What’s this Dragon’s Ascent and how do you beat it?

July 9, 2020 12:14 PM

There’s a new “non-gambling” skill game called Dragon’s Ascent. It pays money and is popular in bars. It pays money, is there a way to get good at it? How is it legal? I called a distributor to buy it for home but apparently you can’t. Is there a ROM or some emulator to get good at it?

The distributor said they strictly run on rev share so they won’t let you buy it. It ate my money quick, way more quickly than a casino game. I looked on the inside and there’s standard PC hardware so surely someone did a dump of this. Considering it is in the back of bars and a “skill” game there’s got to be a way to get good at it. Casino games are random and you can’t have your phone out, everything is monitored. Is there a way to legally cheat at this given the security at dive bars aren’t anywhere nearly regulated as casinos?

Also for some reason the distributor said it is making crazy money yet only mentions I find online question the legality of this.

posted by geoff. to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

It pays money, is there a way to get good at it? How is it legal?

This analysis of the game (PDF) from DC's attorney general might be informative.

Here's an excerpt (emphasis added):

According to the information presented to ABRA and the representations made at the hearing, there is no element of chance anywhere in the Dragon's Ascent game. Rather, the game appears to make money by layering a complex series of variables and requiring more patience than the average game player is likely to demonstrate. Still, it is possible for a player to "win" or make money every single time, if the player is dedicated and patient enough. No part of the outcome of Dragon's Ascent is dependent on chance; the player's reward for each shot is a direct factor of the player's choices and the fixed game algorithm.

posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:40 PM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

How is it legal?

They very carefully avoid the letter of the gambling laws. It falls into the category of Redemption games. The genre of "fish games" became popular ~15 years ago in China and have spread into the US in a bunch of quasi-legal gambling dens. Officially they only offer legal games but there's widespread speculation that they engage in other illicit activities at the same time, as discussed in the Vice article.

Is there a way to legally cheat at this given the security at dive bars aren’t anywhere nearly regulated as casinos?

Stop and think about that sentence again.

Considering it is in the back of bars and a “skill” game there’s got to be a way to get good at it.

I have no knowledge of this specific game, but at least some of the games have been alleged to be more or less rigged (again, see the Vice article). In general, the entire genre is rigged to push people's compulsions to extract money and pay out just enough money from time to time to keep people hooked.

It ate my money quick

That's the intent. To take your money but make you think that there's a way to get good enough to not only make your money back but to go on to win and cheat the house.

The way to win this game is to not play.
posted by Candleman at 12:47 PM on July 9, 2020 [9 favorites]

Also, while these games are effectively unregulated in some places, the code running on the machines people are actually using to play the game may not be what they showed the regulators. With a slot machine in Vegas, they will do inspections to verify that the machines are running the authorized and regulated code. That machine in the back of the random bar may not have that type of assurance.
posted by Candleman at 12:54 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Sorry by “cheat” I mean become good by playing it a lot, aka taking advantage it is a game of skill. I’m more coming from this a software development perspective. I also wanted to try to dump the game image (based on their job listings it is just Java running non proprietary hardware).

As I have ownership stake in the bar I have no monetary benefit from it but as there’s no free play mechanism like in pinball, I can’t verify it. Unlike pinball I have doubt this is really a game of skill but I can’t verify it because I can’t play it without using money which is stupid.

If I can play it for a couple weeks without losing the bank and get good, unlike say a real slot machine, then it is a game of skill.

Only reason I even got it is because it is technically legal and people asked for it, but I don’t want to trick people in thinking it is skill when it isn’t even if they meet a legal definition of skill.
posted by geoff. at 12:56 PM on July 9, 2020

Response by poster: Candleman got to my point exactly, there’s no external auditor, the large national chain distributor correctly responded to my questions “can I change payout” which was no. So I figured if I could dump the code and run it in a VM I could see what actually runs on it and surprisingly no one has done that.

I’ll probably end up just taking it out I was peeved about the mystery surrounding what it does exactly under the hood, and lack of info online. Also suspicious you can’t buy it only you can only lease it is warning flags.
posted by geoff. at 1:02 PM on July 9, 2020

Only reason I even got it is because it is technically legal and people asked for it, but I don’t want to trick people in thinking it is skill when it isn’t even if they meet a legal definition of skill.

