Fallout 76: Are Re-Rollers Gambling?
As of Season 12, entitled Rip Daring and the Cryptid Hunt, Bethesda might has well have entitled Fallout 76’s newest season, Welcome to Gambling. Let’s explore.
Challenge System
When Fallout 76 released in 2018, Bethesda included a “Challenge” system in the game. This challenge system allowed (and still allows in limited ways) players to obtain Atomic Shop currency called “Atom” in exchange for performing relatively basic challenges in the game world.
This Atom currency allows players to “buy” in-game items, such as CAMP add-ons, character clothing, hairstyles and face paint. The selection of the items in the Atomic Shop, at the time, was relatively limited in the early days, but has since expanded into consumables, Fallout 1st items, weapon and armor paints and even weapons.
Almost every video game released today offers a store with add-on items for players to purchase to enhance their gaming experience. The “Atom” currency has always been and remains the only currency in the game that can be purchased with real cash money in the form of USD (or other currencies around the world). For the purposes of this article, all dollar amounts shown are in USD.
For example, if you own a PlayStation, you can visit Sony’s PlayStation store and purchase Atom bundles, such as 500 Atom for $4.99 (or basically $5). The exchange rate is 100 Atoms to every $1 spent. An item in the Atomic Shop could then be said to cost $7 if it costs 700 Atoms. A small discount is applied the more Atom you buy.
If you pay $20, you’ll receive 2,400 Atoms. Bethesda’s marketing states there’s a bonus of 400 Atoms. In reality, this is simply considered a slight markdown on costs. Instead of costing $1 per 100 Atom, this changes the ratio to $1 per 120 Atom or discounted to 83¢ per 100 Atom. If you’re willing to spend $40, you’ll receive 5,000 Atoms. That further reduces the cost to $1 for every 125 Atom or 80¢ for every 100 Atom (a 20¢ discount or 20% discount for each 100 Atoms bought over the $5 purchase in the store).
That means that if you buy $5 worth of Atoms, a 1500 Atom item in the Atomic Shop store costs you $15.00. If you pay for $40 in Atoms, that same 1500 Atom item now costs you $12. That’s not a tremendous discount overall, but you will have saved $3 by buying $40 in Atom over buying three separate $5 Atom items (making $15 or 1500 Atom) from the PlayStation store. This conversion rate is only important if you’re wanting to equate how much something actually costs you in the Atomic Shop.
Fallout 1st
With the introduction of Fallout 1st, this monthly subscription service muddies the Atom waters just a little. By subscribing to this service, you’ll receive not only access to all of Fallout 1st’s features, including access to private worlds, access to custom worlds, access to the ammo and scrap boxes and a bunch of 1st exclusive Atomic Shop inclusions, you’ll also receive 1,650 Atoms each month. The cost for Fallout 1st is $12.99/mo straight up or $8.25/mo if you pay for the $99 to buy 1 year / 12 months up front.
Depending on how you choose to buy Fallout 1st, the value of the monthly allotment of Atoms changes. Buying Fallout 1st at the 1 year price is obviously the cheapest option offering up a nearly 50% discount off of those 1,650 Atoms (ignoring all of the rest of Fallout 1st’s features). 1,650 Atoms would normally cost close to $16.50 to purchase. Of course, the closest Atom bundle on the PS store is the 1,100 Atom bundle which costs $10. You’d have to jump to the 2,400 Atom bundle at $20 to get enough to cover 1,650 Atoms. The best Atom cost bundle is the 1 year subscription to Fallout 1st which discounts the cost of Atoms to 50¢ per 100 or effectively half price. That means that that same 1500 Atom item in the Atomic shop would cost you $7.50… assuming all of your Atoms came solely from being a Fallout 1st member.
Buying Fallout 1st monthly at $13 is still a discount on Atom, but at a rate of (rounded up) 127 Atom per $1 spent, just slightly better than buying the 5,000 Atom bundle shown above.
Challenges and Score
When the first Scoreboard season arrived in 2020, Bethesda changed what the daily and weekly challenges gave as rewards. Prior to the introduction of the Scoreboard seasons, all challenges awarded Atom. A player can spend these Atoms in any way chosen. Atom was originally awarded from both daily and weekly challenges as well as all of the other environmental challenges in the game.
With the introduction of the first Season and the Scoreboard, daily and weekly challenges changed to providing S.C.O.R.E. (another insipid Bethesda acronym). For the purposes of this article, this author will use the word ‘score’ for simplicity. Score is simply yet another, but separate form of Experience Points (XP). The score moves a blue progress bar across the Scoreboard. Once the progress bar reaches the end, the Scoreboard advances by one space. Each Scoreboard has 100 board spaces. Each space requires a progressive amount more score to complete. The first space might require 1000 score to complete. The last space might require 3500 score to complete. Every space in between requires more than 1000 score and less than 3500 score to advance to the next space. Once the game board has completed, additional board spaces appear so that awards can still be accrued by performing daily and weekly challenges.
For the first few seasons, once you reached the Scoreboard’s end, the board was over. Challenges did nothing and were worthless. It wasn’t until a few seasons later that Bethesda realized the problem and added more board spaces after the 100th board space, the final space which awards the “big prize” (such that it is).
What exactly is a Challenge?
