Sunday, November 13, 2016


Rebekah Kearn, a writer for Courthouse News Service, claims in her article, “The Claw Game: Skill or Illegal Gambling?” (2013), that claw machines require little to no skill and are indeed a form of gambling. This is shown through her point of view and personal accounts throughout her writing. Kearn’s purpose is to explain why these games are so addicting in order to show their similarities to gambling. Given the word choice of this article, it is safe to say Kearn is writing to the parents of claw machine players to inform them about why their children shouldn’t be playing claw machines.

Throughout this article I wish to research and write about why or why not claw machines should be considered a form of gambling. Personally, I have always enjoyed playing claw machines so I’m interested on why people would think they’re made for gambling. Claw machines should not be considered a form of gambling because of how much kids enjoy playing these games, just like any other arcade game where you can lose. With the topic of claw machines, I could’ve talked about the payout rates or whether they can be hacked or even if they can be rigged. For this stage my research questions are do people buy claw machines for making money from kids losing every time? Also, do the owners of claw machines know that some people see this as a form of gambling?





By REBEKAH KEARN Tweet(function() {var Po = Document.createElement('script'); Po.type = 'text/javascript'; Po.async = True;po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js';var S = Document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; S.parentNode.insertBefore(po, S. "Tuesday, May 07, 2013Last Update: 8:04 AM PT." Courthouse News Service. N.p., 2013. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.