Based on the analysis above which talks about more difficult shots costing more but bringing more payout, I immediately thought of a carnival game or something similar that is all physical skill. I suppose I could market installing basketball courts in bars for 100% skill based full-court basketball shot game that people buy into and could win real money. It's not random, right? At least the hoop isn't...

In theory you could practice and always make a full court shot, but at a certain point that takes "more patience than the average game player is likely to demonstrate" and, you know, sooner or later.... that's called a job
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 1:03 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Well since there’s no other info online to be clear it is operated on a revshare model and they don’t even give the ability to open the machine so my idea of doing a dump of the Java bytecode won’t tell me if it is really skill or changes based on pay out. To be clear I don’t think it is an outright scam but skill means LeBron is good at basketball and I’m not, there’s no LeBron of slot machines.

Probably be taking it out when I can there’s a lot of perhaps not illegal but smelly things about this whole thing. I’m not against gambling, but I’m against saying a game of skill when it really isn’t the common definition of skill. Plus I’d rather legally have regulated and audited games of chance, this is a mystery box. If it pays out too much does it suddenly stop being a game of skill? Probably not, but with out auditing there’s no way to know.
posted by geoff. at 1:35 PM on July 9, 2020

Also suspicious you can’t buy it only you can only lease it is warning flags.

This is more about profitability than anything else. They get way more overall from leasing for a capped % of the rev than any outright purchase price you'd ever be willing to pay.
posted by PMdixon at 1:57 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Some perspective: pinball machine used to be illegal in many jurisdictions. Most notably for this example New York where Roger Sharpe, a pinball wizard, proved to a court that modern iterations were games of skill (original machines were in part or whole essentially random) by doing stuff like calling his shot. Someone like Roger Sharpe can play all day long on a single quarter. The vast majority of people however are going to spend some amount per hour to play. That is the kind of bar that separates games of chance from games of skill in this domain.

Or like you said LeBron.
posted by Mitheral at 2:28 PM on July 9, 2020

Some more perspective from someone that's worked on pinball and slot machines (talked to Roger Sharpe the other month, he says hi):

Skill-based gambling is a thing now. Vegas has been trying to figure out how to attract younger players back into the casinos and the new hotness is gambling but with an element of skill added. One could consider poker rooms to be the start of this all since being better at playing poker and bluffing opponents will earn you more money but the casino will still get their share and never lose money (although the velocity is way too slow to their liking). Gaming boards skill consider Poker a game of chance for historical reasons anyway.

Vegas is starting to slowly let these machines in, but nobody is quite sure how this will go. There are slot machine type things, although Dragon's Ascent seems more like variant of the fishing game that Candleman mentions above and who the hell knows if that's running in legal fashion or not. There have been other experiments like a free throw contest in Atlantic City.
posted by mookoz at 5:45 PM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: I cannot speak to the legality of it, but there’s some clue on the “skill” part and it definitely is not a game of chance. Some of the legal briefs indicated that the slow play was key, and indeed if you want to take all the fun out of it simply waiting for a ... long time for the right fish, or dragons, to appear does seem viable way to win even if it is incredibly boring. I’m sure you’ll find someone who swears they have a better method, much like the blue haired ladies who go to the “right” slot machine. I’m sure that’s where the big payoffs are, where you hear about the big wins. But if you want to win, or rather not lose, you literally have to sit there for 5 minutes when a level comes up with bad odds, wait it out. I’m sure there’s elements of the game I’m missing but there’s low value fish that are sure things. I’m sure there’s other ways to win, the thing you use to shoot the dragons has to be a certain color and you have to hit the head on the big wins. As an avid pinball player this is so difficult I’d say it is really stretching the limit on what skill is.

Anyway I spent last night playing and coaching others, most people gave up on the skill part because again unlike pinball and the like the skill is intentionally boring they obviously want you to shoot randomly.

Also rather clever is that on games like Galaga we’re trained to shoot as fast as possible which in this game costs you money.

In short like most casino games it is predatory and just skirts the rules, which makes sense since it pays out money. Perhaps most concerning is that kids seem to like it, parents treat it as a video game despite the warning (though if it isn’t gambling I don’t see if that under 18 is simply a warning or legal), and frankly the venues they are installed in aren’t casinos so policing it is difficult.

I’d much rather have highly regulated games of chance with known payouts.
posted by geoff. at 9:23 AM on July 10, 2020