While there are many challenges available in the game, the ones that matter most to today’s players are those that produce score. These are the only ones that advance board spaces on the Scoreboard. All other remaining challenges still provide Atom, but in small and diminishing quantities. The only renewing challenges are the daily and weekly challenges. The environmental challenges are one-off challenges that, for the most part, do not renew. These environmental challenges are one-and-done… with the exception of pick-lock and hack-terminal challenges that have a progression system that eventually ends, but which provide a small amount of Atom so long as they remain uncompleted.
The daily and weekly score challenges help “move the needle” through the Scoreboard. Each game board space unlocks some kind of Atomic Shop item including the possibility of a space awarding Atom itself. The board spaces are not random chance. They are hard set by Bethesda and the “prize” can be easily seen by hovering over the board space.
When Fallout 76 was introduced in 2018 (and until 2020), daily and weekly challenges awarded exclusively Atom alone. The daily challenge board might, in total, award anywhere from 100 to 300 Atoms (maybe more) depending on that day’s included challenges. That meant you could gain at least between 100-300 Atoms per day simply by doing the daily challenges. In a week, that could accrue to 1,000 or more Atoms just by doing daily challenges. The weekly challenges might accrue up to 1,000 to 2,000 Atoms (or more) depending on the included challenges. That meant that between the daily and weekly challenges you could see anywhere between 1,200 and 2000 Atom accrued per week. The problem for Bethesda was that all this freely available Atom from the daily and weekly challenges meant that players didn’t need to buy Atom frequently or sometimes at all. Bethesda wanted more income.
When the Scoreboard was introduced, the amount of Atom awarded by challenges was dramatically reduced to only those Scoreboard spaces which, all except one, offer a measly 150 Atom per space and only a handful of these spaces now exist on the board. In total, a single season Scoreboard typically awards 2,000 Atoms instead of up to 2,000 Atoms we were formerly getting per week from completing both the daily and weekly challenges. With the Scoreboard, it now takes many, many weeks of challenges to unlock the total Atom on the Scoreboard. Less Atom given out means more Atom sold with real cash money.
In other words, the amount of Atom awarded by the Scoreboard has been drastically reduced… forcing players to actually pay real money for Atom to buy larger Atomic Shop items. Bethesda enforces this purchase behavior by putting shop bundles into the Atomic shop for 16 days or 3 days or similar limited time offers which see the item disappear from the store after the timer ticks down. It’s a ruse that tries to force gamers into buying Atom to avoid “losing out”.
The challenges themselves include all manner of fetch quests. Some are long tailed and some can be completed in just a few minutes. Many are convoluted and may require things that a low level player might not have or might not yet have access to. Not all challenges can be completed by every player, depending on where that player is in completing the game’s main quest lines.
Challenge Examples
Challenges come in all shapes and forms. Some require completion of the challenge once, but many require completion of the challenge multiple times. For example, “Scrap Junk to produce Black Titanium (0/10)”. The 0/10 means that the player must scrap junk 10 times to produce Black Titanium to complete the challenge.
Bethesda plays games with these counters, too. The “Collect Pieces of Wood (0/200)” is a challenge that Bethesda has modified from its original to make it more difficult. When you collect wood, you might actually collect 4, 8 or even up to 20 pieces of wood as random chance. Yet, Bethesda only counts the collection itself toward the counter, not the number of the pieces of wood collected… as a way to cheat the player out of getting the task done sooner. Yet, “Craft ammo on a Crafting Bench (0/50)” still counts each individual piece of ammo crafted towards the challenge, even if you’ve only pressed the crafting button once. It’s this inconsistency and disparity between the challenges that not only make this system confusing, it makes the challenges a pain in the ass not knowing which rules apply. These counters are also what put long tails on challenges and require them to take a whole lot longer to complete than they should.
Some challenges are based solely on the completion of other challenges, like the Gold Star Daily Challenge. The Gold Star challenge isn’t actually a challenge, it’s a counter. It counts a specific set of challenges that have been completed. Once all of the Daily Challenges have been fully completed, the Gold Star Daily Challenge also completes. The Gold Star Daily challenge is an incidental challenge that completes only because other challenges have completed.
Challenges might include the following:
- Kill a Yao Guai with a Syringer
- Collect 100 Pieces of Wood
- Scrap junk to produce Black Titanium
- Kill a Deathclaw
- Eat a Meat based Meal
- Eat Pre-War Food
- Scrap Pre-War Money
- Complete a Daily Ops
Each of these challenges is usually sub-qualified with the number of times the player must perform that task. For daily challenges, if not once only, then it’s typically set to 3-5 times; relatively easy. For weekly challenges, it might be 20-100 times. With the introduction of the Re-Roller, the daily challenges have increased repeating the task from 3-5 to sometimes 20 or 30 or more, making these tasks take much, much longer. Yet, you still only have 24 hours to complete the challenge. There’s reason for this change, keep reading.
Atomic Shop Items
Atomic shop items are actually worthless. Why? Because you can’t craft them for others, sell them or even drop them. Any items purchase from the Atomic shop or, by extension, received from the Scoreboard are exclusively locked to that player. If you purchase (for Atom) an outfit from the Atomic Shop, it is exclusively for your use alone. If another player wants that same item, they must also spend Atom to buy it from the Atomic Shop. These player locked items make the item, in fact, worthless in the game world. They’re cosmetic, yes, but that’s the extent of the value of that item.
