There’s no doubt that the “pay-to-win” model used in modern games pretty much sucks from top to bottom, but gaming started out in arcades where, if you put in enough tokens, it was possible to reach the end of most games, though perhaps not get the high score.
While the point was indeed to get as much money from you as possible, arcade games went about it in a way that was hard to hate, so here’s why these “pay-to-win” game systems still captured hearts and minds.
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You Paid to Try Again, Not Skip Ahead
In modern pay-to-win (P2W) games you are generally paying for an advantage in the game, such as overpowered gear, or you”re paying to skip the “grind” of earning experience or in-game currency the hard way. This means that you can skip ahead of the crowd who don’t want to pay their way. This also incentivizes the game developers to make that grind particularly long and unpleasant!
In an arcade game, the only thing that money buys you is another chance to play. Sure, if you pour enough quarters into the machine, then you can progress by the inch to the end, but no amount of money will let you get ahead without being able to play well.
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Better Players Pay Less
Arcade games reward good players by costing less. A talented player can get everything out of a game for a single credit, though, of course, it costs money to become good enough to reach that level! Players famously became so good at some games, that arcade owners weren’t making any money.
Some games had adjustable difficulty for when earnings started to drop, but to revitalize games we got third-party mods like Super Missile Command to change the game without having to buy a whole new game with different levels and challenges. There’s actually a fascinating story behind these mods, and how it led to one of the most successful arcade games of all time: Ms. Pac-Man.
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High Scores and Leaderboards Were a True Meritocracy
While you could pay more and more tokens to eventually see the credits roll, not all arcade games were designed with an “ending”. In fact, early games were high-score based, and kept going until you hit the “kill screen”, which is when the game is pushed so far by a skilled player that something goes wrong in the code (usually a number getting higher than possible) and the game crashes.
Even for games that can be beaten just by pouring in more quarters, getting a high score depends on good gameplay using things like sustained score multipliers or pulling off hard combos. So, being on the leaderboard isn’t something you can just buy with money. After all, getting the right to make rude words with the three letters you get to provide is priceless.
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Cash for Gameplay, Not Cheating Digital Items
The last thing that these arcade things did better was charging you money for more gameplay. If you paid money, you get to play more of the game. It seems simple, but many games today, even supposed single-player games that you pay for once and can play at your own pace, offer you ways to make the game easier or skip the grind by spending more money.
There are few things in gaming that are as ridiculous to me as the idea that you’d pay more for a game so you can play it less. Especially since the game developer is incentivized to make the game more grindy or unpleasant to play, in the hope that you’ll drop a few bucks on a “time saver”. It’s one of the reasons modern games are so pointlessly bloated with busywork these days.
Sadly, arcades are all but dead today, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate what they did right during the heydays of gaming. You can still play almost all of these games today, but you’ll find they’re at their best when you impose a credit limit on yourself.
8Bitdo Arcade Stick for Switch
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