Arcade & Classic Games · 81

Arcade difficulty was shaped partly by economics: a machine had to be exciting enough to earn another coin without ending the player's turn so quickly that it felt unfair. There is a practical reason this matters in games: Pattern learning became a classic arcade skill because deterministic enemy behavior rewards players who notice that chaos is sometimes only pretending to be random. Three initials can contain an unreasonable amount of pride when they sit above everybody else's score.