I tried to profit at an arcade

you remember the first time you ever went to an arcade and you saw all the incredible life-changing prizes available and your mind started running wild with possibilities [ __ ] all right i'll take the electric guitar the skateboard the playstation 2 a thousand tootsie rolls that stuffed animal that's taller than me hey toots would you mind wrapping them up in plastic for me i wet the bed and then two hours and 47 later you realize you've only earned enough tickets to buy one whoopee cushion well not to brag or anything but i'm old as [ __ ] now and i'm pretty good at games or at least better than i used to be so for this video i decided to test out an idea that i've wanted to do basically my whole life i want to find out if you can profit at an arcade if i just play the one game i'm best at over and over and over again can i ultimately earn a prize that's worth more than the amount of money that i spent on the tokens i didn't need to say all that you read the title you know what i'm gonna do so i headed to the second most touristy part of orlando florida to a place called main event which is somewhere in between dave and busters and chuck e cheese in spirit i should say geographically speaking dave and busters is in the middle this place has everything bowling laser tag a weird obstacle course hanging from the ceiling but i don't have time for any of that right now the reason i dragged my wife here at 3 p. m on a friday is to figure out the most efficient game to play and the best prize to buy now this isn't like the old days anymore where you gotta lug around a 75 pound bucket of tokens the first thing you do here is preload cash onto a fun card which holds all of your credits and then also the points you earn from the game and i gotta say i immediately got overwhelmed from the onslaught of numbers okay so 200 credits is 40 or not 40 dollars it's 35 and 300 credits should be quite frankly 60 but it's not it's only fifth and everyone keeps saying that 500 credits cost a hundred dollars it doesn't it's only 75 you save 25 when you buy that which you can use to buy 140 credits which is actually 28 and plus i don't know what any of that means if i buy this one does that mean i can play 200 games now most games cost anywhere between 7. 5 and 8.

5 credits which are such confusing numbers to keep track of why even include a decimal at all who thought of this the last time i came here in 2019 i remember each machine just telling you how much it cost in terms of dollars but if i had to guess i'd say they changed it to be purposely confusing so you don't realize how much money you're actually blowing through with every passing game it's kind of like how if i saw a fortnight skin that said this costs 20 i would be like hell no i'm not spending 20 on this i'm gonna buy 20 dollars worth of v bucks because then the costume is free as with most arcades there are pretty much three types of games here there are the fun ones like basketball connect four air hockey flappy bird but big typically these are the ones you earn the least amount of points for playing but if you're just here to have a good time that doesn't matter then there's the luck based games which can in theory earn you a whole bunch of tickets but you have no control over that because it's essentially just a giant slot machine with spongebob on it and then lastly there are skill based games where technically you could earn the jackpot every time the only thing stopping you from doing so is your own ability the only downside is they're usually tedious and stressful and the least fun options out of all the games in the arcade so in other words they're perfect for this video let me tell you i was ecstatic when i walked in and saw that they still had this ball cup game this is the machine i had in mind when i was planning this video because i used to abuse the hell out of this while the rest of my friends were playing skee-ball and enjoying themselves i was just standing on this machine for one whole hour hoping to earn the best prize out of the group see i was playing the long game sure maybe you guys had more fun that night because you got to play mario olympics and vin diesel simulator but i get to have this forever so who actually came out on top anyways back to the ball game so the goal with this is to get all 50 balls into these spinning cups without losing any of them and you have to do so before time runs out you really got to try to be perfect with this one because the difference between getting 49 balls and getting all 50 is massive but once you get the rhythm down it's possible to start stacking jackpots and become the queen of the arcade when i started out though i was blowing through tries so fast i'd started sweating immediately i got very tense and nervous i think the pressure of the video was mounting on me and every time i would be just one ball away from the jackpot the disappointment and frustration would hit me like a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers they both weigh the same but i managed to calm myself down gain my composure and on my tenth try i did it give me that jackpot baby that'll be 711 points please i love you now now i just gotta stand here for four minutes while the machine counts up all my points one at a time for some reason why does this take so long is there a little guy in there trying to count em up by hand just use a calculator dude