Addictive Online Crane Games Are Getting Me Through the Pandemic
In an era of depressive doomscrolling, crane game apps are a cheerful alternative
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.
