The Galaga Effect -- #Blaugust2021 Day 14

Last night my son went to a local roller skating rink. When I went to pick him up, he was incredibly excited to play the Galaga arcade machine they had there for some reason, so we gave him a couple quarters, and it was over pretty quickly unfortunately.

Shootin' the digital insects!

I was reminded about how ruthless those old arcade games could be. They were absolutely designed to suck your quarters down, but what made Galaga so insidious and so great at the same time was the self-sacrifice aspect of the game.

In Galaga, for the price of a quarter you get 3 lives, but what most people tried to do was sacrifice their first life to the invading aliens, who could tractor beam the ship and carry it behind them during the level. Then, if you shot the ship that was carrying your ship when it was dive bombing you, then that second ship would snap together with your current ship, creating a double shooting ship. Of course, a double-sized ship was also twice the target, but that double shooting ship could then be used to score big points on the bonus waves in-between the levels.

Typically you'd take the gamble and it wouldn't pan out and you'd end up losing both ships in frustration, but every once in a while you'd rock those two ships and beat the challenge levels to the point that you earned a new ship and felt pretty great about your decision. That sacrifice paying off as a reward is definitely "The Galaga Effect" in my mind -- it's a soft gamble that won't outright kill the game, but could result in a fantastic feeling while it lasts. It's a little bit of the same feeling someone might get from when they're on a slot machine hot streak. It's also a much stronger sacrifice than a laying out a chess pawn for sacrifice because it's literally sacrificing 1/3 of your life to get 2x the power.

I read a really fascinating interview with Shigeru Yokoyama, the designer of Galaga where he talks all about how Galaga came about and some of the thought process behind it. When he designed the game originally, players were getting longer play sessions about 7-8 minutes with one quarter, which wouldn't fly with arcade owners, so Namco came in and ratcheted up the difficulty:

"Yeah, although I was really worried after the location test failed to pull in a very good income. The average playtime of a single coin back then was about 3 to 4 minutes, but people were playing for 7 or 8 minutes with our game, so the income was lower. There was some grumbling about that at Namco, but I asked them to let us leave it this way. I said the fact that people could play longer would make it popular, and it would still draw a good income. However, from the arcade operator’s perspective, short-term profits were the priority, so in the final commercial versions of we ended up caving to management and doing it their way." - Shigeru Yokoyama

I quickly found a free version of Galaga online, called Galagon 2004, just go to www.freegalaga.com and you're there. I'm sure there's more of them out there as well. All the old games have been recycled and redone hundreds of times, and if you're into old game Emulators, I'm sure you can find even more. 

The arcades these days have a version of Galaga called Galaga Assault where you play for tickets. It's amazing to see how controlled play times are on this game.  They've really got it down to a science. In addition, Galaga Assault has a "redemption mode" where you actually buy extra fighters in exchange for quarters.  If you really want to throw extra tokens down the drain to try and win the jackpot, you can have extra fighters already attached at the get-go of the game!

Galaga Assault quadruples down on hedging your bets. I feel like there's something to be said here about pay to win, but in a ticket arcade, that's  . . . a given?

I'm trying to think of some modern examples of the Galaga effect in games. If something comes to mind, please share it in the comments. 

Personally, since I've been playing Risk of Rain 2 lately, I'm reminded of the shrines where you sacrifice life in exchange for gold. 50 life for 25 gold is a big risk. Although sometimes that feels more like an act of desperation in that game and the benefit probably isn't quite as tempting as it was in Galaga.

Happy Dueling!