Some items can be used by other players, like Shelters, making these kinds of Atomic Shop items a bit more worthwhile than those like cosmetic armor or weapon skins. Shelters, for example, are probably one of the most useful items in the game. These in-game rooms offer the player a way to decorate and build in creative form, which can be shared by other players who visit that shelter. Shelters also afford a way to display items to other players that you have found and which you value. You can even display Atomic Shop items, but why bother? Only the rarest items found in the game world are those worth displaying.
What is a Re-Roller?
Here we arrive at the heart of this article and why you’re here reading. It’s important to understand the above system in place to understand this next most recent introduction by Bethesda, the Re-Roller (aka Re-Roll). Some challenges have been a problem to complete by some players, but only because the player might not be far enough along in the game to actually complete that challenge. For example, they might not have access to a specific location that a challenge requires. The player also might not be high enough level to use the required weapon to complete the challenge. There are many challenges like these that Bethesda includes in the challenge board.
Because of complaints over uncompletable challenges, Bethesda has now introduced in Season 12 (the current season as of this article), the concept of a Re-Roller. What is a Re-Roller? It simply allows you to “spin” for and hopefully 🤞 get a new and completely different challenge. And here’s where the gambling arises and where Re-Rollers intentionally fail.
Before diving into all of that, let’s step back in time.
EA and Loot Boxes
Several years back around 2019, EA introduced for-pay loot boxes into several of its games, but most notably FIFA. These for pay random chance loot boxes, once opened, provided the player with a common, rare or legendary item, which could be used in the game. In the case of FIFA, the game’s loot boxes provided trading cards in various rarities.
Many authorities jumped in claiming these loot boxes had become a form of gambling. These authorities are not wrong. They are a form of gambling. You spend real money and then the game spins and awards you with a “win” or “lose” situation. Because of typical house odds of offering up the worst rewards most frequently, it encourages players to do it again and again in hopes of getting “something better” or at least not a duplicate. Yes, duplicates are possible and extremely common.
As a result of the backlash over loot box gambling and other games of chance, EA and several other game developers have since stripped loot boxes from their games.
Enter Bethesda and Re-Rollers…
Re-Roller Gambling
While Fallout 76 has included a relatively real appearing slot machine in the game for many months now, it doesn’t rely on real cash money to operate. The in-game slot machine uses “caps”, an easily obtained in-game currency. This currency has been in the game from the beginning. Today, caps are considered mostly worthless, other than for the purposes of finding player vendors who are selling relatively rare in-game items.
With this slot machine, there is effectively no way to lose. The cost to play is 10 caps. Spending 10 caps, you’ll always get something for your caps spent. For example, spinning this slot machine always awards +2 to Luck for a limited time, a very useful player perk for as long as it lasts. You can always renew this perk by spinning again. You get this perk no matter whether you get caps back or not. Most times, you’ll get back exactly the caps you spent to play, 10 caps. Sometimes you’ll get back 4 caps. Occasionally, you’ll get 20 caps or more. If you don’t win anything, the game still awards you a piece junk to scrap or sell… junk likely worth 5-10 caps at a vendor. In essence, you almost never lose any caps in this slot machine… and even then, the additional perk means you never lose. It is also impossible to spend real cash money to play this machine as caps cannot be purchased directly with USD.
Enter Re-Rollers
The name itself actually has connotations of spinning something, like a slot machine. Even the sound effects used when re-rolling are reminiscent of spinning a slot machine. How do Re-Rollers work?
Because some challenges may be uncompletable (for whatever reason), a Re-Roller allows the player to take a chance on a new replacement challenge in the hopes it will be better than what was there. In effect, the Re-Roller is tantamount to pulling the arm on a slot machine and waiting for the spinning to stop to see if you have “won”. If not, that encourages you to spin again. This encouragement is tantamount to and turns a Re-Roller into a form of gambling… triggering the same effects as any other game of gambling. While the game issues one free Re-Roller per day, additional Re-Rollers aren’t free, making this situation far, far worse.
Re-Rollers cost Atom to buy from the Atomic Shop. As has been established earlier, Atoms cost real USD. Thus, to buy Atom means paying real cash money to Bethesda for these Atoms. Thus, Re-Rollers cost the player real cash money to buy. This further means it’s possible to lose a large amount of real USD to gambling with these Re-Rollers. This is also the first time Bethesda has tied real cash money to an in-game random chance based gambling device in Fallout 76.
One could argue that Lunchboxes could be considered a form of gambling, but there’s really no gambling involved. You buy a lunchbox, you open it and you get a reward in game. There is no random chance involved. The only randomness is in the name of perk you get, not whether you’ll get one as each one is nearly equal to the others. More than this, you can buy Lunchboxes in the game world by earning in-game currency… something that can’t be done with Re-Rollers.
Re-Rollers can only be obtained by spending Atom in the atomic shop or by obtaining a very small number of them off of the Scoreboard (and even less off of the ever diminishing environmental challenges). Even then, the Scoreboard only offers 3 Re-Rollers from a single space with just a few spaces across the game board. Those 3 Re-Rollers are easily consumed in just a few minutes on ONE (1) Challenge. There is no other way to get Re-Rollers in Fallout 76 as of this writing.
Gambling Triggers and Addictions
The problem with random chance spin and win mechanisms is that they trigger the same exact gambling centers of the brain as any other form of gambling. Because real money is involved in obtaining Re-Rollers, this could cause real actual gambling problems for children targeted by this new Re-Roller mechanism. Unlike the slot machine above, which always wins you something, the Re-Roller has no guarantee you will get anything different from what you already have, which is perceived by the player as a loss. Yes, it IS entirely possible to get the same exact (or an even worse) challenge as a result of a Re-Roller. Sometimes it happens multiple times in a row.