it's like they're trying to discourage you from winning the jackpots by making them inconvenient well while we're waiting for that i do just want to say unironically i was so relieved when i won this i think i had built this video up so much in my head over the past couple years and i just felt it all falling apart before my eyes when i started losing again and again and again i started to freak out and think did they make the game harder or worse am i just dumb now am i gonna have to go to chuck e cheese they'll never let me in there i'm almost 30. hey my points are done with the satisfaction of one that's right a single win in my belt i decided to just enjoy the rest of my night with amanda knowing i was gonna have to come here by myself later in the week anyway we went bowling for the first time in about five years which reminded me that i am possibly the worst bowler in the entire world including babies i think a baby would do better than i did the second game though i was like wait who are we trying to fool by doing regular mode let me just throw the bumpers up and then we'll have way more fun just kidding i sucked at that too then we ate dinner which was um it was fine there's just something about cubed meat that makes me feel like i'm being given my rations for the day when we were done eating i decided to try out a few other games but i quickly came to the conclusion that nothing was going to be as productive or efficient as quickdraw i should probably talk about the prizes because that's the other thing i have to figure out the single most expensive item in here is for some reason a minion named turbo day just below that are some random kitchen appliances some extremely cheap looking electronics you know the kind of headphones you buy for three dollars at a cvs checkout line and they stop working before you even make it back to your car there's a bunch of vlogging and podcasting gear then they've got a few plushies which range from among us to terrifying a fake wad of gum you know for pranks and then finally a whole bunch of candy that you throw in when you don't have very many points left i always find it interesting to see how they price these things because it's not like there's a one-to-one ratio of points to dollars i i don't think that the minion on a hoverboard is worth 14 marvel mugs or 400 blow pops but i'm not in charge of an arcade all right babe let's see that hole that's just what amanda got with her uh entree and tickets i found out you can save your points for up to five years um i don't think i'm gonna be saving them that long but i am gonna come back in a couple days i've got about 1700 points stocked up 37 in i believe so yeah not off to a great start in terms of profiting but i may have discovered a loophole you see anytime you buy something at main event they give you the option to fill out a survey on their website in exchange for a free 30-minute game card if i could stand on this machine for 30 straight minutes i could win thousands of tickets without having to spend even one more dollar it's the perfect plan so i headed back to the second most touristy part of orlando and i swiped my card again and i dropped those balls and um turns out you don't actually get any points from the free plays so twas not the perfect plan but i still had fun not that that matters for this video i did get to play possibly the funniest game of dealer no deal in its entire history obviously i couldn't risk ending up with only one ticket so i decided to accept his offer of one ticket anyway after farting around for half an hour i decided to just suck it up spend another 35 dollars and i headed back to my favorite stress game took me a few tries to get back into the swing of things but on my fifth game i won the jackpot then three games later i won it again and two games later i won it again and at this point no one could stop me i won twice in a row then three times then four times before capping my streak off at five consecutive jackpots if this isn't poggers then i don't know what is uh grandma if you're watching this poggers is a gaming term for when someone does a good job so can you tell grandpa too also do you like how nervous i look filming all of these shots i felt like the biggest idiot every time i picked up my phone to record myself winning this stupid game the thought of someone watching me be proud of this is so embarrassing just looking at me from across the room like does this guy have a job it's wednesday go home well sorry to break it to you person i made up in my head but this is my job now the arcade is my office and i'm gonna give myself a rage just when i could feel myself starting to get a little bit too cocky the universe sent another obstacle my way maximum payout so now i'm getting punished for being too good at the game at this point i'm pissed at least warn me ahead of time when i'm getting close like hey you might want to slow down there big guy this machine's almost empty also what you ran out of virtual tickets just make more of them i thought about it and i think this might be why they count up your points so slowly so that by the time they've arbitrarily decided to stop giving you points you've already spent eight more dollars on the machine all for nothing i even had to watch them count up my unawarded tickets one by one and at this point you're just taunting me anyway when the dust finally settled i had lost about one and a