How To Win At Claw Machines? | Talking Point | Full Episode

foreign how much did she say you gave me 50 divided by three that's about 16 tries can you tell the claws are so soft there's no way I'm going to be able to get it [Music] producer on burning through your cash [Music] if the claw grip actually grips the toy it makes me feel so hopeful I thought that I would be able to wrap the claws around once but it was filled up [Music] I'm actually sweating [Music] call my cash one two three games four games five games I've got six tries left sweetheart aren't you so proud of Mama I think my daughter trained me good job okay I'm done I can't believe I actually managed to catch one and I didn't even have a strategy so was it just a lucky break or with the right skills I could actually win all the plushies I could ever want there is no data to answer my question so I've devised a plan I'm going to organize what I presume is Singapore's first ever expert versus amateur claw machine tournament but before I kick things off a quick check-in with someone who is an expert on statistics and probability is it possible to estimate the winning probability of the newbies versus the skilled players yes it is possible as long as you have enough like players playing it and play it a lot then you keep recordings of their plays so here's my plan I have five newbies and five skilled players and the plan is for them to play 20 rounds each consecutively how does that sound pretty sufficient I would say what are the specific data points I should be collecting it's important to record the turnouts it means like so let's say you have 20 players for each players right so you want to know like when do they have Dwayne instead of just having the total number of black wings in the end yeah oh so what you're saying is that I need to know exactly which round they play that they managed to win yeah how is that important I guess that's important for the Newbie players because like maybe you will see that in the beginning let's say the first 10 round they don't have wings but then they learn some things through the process and then they start winning for the next 10 Rounds yeah ah okay got it uh so what you're saying is that if a newbie comes in and wins on the first round there's a good chance that it's due to luck what else should I take note of so I think like first the machine should be entry level so the New Year players should be able to play and also let all the players play the same machine because I guess like different machine would have different winning probability so you want to rule out that you know Factor with the parameters of the experiment set it's time to meet our competitors players were recommended from within the chlorine community and to seek out the newbies I put out a call on Instagram these are my claw machine novices [Music] and here are my claw machine experts who have a combined 25 years of playing experience between them [Music] 10 of them will be playing on this machine that's commonly found across arcades okay guys welcome to the challenge so here are the ground rules each player will be playing 20 rounds back to back in the interest of fairness we will only be using one machine so all of you will be playing one machine and to level the playing field each machine will be topped up when someone wins a prize maybe the yellow one in the center for me the white one easy really great one at the back I want them but the more important question is do hello [Music] get ready [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] two hours 200 tokens and a haul of 17 plush toys I've recorded all the data who won and which round and I'm bringing this back to Prof sin so Prof what do the results tell you each role is responding the wingnings from each player so we put into two groups we have the new B group we have the pro players first if you count the numbers they're only five Wings in total of like 100 players for the Newbie players whereas you have 12 wins for all the plow players so we plug in numbers number of wings in the first group is five and the number of like place is like five people times 20 so in total it's a hundred so it will be five percent and then for the second group they're in total 12 wins and then again the number of places and it's 100 so it'll be like twelve percent yeah again like these numbers are just estimators if you wanted to be more accurate the way you do it is build up these confidence intervals so here we plug in the number where n is uh 100 and if you do the math this will give us like the winning probability of the Newbie players will be 0.8 percent to nine point two percent where the skillful or Pro players their winning probability is roughly six percent to 18 percent the pro player definitely half of edge over D UB players definitely you can there's some skill involved in this plays so am I right to say that if I'm a complete newbie to claw machine I will have a 0.8 to maybe even close to 10 chance of winning something yeah well the 10 is really the upper bound which is like wishful thinking you know but even for the pro players like the winning purple is roughly six percent to 18 so it's not really a high probability so meaning there's a lot of luck it's I would say that game is more about luck than skill although there's definitely a skill you know involvement but the luck well decides more our little experiment shows that luck plays a huge role in winning a prize no wonder I won a plushie earlier clearly I was lucky but since the probability of winning is higher if you have the right skills I want to know what these skills are I'm going to show you the number type technique [Music] before I find out what kind of skills are needed to win at a claw machine I first want to know [Music] how exactly are claw machines constructed what is going on inside them to find out I've rented my very own claw machine and I'm going to break it down [Music] well not me personally but I've invited a couple of experts who will be doing this with a little more finesse first up we have claw machine technician Thomas Teo this is the motherboard this is the brain of the machine to control everything the cross rank the cross speed every single thing all these are the other cable control every single thing that you do and miss the sensor the sensor will trigger the machine there are some lighting in fact some sound will make it more funny and happy so what are the settings that you can adjust basically a lot example the the cost rate of the machine and the crane can move left right and also can back and forwards okay okay next this is the maximum speed you can see the speeds fast oh goodness okay I'm going to show you the slower [Music] [Music] can you see a difference this is slower you can adjust the speed of the crane why do you do that okay basically to adjust the crane speed it depends on the item if I adjust too slow you feel bored because this is traveling too slow if it's too fast to be overshoot and it's not precise for you to have a fun gameplay so you need to adjust the crane speech at such a sweet spot yes that it is just right for the player yes how do you decide that I will play around a few times to feel that okay here's the feeling is right for the machine itself the setting of the default setting is for those small plush if some of the machine they want to have some big price and and some parts are too bulky so we need to set the setting equally to have fun and have a fair game throughout the the whole entire machine okay this is interesting because it's the first time that I'm hearing that you are manipulating the machine to make the play fairer for me but in a way I get it because there are really a variety of prices out there please my second guest has been involved in the packaging design of different types of consumer electronics would you say that these machines are designed to entice people to keep coming back these machines are designed in a way that let's say for example if you walk past any mall or what they would entice you with that low cost like one token that you can actually win a price for external