Let’s consider that it costs 50 Atom to buy one Re-Roller. That means that an average player could spend as much as $1 for every 2 Re-Rollers purchased. Because a player might need use multiple Re-Rollers multiple times, it would be easy to spend $5 or $10 attempting to get new daily challenges… every single day. That money adds up in a week or a month or even a year.
As stated above, this unusual move is the first time Bethesda has tied real world fiat money into the purchase of a random chance game mechanic driven entirely by the need to gamble. While there’s no way to win cash money back out of this, using it always means loss of money AND its effect as a gambling device stands. Because the win is considered a “better” (subjective interpretation) challenge, the loss is real money spent on wasted / lost Re-Rollers. This loss of Re-Rollers has the real affect of triggering a gambling addiction.
As a result, the questionable inclusion of this game mechanic is easy to see children become addicted to this system so that they continue to Re-Roll without bounds, just to see what they get… all in an effort to make Bethesda more money! It’s not a simple matter that child wants to complete the challenges. It’s that the addiction causes the child to want to see “better” or “rarer” challenges. Addictive mechanics lead to addictive behaviors… and this Re-Roller feature has a real chance of being abused by someone caught up in gambling addictions. Worse, these games are targeted towards children and young adults who might not understand gambling addiction or the money problems which can result from them.
More than this, it’s surprising that Bethesda didn’t realize that these real world money tied Re-Rollers are actually a form of gambling and put the brakes on this feature before introduction.
Because Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft, that puts Microsoft on the hook for this gambling device. An enterprising lawyer may now see very deep pockets in Microsoft and choose to pursue a lawsuit over perpetrating gambling on minors. In fact, under the eyes of state laws, gambling targeted towards minors is illegal. Bethesda is playing with legal fire here.
Convoluted and Epic Challenges
One thing that has made this entire Re-Roller system far worse and even more addictive is the inclusion of even more complex and convoluted challenges. Most daily challenges included in past Seasons have required relatively simple quest objectives. Go kill a single creature. Fetch 5 purified water. Easy and relatively simple, but also useful items to player.
With this Season, Bethesda has abandoned these simplistic challenges for longer tailed, more complex and even more difficult challenges. Where it might have taken an hour to get through the daily challenge board, it might now take 3 hours because of these newer more complex and convoluted daily challenges.
Weekly challenges have always been long tailed. That means that they might take several days to complete. That’s the point in weekly challenges. Daily challenges have always given only 24 hours to complete these challenges before they reset for the next day. Moving the challenges from maybe 5-10 minutes per challenge to 15-20 minutes per challenge is an odd play, but not when you consider Re-Rollers.
A reasonably experienced player can instantly size up the amount of time a specific challenge might take. This re-enforces the need to Re-Roll long-tailed challenges in the hopes of “getting something better” …. thus, ensuring that players get addicted to this random chance Re-Roller system. Thus, the reason for inclusion of longer, obscure and more complex challenges ensure that players will buy into this gambling mechanism for a “chance” to get something better or faster or easier.
In reality, the challenges ahead of the one being Re-Rolled are equally as complex and equally convoluted, with the exception of a perhaps a tiny few which might be as easy or as useful as those given in prior seasons. A player ultimately has no idea what might pop up when a challenge is Re-Rolled. Thus, the illusion of “getting something better.”
However, it didn’t stop with complexity. Bethesda felt the need to include one more incentive to reinforce gambling behaviors: Epic Challenges. “Epic Challenges” offer higher Score and are, thus, rarer to see from a Re-Roller. Rarity is a concept that will cause players to want to gamble. Because Epic Challenges are considered a low chance “win”, players will be incentivized to consume Re-Rollers multiple times until they get an Epic challenge.
Therefore, this Epic Challenge system “rarity” encourages players to Re-Roll every challenge on the daily (and weekly) boards simply to get Epic Challenges. Doing so could cost the player $20, $50 or even $100 real cash money to achieve… being required to Re-Roll 6 challenges per day and up to 12-20 Weekly challenges. Expensive AND addictive.
Way Cheaper to Pay for Board Spaces
On the Scoreboard, Bethesda has included the ability to pay 150 Atom to advance one space. For example, if you’re at space 99 and you want to complete the board, you could simply pay 150 Atom and avoid the hassles of performing challenges to gain the required amount of score.
Let’s equate this with Re-Roller costs. The purchase of three (3) Re-Rollers costs 150 Atom, the same amount it costs to buy one board space. Consider that three Re-Rollers on daily challenges cannot provide you with any amount of score close to completing a board space by itself. The board space might complete if, for example, the score amount given for a challenge is 150 and that also happens to be the amount needed to advance to the next board space. That also meant you had completed many previous challenges to get the progress bar to the point of being almost completed.
To put this in perspective, for only 150 Atom, the gameboard will advance an entire board space (adding somewhere between 1000 and 3500 score) OR you can pay 150 Atom for three Re-Rollers in the hopes that you can replace one single daily challenge and receive maybe 100-200 score. In other words, paying for just three Re-Rollers at 50 * 3 = 150 Atom is between 10x-35x more expensive than simply paying that same 150 Atom to advance a full board space. Thus, there is zero value in paying for Re-Rollers when you can pay for board spaces. Bethesda understands this.
