents each with the biggest item probably only costing nothing more than a few dollars. But the journey of you getting it would have cost lot more than that. But hey, if you are trying to impress a date, perhaps it is consider a small price to pay. Anyways, as multidisciplinary YouTuber Mark Rober found out, those games are deliberately designed to reduce the chance of you winning. Mark, with some help from his friends, spent an entire day at a small carnival to study the statistic of the gameplay of the various games, noting down how times each game has been played and the odds of winning.
Armed with the data, he grouped typical carnival games into three categories: random chances game, skill based games and near-impossible games which he also described as “borderline scams.” Whoa. That’s kind of harsh, but then again, we shouldn’t be surprise if it really is scammy. Random chances game is basically roll a dice game where luck is the key of you winning or not. Skill based games, like hitting milk bottles, requires some form of skills, and finally, near-impossible games are games that are, well, are near-impossible to win. Duh.
Whatever the group the games fall in, one thing for sure is, they are all deliberately designed to reduce your odds of winning. In other words, the games are tweaked to disadvantage players. The ‘tweaks’ can be so subtle that you won’t take notice and it may involve using super light materials so that a ring, for example, would easily bounce off the glass jugs, or weighted milk bottles so that they more difficult to topple. Even seemingly straightforward games, such as basketball, have hidden “secret” that makes it a tad little harder for you to own.
Anywho, we suggest you check out the video below and learn the entire tricks carnival operators have been pulling all these while.
via YouTube.