Design Elements right and then you have this lights mesmerizing right really call out to you can you psychology of it yeah this story which is called near mystery when you are close to winning right kind of like motivate someone to play keep on calling you to come back again and play because human itself right we have this tendency to see closure so you know you want it you keep on going for it what differentiates claw machines from other arcade games arcade games such as the pinball or such as the driving right it's based on objective where let's say the gameplay mechanics is not right the highest score you need to clear certain stages where else in this machine the real world is very immediate let's try the game itself looks quite okay right let's go slightly and just hit the button ready let's go find another token yeah [Music] The Craze for Claus has seen over 20 dedicated arcades with over a thousand of these machines pop up all over Singapore so much so that even this former construction project manager has spun his love for claw machines into a business there are more and more operators in the claw machine business how do you beat the competition my concept I actually have this idea from Taiwan in Taiwan they have all these type of chrome machine I want to cater for every customer because some of them just want to play plushie which I also have and some they will take on more challenging machines I also have my prices have to be the latest and the rarest so customers are being attracted and Drawn to my shop those prices being won we actually are post on social media to let them know that we actually have the latest prices we want in the shower my prizes they are more value and they're more rare foreign what is your most expensive price easily it will go up to 70 80 depending on the royalty of the figuring itself do you have a lot of people winning your 70 price it depends on how skillful you are so if you're skillful enough then I lose up but if you are not good and we know what does it take to be skillful at a claw machine today I'm turning to a couple of claw coaches so that I can learn some Pro moves Gideon Ong and Robbie young are dedicated flowers and I'm here to catch a very big chicken wing but there's only one let's go come on and they've turned their passion into viral content for their over 3 000 subscribers on Tick Tock to date how much do you think you've spent on claw machines I believe I spent over a thousand dollars on call machine what about you Gideon well easily two two thousand what exactly do you enjoy about claw machines it is a very thrilling game to play you know like you you're potentially able to get the price for a lower value then it might actually cost out there I'm going to show you the double type technique [Music] right so put a call where you want it to be you tap the first time second time it stops the claw and it closes the the call it shuts the claw so that's how we do it missed it here it is [Music] all right so for the shift technique [Music] we have to catch the edge of the soft toy so when the the toy dropped eventually it will shift forward nearly to the truth we will try to get the H which is the head of this soft toy yeah and it will slowly move to the payout shoot so basically I've shifted the toys to a favorable position and I can eventually get a toy to come out of the shoot in addition to the tips that I share with you importantly we also have to learn how to spot opportunities so we move to this segment you can see actually this yellow soft toy is very near the truth and it's just by the age so we can actually just pick it up and it have a very high tendency of getting it out but even with skills and luck on my side will I always be at a disadvantage because the claw machines may just be great industry is secret now let's go there [Music] we are at play United Tampines 1 Southeast Asia's largest claw machine arcade with over 100 machines Gideon and Robbie have one last technique to share with me [Music] so normally say let's assume this is the truth okay here's the price you want so if you go straight down pick it up it just comes up and just drop straight down okay it drops straight down to the same position but if you swing first of all you have an offset a little bit towards the Tilt side so when you swing you time it well it drops the claw it catches the toy while it was swing back yes and it will swing back and drop it into the tube and that's the whole idea of it okay that makes so much more sense Shifting the controller up and down really fast can make the claw swing violently [Music] Theory sounds very good let's see what happens with the practice so you swing left and right away no you're gonna do it fast enough oh so like this yeah so when the call is there all the way there no you almost [Music] so let me show you [Music] it takes a little bit of trial and error so you have a slight offset towards the true side and that's a bad one let me try again hahaha a little bit of offset Swing Swing Swing [Music] oh there we go there we go you are good well done I've picked up some claw machine skills but even with luck and skills are claw machines rigged to disadvantage me I am meeting someone who created an app that lets you play claw machines live from anywhere in the world every time someone fails at a game we will say that the machine is rigged what would you say to that let's put it another way when I set a machine my number one objective is not whether it's easy or difficult my number one objective is to make it fun some people like a better challenge some people like a easier game so when we set the machine right you have to be set in a way where as a player when I play it you have to be fun okay so what I'm hearing is that when it becomes too easy you will tweak the difficulty so that it is more challenging for the player example string of the clock one two forty five so it's not that complicated we just need to make a little tweak a little adjustments and then the player may find some another refreshing experience when they play this same particular machine okay is that very um is like a it's like a game where we are trying to get better at the game it's a gameplay it's a Scale based gameplay a very claw machine operators who break the machines so as to disadvantage the players yeah they're definitely okay first of all what do they do um industry is secret now let's go go let's go there there are machine where you see the price they will do it so when you walk past as a machine like you will say hey it's gonna drop out soon but there's actually very heavy weight inside this bottom part what what other tricks of the trick come tell me this is one that I saw back then quite a while ago I saw some people doing the machines are set in a way that is unfair for the players is example there's a block here let's see right okay so some of the machines right this piece of block they are set very high plus the halfway point so once you pass the halfway point of the base it's very hard for the price to come up when you say back then to your knowledge does it mean that like such brigging is less common now compared to life so why uh because I think the competition is getting more uh it's very more competitive so after a while people realize that when you do such a thing people start to feel that it's not worth it in the long term you will just lose customer [Music] so after all this do I think claw machines are right I think rich is a very strong word and most claw machine operators are not being manipulative or dishonest when they adjust their settings rather they are trying to strike a balance between providing a challenging game giving out wins and keeping their businesses afloat so the next time you drop in a token and start maneuvering those controls remember have fun maybe work out some techniques and if you don't win well that's all part of the game too [Music]

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 232,405

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Id: VNQ0LOXfvdY

Length: 22min 37sec (1357 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 25 2023