Gambling Targeted Towards Minors
There’s a reason why gambling establishments require people to be age 21 to play. First and foremost, it’s the law. More than this, children shouldn’t be gambling. Unfortunately, video games can’t age check before each use. There is no way to exclude a system like Re-Rollers from players under the age of 21. The only way to avoid such a situation is if such a gambling system is not included at all.
This is why so many game developers have since removed real cash money based random chance loot box systems from their games. It’s also questionable why Bethesda has now chosen to include one in Fallout 76. Bethesda has most definitely crossed a line here; a line that shouldn’t have been crossed.
Ultimately, this Re-Roller system is likely to be seen for what it is, a gambling system strongly encouraging children to gamble by the use of Bethesda’s “Epic” challenge strategy, strongly appealing to “rarity” and “miss out” child behaviors. Gambling systems should never be included in products used by or, more importantly, targeted towards minors… particularly gambling systems when tied to the use of real cash money.
Bethesda, if you’re reading, you might want to quickly retain legal counsel as this Re-Roller system is likely to blow up in your face once again. That, or you quickly need to consider its removal from Fallout 76.
Gambling Addictions / Get Help
If you’re a player who is susceptible to gambling addiction, you should not play nor fall prey to Bethesda’s gambling encouragement. Instead, please get help. It is strongly recommended to steer clear of all such gambling mechanisms included in video games; mechanisms which trigger gambling addictions and encourage you to spend real money on them.
If you’re a parent reading, you should limit your child’s play of Fallout 76. Better, stop their play altogether until Bethesda removes this gambling device and stops encouraging players to pay real cash money on random chance gambling devices.
No video game should ever make money off of the backs of children encouraged to ostensibly gamble with real money. Gambling should always remain in places like Las Vegas or Atlantic City, where people who physically travel there have made the conscious decision to gamble and are of legal age to do so.
Can this be corrected / Solutions?
[Updated Mar 18th, 2023] When this article began, this author wrestled with the idea of adding a solutions section and decided against it. The simplest solution seemed for Bethesda to remove the feature from the game entirely and be done with it. However, I’ve since decided to include this section, only because it may help out other developers considering adding “games of chance” to their game… particularly when those games of chance are tied to fiat currency and in games where children (aged 17 and below) already make up a very large portion of the player demographic.
When you’re building an adventure game like Fallout 76, where the primary objectives are to explore and experience combat situations, adding games of chance (like the Re-Roller) as ways of raising additional money is problematic and possibly illegal in some parts of the United States. Basically, a game developer should never raise money by targeting children with games of chance when tied to fiat currencies.
The big mistake Bethesda made here was to tie the purchase of a Re-Roller to fiat USD money. To rectify this situation, Bethesda would need to untie this entirely. Get rid of Re-Rollers purchased through the Atomic Shop and replace the purchase of Re-Rollers to vendors located in the game world using one of the many already established in-game currencies, such as Scrip, Gold Bullion, Stamps or Caps. These in-game currencies are earned, not purchased. For a gamer to obtain these currencies, it only requires time, not real cash money. In fact, there is no way to pay for these currencies with real cash money using any in-game mechanism by Bethesda. However, that doesn’t resolve the problem over the fact that Re-Rollers are a game of chance included in a game title targeted towards children.
Instead, Bethesda needs to reconsider the idea of swapping out one challenge for another entirely. For example, get rid of this “game of chance” mechanic entirely and replace it with a buyout option. Instead of being required to “roll and pray for something better”, the player can simply buy out the challenge by using in-game currency. Pay some amount of caps or scrip or stamps or bullion and the challenge is instantly completed. An in-replacement buyout option gets around the problem of gambling and games of chance entirely.
The other option is to simply include more challenges… more than are actually needed to complete the game board. If the player misses a few challenges, no big deal. Though, the buyout option is the best solution as it gives the player the option to complete all challenges if they so choose simply by playing longer and earning more in-game currency.
Should a buyout option be tied to actual fiat currency? Perhaps. One thing is certain with the buy-out option, it cannot in any way be considered a potentially illegal form of gambling targeted at children. Though, bilking children out of money for the purposes of such “buy-out” mechanics is still considered dubious at best. Including games of chance in similar fashion to a slot machine, on the other hand, is problematic all around when an excessively large demographic of players consists of ages 17 and below. The only way such games of chance mechanics should be included is if the developer has a way to absolutely 100% exclude 17 and younger from participating in these mechanics.
To date, I don’t know of any game developer that has found a way to do this reliably… or at all! The best way to handle the inclusion of “adult” gambling situations is simply not to include them. If you want to operate games of chance via fiat money gambling situations, then spend the money to construct and open a real casino in Las Vegas.
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Remembering the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas
Back in the late 90s and into the early 00s, the Las Vegas Hilton had a Star Trek attraction called The Star Trek Experience. This attraction morphed some over the years and added new features, but its first attraction remained its most impressive. It closed in 2008. Let’s explore and remember this amazing attraction.
Star Trek at the Las Vegas Hilton
The Las Vegas Hilton was a casino and hotel not far off the strip at the south end. Down at this end of the strip and at the time you’d find hotels like the Stratosphere, the Sahara and Circus Circus. Though the Las Vegas Hilton wasn’t on the strip directly, it was not far off of it across from the Las Vegas Convention center.
