Addictive Online Crane Games Are Getting Me Through the Pandemic
By: Laine Yuhas
Tags: Arcade Games, Gaming, Culture, Digital Life, Technology

As kids, my brother and I spent summers on the Jersey Shore, hanging out in the arcades of Point Pleasant, devoting countless hours to learning how to beat the crane games, also known as claw machines. We avoided the oversized prizes from the bigger games in the middle of the arcade (those were for tourists) and instead patrolled the edges, looking for easy-to-win prizes in less popular machines. We never really needed more stuffed animals — our rooms were already full of the cheap tchotchkes — we needed the high of beating the machine.

In 2020, I’m still playing crane games. But instead of popping quarters at local arcades that no longer exist or are closed because of Covid-19, we use apps to control claws located in warehouses thousands of miles away, watching the action via webcams from the safety of our own homes.

There are dozens of crane game apps out there, all with the same enticing premise: Win a prize on your phone, then get it shipped to your door. Sound too good to be true? That’s what I thought until the prizes started arriving. Since I discovered this world, I’ve played Clawee, OpenWow, Toreba, Sega Catcher Online, and TokyoCatch.

The first win on the first app I tried was easy. That’s Clawee’s model: Start with small prizes on generous machines, then hope the player spends more money to win bigger items. On my first attempt, I pressed the controls dubiously. I knew I could win on a machine right in front of me, but a machine on another continent? The claw dropped and grabbed not one but two lucky cat keychains. I gleefully sent the video footage to my brother. (He only got one prize on his first attempt. Typical younger brother.)

My inner child fainted while my rational adult self agreed that my brother and I would only use free plays, not real money, to win Luna.

I paid $5 to ship my two prizes and gain some Clawee coins. Maybe that made me a sucker, but I figured $5 wasn’t a big loss if the prizes never showed. Due to a happy miscommunication, Clawee shipped me one lucky cat keychain and one full-size cat plushie (please don’t tell them). Paying $5 gave me free coins for a week. After those ran out, I moved to Toreba, the mother of all crane game mobile apps.

On Toreba, you get one free try per day and free shipping once per week. Many prizes are character items from major entertainment franchises. I scrolled past Disney, Sanrio, and Pokémon plushies until I saw Luna, a stuffed cat character from the ’90s anime Sailor Moon.

The author’s prizes. Images courtesy of the author

I grew up on Sailor Moon. I watched episodes every morning and dressed up as Sailor Saturn for Halloween. Now, I had a chance to win a genuine Sailor Moon prize from a Japanese-style crane game. My inner child fainted while my rational adult self agreed that my brother and I would only use free plays, not real money, to win Luna.

It took weeks until I finally won Luna and nearly two months until she arrived (the process was slowed by Covid-19-related international shipping restrictions). It was worth the wait to fulfill my secret, ridiculous goal of winning a prize from a Japanese arcade.

In an era of depressive doomscrolling, crane game apps are a cheerful alternative. The app home screens show dozens of enticing prizes. Click any image to see a live video feed of the game machine, complete with cheery arcade music and a real-time count of other players watching the same machine.

Ticking play clocks and visible queues encourage you to play before another player grabs a well-placed prize. You might spend eight tries setting a prize into a winnable position only to run out of points. Then, another player can snipe your prize, sneaking in for the win. Players who rely on free tickets can (and do) win even the most desirable prizes. But they’re at a disadvantage compared with “whales,” the people who spend tons of money on apps.

Crane game apps are a business, so they’re designed to keep you playing, not winning. Every crane game features the same typical drawbacks: weak claws, heavy prizes, and pre-programmed win rates. Apps introduce a few new complications.

First: There’s lag. Hit the button, and the claw might move three seconds later — a big downside if you only have 30 seconds total. But some lag is unavoidable when you’re controlling a mechanical arm from across an ocean.

Crane game apps are a business, so they’re designed to keep you playing, not winning.

