Is Chuck E Cheese A Form of Gambling?

[Blue_Blistering_Barnacle]

@mistymage

Back in the days when pinball machines were considered gambling machines it was because they actually did pay out. I have an ancient non-working Sunshine Derby pinball machine that ran on a small car battery, has a plunger but no flippers and on the side it has a spot that swings out where your winnings would accumulate. It still had tokens in it.

http://mistymage.com/Family/pinball/pin1.jpg http://mistymage.com/Family/pinball/pin2.jpg

http://mistymage.com/Family/pinball/pin5.jpg

Way cool!

[Joey_P]

@BigT

One example I seem to remember are the coin pushers. Those are just gambling–there’s no skill involved. I remember a game at my local pizza arcade that was about rolling a coin on an exact spot. The way it played, it seemed a lot more like gambling than any skill game.

That’s a game of skill. Granted, it’s hard to get anywhere with it and they use tricks to make it even more difficult, but since you can aim where you roll the coin to and stop/start the pusher, that’s different than, say, a slot machine where you just push a button and have no way to influence what happens.
Like a grabber, the majority of people never get anything with them, but it’s still a game of skill (even if it’s rigged to make sure you barely get anything). I have a friend that’s oddly good at them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her not get something out of those machines. I recall watching her play 4 times in a row once, she got 5 prizes. She got something each time and on one of the plays she snagged two things.

I also vaguely remember a tic-tac-toe game. That was probably more like gambling, since it was just random whether the computer would let you win.

Even if the computer was random, it would require skill on your end. Unless you could close your eyes and have the same win/lose ratio as when you were actually trying, it’s not a luck based game.

[Melbourne]

@Jinx

Nothing against kids’ games, but I wonder… Why lawmakers do not see these games of chance as a form of gambling? You may say tokens are used in place of money, but money purchases the tokens. (It’s a kiddie form of money laundering!) Is it because the stakes are small? And yet, they saw pinball as a form of gambling (in some States) WITHOUT any prizes or monetary gain! So, I am confused. Is there any logic to all this?

Apart from the fact that pinball machines were used as the basis of gambling, with prizes and monetary gain, the NYC crackdown on pinball machines was apparently because the mayor thought those kiddie games like in Chuck E Cheese were a form of vice and a ripoff.

So the modern version would have been illegal for that reason, and is legal because pinball machines have been legalized.