To combat its off-the-strip location, it employed various marketing practices to entice would-be gamblers to head to this hotel and casino. In that effort, in 1997, it enticed Paramount to build its Star Trek Experience attraction at the hotel where it remained in operation until 2008. I actually liked this casino, not strictly because of its Star Trek area. Today, this hotel is no longer named the Las Vegas Hilton and the Star Trek Experience no longer operates there having lost its lease. The hotel was later briefly renamed the LVH and is today known as the Westgate Las Vegas Resort and Casino and received this rename in 2014. It no longer bears the Hilton name.
However, back in the early 2000s, The Star Trek Experience was something to behold.
Star Trek Experience
This experience was like none other that I’ve visited. When you first entered the hotel where the attraction lived, the Star Trek Experience was to the left. The hotel was to the right. There was also a bar to the immediate right. In fact, the entire casino portion of the hotel around the entry way was entirely space and futuristic themed. This included everything from the carpeting, to the beams to the lighting and even the slot machines had a futuristic theme. The Hilton did up this area right and it entirely looked appropriate with its space theme.
As you entered the Star Trek Experience, the entry way consisted of basically a museum of Star Trek props, video screens running, large starships were suspended from the ceiling, including the Enterprise. As you made your way into the area, you came upon a desk. This is where you bought tickets to enter the show. When it was just the Star Trek Experience alone, you had two ticket choices: the museum alone or the museum and the experience together.
Whichever ticket you bought gave you admission to mill around the museum and look at the props and use the interactive exhibits. The museum encompassed mostly the entry way and ran up into the upper level. The Star Trek Experience had two levels. The upper level, which the museum had ramps and/or stairs to lead you to the queue line. The downstairs included various gift shops and Quark’s restaurant and bar. We’ll talk about the downstairs a bit later.
In the museum, one of the interactive exhibits was a pseudo functional replicator. Of course, it didn’t replicate anything, but the screen in the well area simulated the replication of food and drink items. It was interesting, but it was also a little bit cheesy in quality… as were many of the interactive exhibits. They really weren’t cutting edge when this museum was in operation. The museum portion of the Star Trek Experience wasn’t really the reason to go there. In fact, I found the museum portion to be of such average quality that it kind of set off warning bells that the actual experience itself might not fare much better (at least when you’re a first timer). In this case, it is very much a don’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover situation. The Star Trek Experience show part was well worth every cent of that ticket price… at least to me. The museum, on the other hand, was a rip-off that I wish that I could have skipped. Unfortunately, you were locked into buying both with one ticket if you wanted admission to the “show”. To me, it was just a way to boost the ticket admission price.
The Experience Itself
After you made your way to the back of the museum, there was a queue line where you would queue up for the next show. The shows ran about every 15 minutes or so. This meant you could stand in line for up to 15 minutes for the next show, assuming you were in line at less than the number they admit per show. The show itself could only house maybe 15-20 people. I don’t recall the exact number, but once they counted enough heads into the show, the line closed off to wait for the next show.
I visited the show maybe 3 or 4 times while it was open over the years and I think I had to wait one time for the next show because of the head count situation. If you had intended to visit the show at certain times of the day or on certain days, you could encounter larger crowds. If you went on some weekdays, you could breeze through the line into the next show.
All the while you’re standing in line, there are TV displays talking about various Star Trek stuff, sometimes showing excerpts from the TV show or the movies. As you move to the head of the line, there’s a monitor that talks about the safety requirements of the show itself. The museum extended down the queue line hallway which housed props and costumes from characters such as Lursa and B’ator and various Spock outfits from the then recent movies. While the museum portion was interesting enough for the first time visitor, it was simply wallpaper on subsequent visits. It wasn’t even very impressive. I can’t recall the museum updating its contents or remodeling during the entire run of The Star Trek Experience. I could be wrong about that, but that was entirely my impression of the museum area. I personally would have been just as happy to skip the museum cost entirely and jump right into line.
Once you were let into the Experience, you were led down the hall into a small blue room with an interesting lighting concept. You were asked to stand on a line. I believe there were 5 yellow stripes down the center of this rectangular blue room. This meant there would be 5 groups of people each standing on a line. Everyone was situated so that you were standing in the center of the room not touching any of the walls. If you inadvertently leaned on a wall or were touching it, one of the staff would loudly request not to do this.
Once everyone was situated on their line, we were directed to look up and forward to a screen which ran a video that began the entire Experience. Mostly, it discussed safety protocols and not leaning against walls and blah, blah, blah. It was a mostly cheesy video that really was nothing more than what the staff had already told us about standing on the lines. In the middle of the video, the lights begin to flash and there’s a bunch of audio noise as if the power is going out and the whole room plunges into darkness. And… pitch black it was. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. There was no light anywhere.
Suddenly, there’s a huge whoosh of air flow all around. It wasn’t gale force or anything, but it was a startling cold breeze that didn’t seem to come from any specific direction. Then, the floor and ceiling lights come on and… we’re now standing in the center of a transporter room. A literal round, brownish transporter room. The circular room with a circular ceiling, light in the center and all of the paint job of a Next Generation transporter room. It was uncanny. Gone was that small blue room with its yellow lines and in its place was an honest-to-goodness transporter room.
The effect was uncanny and astounding. It was the single thing that made the entire Star Trek Experience worth its price tag. I could have walked out of the Star Trek Experience right at that point and I would have felt satisfied.