half jackpots very upsetting not gonna lie but i don't think this completely ruins my plan i'm pretty sure this is only a temporary limit i think it's just there to keep you from hogging one machine during peak hours which is fair by the way if i had a line of kids behind me waiting for their turn and i was just like sorry i'm making a video that would be pretty selfish but i came here in the middle of a school day and there was neri a child in sight since i wasn't sure if i'd ever have this many points at once again i decided to cash out on day two and buy myself the hot dog toaster i had my eyes on from the moment i walked in the room now i'm not sure i would say that this is the best day of my life but it's definitely in the top five i actually feel kind of bad because i had to get one of the employees to not only grab a ladder from the storage room but also get like a special key to unlock the high value prize section and he seemed really confused i was hoping he might be like oh that's funny you got the hot dog toaster no no one's ever redeemed this before but i don't think he really said more than two words all right babe i know you and the one they were close your eyes i know work's been crazy lately but i have something for you open your eyes thanks it's not for you if i open it and there's like crumbs in it i'm gonna laugh i'm gonna cry oh that's smiling at us is that a thing was hot dog toaster i doubt it all my baby boomers in the chat sound off was hot dog toaster's a thing let me know with enough credits left to play nine more games of quick drop i headed into day three with a very clear goal in mind from all the googling i've done i'm pretty sure this marvel mug has the best points to potential resale value ratio of all of the redeemable items here if each attempt cost me about two dollars and i think i could reasonably sell this mug for ten dollars that means out of five tries i only need to get two jackpots to turn a profit if i get really lucky and win five jackpots in a row like i did yesterday then i'd have enough for three mugs at which point i could be potentially making a twenty dollar profit and so on and so forth until i've sold one mug to every human being on the face of the planet and i'll finally have enough money to buy my own private island that no one's invited to also fine i'll explain my strategy with the game so you too can try to win at this specific machine in orlando florida the secret is to just drop four balls at a time that's pretty much it they even show you that in the little tutorial video that plays and yet i still see so many people try to drop all 50 balls in one second like they're in a hurry to lose if you drop exactly four balls every spin which is pretty easy to do you will end up with 48 out of the 50 balls with the time that you are given that means at some point during the 12 turns you only have to drop one extra ball twice to end up with 50. personally i like to get those fifth balls out of the way early so i know how hard i need to focus for the rest of the game but if you'd rather save them for the end because you'll have the rhythm down at that point i can't blame you i'm just impressed that you flew all the way to orlando to play this game as usual i got up to a bit of a shaky start probably didn't help that i forgot to take my tom brady brain pills like i did on day two i hope they don't consider that an illegal substance here and it's not like the arcade equivalent of steroids in baseball but after a few tries i was able to win the massive jackpot that everybody else had graciously accrued for me you see every time someone loses this game the jackpot goes up by one and resets when someone wins so this means there had been about 300 losses in a row and i got to benefit from that that's another variable to throw into the math here but even without that 600 points is nothing to sneeze anyway after three days of mashing one button a million times and a hot dog toaster already sitting pretty in my kitchen i headed to get my rewards lucky for me i got to ask the same guy from yesterday for help grabbing the led sign that was just out of my reach instead of using a ladder though he just kind of climbed on top of the shelves and i really admired the creativity am i going to somehow profit off of this sign no but to me having a man cave that's open all day every day is priceless oh also i grabbed the mug that i came here for i keep getting distracted by funnier prizes as much as i wanted to race home and enjoy a celebratory cup of decaf coffee out of my new mug it was time to get down to business and i threw that bad boy up on the world's worst commerce website facebook marketplace and i waited and waited and waited and just when i was starting to lose hope my friend cody offered to buy it from me with real american money sorry for the abrupt exit cody but i had to rush home and count my earnings ten i couldn't believe my success i earned enough points to buy that mug with one game of quick drop these kind of profit margins are unheard of jeff bezos who there's a new guy in town why did i even bother going to community college for eight months when i could have been investing that tuition money into the school of video games let's go ahead and break down the numbers shall we i don't have a regular dry erase board so this calendar is going to have to do day one we spent 37 um i still don't know why it was 37 and not 35.

