Carnival Games

Hello Everybody!

Welcome back! How are you doing? Do you feel well? Are you ready for the end of the week? Because we are! Today’s blog post is going to be a fun one! It’s about carnival games and the science behind them!

Have you ever been to a Carnival or a State Fair? Any place where they have games you can win prizes like plush animals or cool toys? You have to pay to enter, which we think is just atrocious, but surely you’ve tried your hardest at winning one of those coveted prizes!? Did you know that the odds of you winning are stacked against you, even before your first try? Well follow through with us for a few minutes and we’ll find out together! Through our research we came across this video that we thought already did a perfect job of exposing the way Carnival ‘shenanigans’ run and operate – identifying which games you are more likely to win and which games where it is nearly impossible to succeed. It’s a video by the popular Youtuber, Mark Rober!

We came across a video he did about the carnival and we thought it was perfect! He did such a good job of putting the video together, we thought we’d share it here and also discuss! Give the video a watch (below), and let us know what you think in the comment section below!

Mark goes about things very scientifically and methodically, in all of his videos – we love it! He boils stuff down and moves through every part in a very simple way, being sure to explain everything to its full extent. And for this carnival video, it was no different – so let’s dive in! Mark started with identifying the 3 different types of games that you might find at a carnival. He classified them based on how you would win each game. They are as follows:

1. Random Chance Games
2. Skill Based Games
3. Near Impossible Games

Random Chance Games

Random Chance games were simple games designed to make you think that you had a fair chance at winning a prize. From your perspective, you might think you even had a better chance than most, bringing enough skill to the table – when in reality the odds are very highly stacked against you from the start.

One of the games which we’ll call the object toss – requires you to throw an object of a certian shape to land in a bucket or cup or bottle head of some sort.

Now the given odds of you making it into one of the colored cups should be the number of colored cups over how many total cups there are – a standard percentage.

However, what we find is that the balls or objects that you are throwing to try and get into the colored cups are DESIGNED to be very bouncy and lightweight. So much so, that it becomes statistically more unlikely that you will make it into a colored cup because the ball will never stay where it lands – it will always rebound and end up somewhere else.

Skill Based Games

The second group were Skill Based Games; these were games that were primarily based on only skill to win, with no varying level of randomized chance involved.
As seen in the video – the basketball hoop game is an example he gives of a game in this category. Before you even step up to make a basket – there are some small differences that make a big deal to whether you’ll make a basket or not. Mark pointed out that the distance from the free throw line and the height of the basket were different from what you are used to at the standard basketball court.

This difference will cause you to overestimate your chances of succeeding, as your perception is skewed believing that because it’s a ‘standard’ basketball court and something you might be familiar with – you will perform like you have in the past. When in reality, it’s a different experience altogether!

Near Impossible Games

The third group was a category of games that were practically designed to be impossible and Mark calls them himself, “practically scams”. And as far as we’re concerned, there were pretty much two games that perfectly fit into this category. One of them was the ring-to-bottle toss, where the player would through a small plastic ring and try to land it over the head of a glass bottle – AND have it stay. The catch is, the plastic rings were SUPER light and bouncy and the diameter of the hole in the plastic ring was juuusssttt barely bigger than the diameter of the glass bottle head. Thus, it made it nearly impossible for the player to land a ring on a glass bottle head, much less, have it stay there so they could win a prize.

The second game that was practically impossible to win because it would take an extremely high level of skill is – the ladder climb.

The ladder climb is a very well designed example of how the carnival will make money off of the contestants in the game overestimate their chances of success. Because it has the ladder shape, your mind assumes that you can climb it easily – but what you don’t know is that because the end points of the ladder taper off to a single point – the game is actually no different from crawling upward on an incline (which make your chances worse), on a tightrope… Mark does a good job explaining this – check out the time stamp 6:55 to 9:15.

Well… what do you think? Pretty cool stuff right? It’s amazing how even in a place where you are supposed to have fun and a good time, the carnival is still intent on making its money from you the unknowing participant. We hope this video was eye opening for you as it was for us – giving you a little peep into the circus show going on behind the curtains.

We’d like to thank Mark Rober for putting together such an exquisitely well made video, as he does on a regular basis! If you were impressed too, be sure to check out his Youtube profile as he has TONS more cool videos! Link’s below.

https://www.youtube.com/c/MarkRober

Thanks for stopping by this week, for a munchy mind morsel! This is your family friendly Free Play Lotto signing off!

Until Next Time!

– The Free Play Lotto Team!

Source:
1. https://www.youtube.com/c/MarkRober/about