But no, the show had only just begun. Two people dressed in Next Generation jumpsuits walk in and one explains that we were transported and intercepted on the Enterprise. The show proceeds on the premise that one in the crowd is related to someone on the Enterprise and that gave the whole show its “story”. As we are led from the transporter room, we are led onto the bridge. This is where the whole story derails a bit. Randoms transporting onto the Enterprise are not likely to be lead to the bridge due to the possibility of takeovers. That’s a breach of protocol. Instead, we likely would have been led to a cargo bay large enough for a crowd of our size or perhaps some place like Ten Forward. I digress.
Anyway, we are led to the bridge… and, a marvel that bridge was. This TNG Enterprise bridge set reconstruction was amazing and entirely spot on. From the wooden arch in the back to the seating just below to the helm control seats in front of the screen. The lighting was spot on, the paneling, the paint job, the leather on the seats… everything was as spot on as I could have ever imagined. It was simply an amazing bridge replica.
Because the story needs to progress, we are again lined up either around the back of the bridge or around areas where the ‘actors’ could do their thing without obstructions. The view screen begins showing a ‘transmission’ about the “heir” being transported aboard for safety and a bunch of blathering ensues between the screen and the actors. The hired actors ranged from decent to downright bad. It all depended on the show. Most of the ‘actors’ were hired due to their height and weight proportions… not so much for their acting abilities. I can guarantee you every single person wearing those TNG jumpsuits looked immaculate in them. They could have easily been an extra in any TNG episode. Everything about this part of the show was high quality. From the costumes to the communicator on their outfits to the pips. Everything was nailed perfectly. In fact, it was so perfectly designed, the show could have used one of these bridges in a pinch had they needed to film there.
The concept of the show itself was really its weak point. The story was designed to enthrall the audience, having them become active (sort of) and unwitting participants. It worked to rope the audience in, but the story was just not that great… and the next part bears this out.
As the whole bridge scene ends, we are led out of the bridge into a oversized turbolift. Once we’re suitably situated into the “turbolift”, the whole thing rocks a bit, the lights flash, there’s some sound and an announcement during the commotion and then it all subsides and the door opens. Not a terribly convincing effect here, admittedly. We’re told while all of the commotion ensues that something is firing upon the Enterprise. At this point, this is where the magic kind of dwindles a bit. As we’re led out of the turbolift, we walk down a hallway that looks more like a hallway on DS9 than the Enterprise and then into an open area, presumably a Shuttle Bay where there’s a shuttle craft parked waiting with the door open. There are also visible EXIT signs along the walk which completely break the magic and which were presumably required by law. As I said, the magic kind of ends here. The shuttle bay area wasn’t that well designed and the shuttle interior looks like a cheesy motion simulator, which it in fact is.
At this point and once we’re in the motion simulator, the “experience” concludes with a ride in a movie based motion simulator that sways, rocks and jerks in time to a movie. The difficulty with the “movie” is that I always found it to be blurry and not a great experience. It was filmed and I believe it actually used many from the TNG cast, but the overall story just wasn’t that great. Additionally, the simulator’s movements were overly herky jerky. If you were one with back or neck problems, you’d want to skip this last part of the ‘ride’ entirely. This part was extremely hard on even people with healthy backs. Again, Shuttle Crafts would have been designed with inertial dampeners and, in fact, you probably wouldn’t have felt much movement at all with the inertial dampeners operating, even when diving and banking and whatever other screen movements were going on. In reality, the entire rocking, swaying and jerking motions were entirely unnecessary and pointless. As I said, the magic dies pretty quickly once you get into this cheesy motion simulator ride.
If the show had ended on being transported back out at the end, that would have been something I could have found to be a befitting ending. At the end, when we exit the shuttle craft, we’re back on Earth and the room looks like a standard building interior. We are led to an elevator and are deposited to the gift shop and restaurant area below the attraction.
The entire show experience lasted perhaps 15 minutes all told, most of it being the movie at the end. The sets built and costumes used were all spot on. The actors were of average quality, many of them you could tell had been doing it for far too long. What I mean by this previous sentence is that when someone performs a script too frequently and constantly, the performance can suffer from being fresh or genuine. Instead, most of the actors seemed too rote even though they stayed fully in character. Though, the actors all being height and weight proportionate certainly made the costumes look all the better. There was certainly not a single overweight actor there. That didn’t excuse the rote performances.
Gift Shop and Restaurants
After the final elevator deposited us into the gift shop area on the lower floor, we were left to shop at various stores. I recall there may have been 3 or 4 different gift shops with Quark’s bar and restaurant being the primary food place there.
While I did eat at Quark’s once and the food was typical for a mid-high-priced American Bistro like TGI Friday’s or Chili’s, the reason to go there was simply for the ambiance and the unique menu. The bar itself did resemble Quark’s bar on DS9 without Dabo. Though, I think it would have been more appropriate to build Ten Forward over Quark’s. While the area downstairs was themed DS9, the shops themselves looked more like a mall shop than it resembled being on a futuristic ship. On the other hand, the wares being peddled ranged from cheap crap to middle of the road to high end props. It depended on the shop.
I didn’t buy much from these stores because nearly everything was way overpriced. Even Quark’s was overpriced for the type of food quality. As I said, the only reason to eat there was its atmosphere and its unique bar drinks. As for shopping, I always liked to look at everything in the shops, but look only, not to buy. Of all of the times I visited, I think I may have bought perhaps one or two small items.