In a normal arcade, you typically take your prize directly from the machine. Since apps can’t offer the same immediacy, some use substitution prizes. A dozen different photos on the home screen can redirect to the same machine with a generic prize. Win the prize in the machine, and the company ships the prize from the photo on the app home screen.

Players complain that substitutions let companies ship low-quality or bootleg prizes since you don’t see the actual piece before you win. One of my generic cat plushies from Clawee came with cracked brown stripes painted over white fur.

But there’s also an upside to substitution prizes. On OpenWow, you can back out of a difficult-looking machine and click the prize photo again to get redirected to a potentially easier game for the same reward.

Then there are cultural differences in the games themselves. The games on Toreba are Japanese-style UFO catcher machines. Claws have only two arms compared with three- and four-pronged American claws. There’s no joystick; just one button. The first button press moves the claw sideways; the second moves the claw backward. There’s no going back and little room for error.

Toreba rarely uses substitution prizes, which means they have hundreds of machines in several styles and dozens of configurations. On YouTube, creators like Crane Love and PatahrakPlays explain the different machine types, starting positions, win conditions, and claw techniques. You can’t just grab the prize. Depending on the machine, you’ll have to swoop, stab, poke, pivot, or flip accordingly.

The modular squares and bars that make up the machine configurations are coated in rubber, which naturally grips the prize surface. In contrast, the claw itself has two slippery metal prongs. Some players believe the configuration bars are covered in double-sided tape. Sticky setups make it harder for the claw to dislodge the prize or let gravity do its thing. Plus, if the prize gets stuck, you can’t kick a video of a machine.

Third-party fan sites help players get the most out of each play. Mainstream video games inspire fans to publish walkthroughs that explain how to, say, complete certain quests for the best rewards. Crane game fan sites attempt to do the same thing for crane games, which have nearly infinite combinations of machine type and setup, prize size and weight, claw strength, player skill, and connection lag.

Since Toreba has the greatest number of players, it also has the most fan resources. The most extensive third-party resource is the Toreba Prize Watcher. The website monitors every one of the hundreds of prizes and machines available in the app. Prize Watcher’s “Sweet Machine” filter shows games that have had multiple winners in the past hour plus the videos of the winning plays.

The Toreba subreddit has 11,000 subscribers, and there are multiple fan Discords with hundreds of members. Post a screenshot of your desired prize, and fellow fans share strategies or deem it unwinnable. Sometimes, members come to gripe about another player sniping their prize only to find the same player celebrating their victory in the chat there. Surprisingly, there’s little animosity in crane game communities, even among people competing for the same item.

If you don’t feel like investing the time or money into winning the games, you can still buy prizes from sellers on Mercari, eBay, and private forums. Reselling is banned by most of the apps’ terms of service, but that doesn’t stop enterprising players from making (or recouping) money from their winnings.

Scraping out a win is pure, uncomplicated joy.

One whale is so good at the crane games that they have set up their own rewards program for their resale shop. Spend $60 buying plushies there, and you can get an extra Kirby figurine; spending $600 will net you a trio of foot-tall, kimono-clad Hello Kitty plushies.

Though only a small number of players sell the prizes, many players share footage of their winning plays. These snippets serve as surprisingly addictive mini-mysteries. Even if you know the outcome, you don’t know how it will happen. Victory videos are both inspirational and aspirational. Watching someone win your dream prize might get you to open up the app (and your wallet) for another attempt. Or you might just turn to a reseller for a guaranteed order.

Crane game apps have been a daily bright spot for me this year, especially during those first, tough quarantine months. Unlike video games, the rewards are tangible, and they don’t disappear when I turn off my device. And scraping out a win is pure, uncomplicated joy.

There’s always something to look forward to, whether it’s the daily reset of free tickets or waiting six weeks for international shipping. The wins stacked on my dresser are a reminder that good things come to those who wait — an important mindset as we get ready to enter another wave of shutdowns.