Being a gamer used to be taboo, but now superstars are being made of streamers who live comfortably at home while playing games all day. It’s a nice way to earn a living and a far cry from the days when blistered thumbs amounted to little more than bragging rights. That’s not to say these successful streamers aren’t skilled — some of them pull off incredible feats — but there is an oft-overlooked subset of gamers out there, doing their thing, grinding like rounders. These people are arcade gamers.
They hunt for tickets, a precious currency that can deliver them sweet deals if they have the right kind of eyes. The ability to rake in tickets after spotting an “undervalued” item at an arcade leads to stories like this gentleman nabbing a rare Nintendo Switch, normally retailed for $299 (and way more on the black market) at Dave & Buster’s for just $50 and time.
The gamer named “Dragonslaayer” revealed his latest score to Reddit:
I went in and was bummed when the Switch wasn’t in the electronics cabinet. I asked one of the guys if he had any idea about if or when they’d be coming in. He looked up the shipping info, and incredibly, the report he printed out said that a box of Switches was on the truck that was arriving as we were speaking!
He was nice enough to go into the back and grab the box off the pallet. The managers and techs that work at my location couldn’t be more friendly. Shout out to the guys that helped me out
Turns out Dragonslaayer is an expert at the game Floppytickets, and can consistently hit the jackpot. He makes sure he’s respectful to the staff so he can continue his winning ways without any static.
“Actually the guys there are very nice as long as you’re reasonable. I don’t sit at one game for hours at a time not letting anybody else play or anything like that. I’m always nice to the employees and treat everybody with respect and they give respect back to me.”
Why doesn’t he get his big score and take off? Probably because it seems like Dave & Buster’s is consistently undervaluing their systems, or Dragonslaayer is just really, really good at these damn games. He’s not even spending that much time working at it:
“Assuming I spend 1.5 hours each week there and I make 10k tickets each time that is 15 hours playing the game to get 100k tickets.”
As another Redditor points out, his $250 profit on 15 hours of playing works out to be roughly $16 an hour. Not bad, considering he’s winning all the systems:
“Yeah I’m very fortunate to somehow be good enough at the game I play to be able to do this. I’ve gotten 2 ps4s as well so far for friends so I can play online with them haha!”
We want to be Dragonslaayer’s friend.
(Via GameInformer)