Costumed Actors
In the shop area, you’d also find additional actors in various Star Trek dress. Some were dressed like Klingons, some dressed like Ferengi and some dressed like TNG officers, male and female.
As I understood it, the people working these “roles” were actually hired as actors by Paramount. In the Experience attraction itself, these people actually had speaking roles. Downstairs it was all free form. You asked questions and they would ad-lib answers in their character. Mostly it was for photo op purposes. I recall that you could only take pictures in the shop area, but I could be wrong about photography even in this area.
Photographs were entirely off limits throughout the attraction and the museum. Though, many did sneak pictures here and there.
Behind the Scenes
Later during the run of The Star Trek Experience (toward the end of its life), the show began offering a Behind the Scenes / “Making Of” ticket purchase. This was separate from and unique to the original show. Instead of going through the show like normal, in between the shows you would take a tour of the set behind the scenes while a show was in progress. You would get photo opportunities on the Bridge itself that you don’t get during the Experience show.
The behind the scenes also showed how the gimbal setup worked for the transporter effect. Basically, the entire blue room was on a gimbal / fulcrum of sorts utilizing creative lighting, sound and set movement. In about 10 to 15 seconds, the entire room (walls and ceiling) sans floor moved swiftly upwards. The “transporter set” round ceiling and walls quickly moved into place just below the now raised room. When the lights are brought up, it’s as though you’re now standing in the transporter room. The effect is uncanny and astounding. It’s even more astounding when you realize the engineering involved in getting this to work so seamlessly, quickly and silently. The behind the scenes showed a much slowed down version of it to show how the effect was achieved. Amazing engineering.
The gust of breeze was an unintended side effect of the room volume being raised up so rapidly. It wasn’t designed as part of the effect. When something that large moves that rapidly, air is displaced. Because the air movement heightened the transporter effect as a happy accident, no effort was employed to get rid of it. Even after knowing how the transporter effect was achieved, subsequent visits, at least for me, were just as mesmerizing. In fact, the entire transporter effect was the entire reason to visit The Star Trek Experience. The rest of it was all gravy. The transporter effect was worth the price of admission alone… which is why I wished they had utilized it twice. Once to start. Once to end it. The cheesy motion simulator was a big letdown after all that had come before.
In fact, the transporter effect and the bridge were the two most immersive and amazing portions of the attraction. Unfortunately, everything after these two segments, the immersion begins to fall apart, almost completely falling apart while being escorted to the “shuttle bay” for the final segment. As stated above, the legally mandated lighted EXIT signs were one of the biggest immersion busters, when you’re supposed to be aboard a starship in space. Yeah, that just doesn’t work.
As part of this tour, we were also taken below the motion simulator, but we had to remain there for the duration of the entire operation of the motion simulator room. This is where the lion’s share of time was spent on this “Behind the Scenes” tour. I’d say we spent at least 8 minutes down below watching the craft rock and lurch. Because of the amount if time we had there, the tour guide was able to completely explained how this motion simulator worked. It was technically impressive, but the problem I had with this motion simulator is that it made no sense in the Star Trek universe. When riding around in a shuttle craft, the inertial dampeners would have reduced the motion of the craft so much that short of an intense blast, you wouldn’t be able to feel the motion of the craft at all no matter if it banked, dived or performed any other maneuver. In fact, the motion simulator’s motion was so sudden and so violent at times, even people with perfect backs and necks could still feel out of sorts after having ridden in this simulator. Anyone with a bad back should have completely avoided this “ride”.
I completely “got” that the attraction creators felt that need to have a “ride”, but that shuttle simulator was entirely the wrong choice for continued immersion. In fact, I don’t think this attraction even needed that “ride”. A standard movie theater modeled to look like a Holodeck would have been sufficient. They could have even had a few actors move in and through the Holodeck to “act” the final movie portion.
The Borg Invasion
Around the time the Behind The Scenes tour began (maybe a little before), the Star Trek Experience introduced a new show called the Borg Invasion. This show was even more of a letdown than the final motion simulator. In this one, you enter a room and you sit in a standard movie theater type seat. A 3D movie begins playing and the only thing that happens with this is a light motion to the seat itself. The seat cushion piece also goes up and down in addition to vibration.
The experience was, in fact, so bad compared to the original Experience that I find it hard anyone could have greenlit the idea. It was an average experience that was more akin to seeing a movie in a theater than having an experience. Even when the Borg Invasion began, the original Star Trek Experience continued to operate. You could still experience the transporter effect and visit the bridge.
The Overall Experience
The best part of the Star Trek Experience was definitely the transporter effect. It was so well done and so convincing that everything else around it pales in comparison. I do wish that they had given more thought to the story line around the show. The “being an heir to Picard” (or whomever) idea was such a stretch that it felt clumsy. Though, the sets, costumes and the primary effect were top notch. Even the downstairs shop area was particularly convincing as a set inside of DS9.
I do wish the original Star Trek Experience was still in operation somewhere. The show would need to be retooled a bit and perhaps updated for Discovery, but that transporter effect still boggles the mind as to how impressive it is (or was).
If you have visited the Star Trek Experience in the past, please recall your experience below in the comments. If you formerly worked at the Star Trek Experience, I’d like to hear from you as well. Please comment below. To avoid any copyright complications with Paramount or CBS, I am avoiding the use of any Star Trek imagery in this post. Please enjoy this post without Star Trek images.
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