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psychodelephant t1_j02jwhk wrote

Reply to comment by AndarianDequer in Infinite lives: the company saving old arcade machines by diacewrb

Looking back (I was an 80s kid), it’s probably good that they cost a quarter. It slowed us down, made us really focus and prevented binge playing which is a critical consideration. Once Nintendo arrived on the scene, the binge playing lifestyle also arrived and it has only gotten worse. Some people can handle. I watched two guys in the dorms get kicked out of school (one for Starcraft addiction, the other N64 in general). It has enormously changed society, good and bad.

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IgnoreMe304 t1_j04yepb wrote

Grand Theft Auto Vice City almost got me flunked out my freshman year.

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detectiveDollar t1_j0mr5wf wrote

I disagree, arcades were far more expensive per hour for the vast majority of people ("Just one more quarter and I'll win"), even at prices of games back then. They were also much more addictive, consisting of short simple challenges and playthroughs but with a high difficulty curved. They were 100% engineered to get a player addicted.

With today's prices you can buy an average game on sale for like 30 attempts (25 cents is the 80's is nearly a dollar today).

You could easily bankrupt yourself from it, hell there's even a SpongeBob episode about it.

Also once you had the ability to save, you could turn it off and walk away without losing your current attempt.

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