i guess the card itself it cost two dollars because when i refilled it it was exactly 35 the next day but i don't [ __ ] know we also spent 48 dollars on bowling and 70 on food and drinks but that doesn't count that's not part of it i'm just saying that that's what we did okay but 72 dollars spent on game credits and here is what we earn number one a state-of-the-art hot dog toaster a relic of simpler times a rare and priceless artifact that is currently being sold on amazon for 25 but let's say i was going to buy that anyway and in doing so i saved 25 which is almost like earning 25 because penny saved uh penny earned benjamin franklin last i heard he's the guy who electrocuted himself on purpose so i think he knows a thing or two about matt we also got the man cave sign and again let's say i was gonna buy that anyway well currently that's being sold on ebay for an average of about forty dollars at less than two thousand points that's a bargain if you're wondering why i didn't just try to sell that one instead that's because i didn't think anyone would buy it um but maybe i'm wrong about that finally of course we have the mug which i sold for 10 now if you have a calculator at home and you're playing along you may have noticed that this number is bigger than this number i'm trying to think if there's a word for that like a math word you know for when you make more money than you spend on something what's the term again oh that's right i think it's called a profit and that's not even mentioning the fact that i practically threw away half my tickets on day one and the machine stole over 900 points for me on day two and i um forgot to get my parking validated on day three so i had to pay for that myself also i guess if you factor in like gas and stuff because i had to drive a lot that's probably another like 15 you know what on second thought i think we're just gonna call that part a wash i made a three dollar profit and that is a success so to answer the question of can you profit at an arcade the answer is technically yes obviously it depends on which arcade you're at what prizes they have if there's a machine that you can win consistently but for this specific ball drop machine i have learned that if i just win jackpots over and over and over again making sure to take breaks so i don't hit the payout limit i can absolutely redeem my points on something that i would have wanted to buy anyway and save a few bucks in the process am i gonna somehow turn this into a full-time job you never know i mean i would pretty much be actively crashing the blue marvel mug market by increasing the supply so much absolute best case scenario i could see myself locking in minimum wage um but i would run out of people to sell mugs to eventually or before any of that happens the arcade might just run out of them or they'll catch on to what i'm doing and nerf the machine i like or raise the price of the prizes or put a photo of my face on the wall that says do not let this guy play quick drop he is bleeding a stride i guess if i had to pick one thing that i learned in this video it's that unless you have a concrete plan going into it and you've already done the math you're probably only going to lose money at an arcade also don't do what i almost did in this video and get really excited by the idea of selling something for a profit because i almost got like a bunch of mugs before even seeing if they would sell and then i barely sold one of them remember the value of a product is only what someone is willing to pay for it this isn't runescape i can't just throw my avengers mug into the grand exchange and get a bunch of gold coins for it i have to use facebook marketplace and facebook marketplace is the worst all right well i'm gonna go toast a hot dog which apparently is a thing that people do and while that's cooking up let's hear a word from today's sponsor i don't have much time to explain but today's video is sponsored by current who's here to modernize banking and also help me give away money to you guys all you have to do to enter is download the app at the link in the description use my promo code drew g also pronounced droog and five people will be randomly chosen to win 500 each but that's not the only reason to sign up because current also has a bunch of built-in tools to help you earn and save money you can get points by using your card at over 14 000 stores nationwide and then turn those in for cash they have no overdraft fees up to 200 no minimum balance fees and you can even get your paycheck up to two days faster when you sign up for direct deposit all of that plus a new interest feature where you can earn up to four percent apy on your money which is more profit than i made in this video so quit banking the same way people did 300 years ago and download current for free at current.