It doesn't seem like there should be much incentive to manipulate the skee-ball game itself since the owner can just adjust the ticket payout to meet a pay-out

It doesn't seem like there should be much incentive to manipulate the skee-ball game itself since the owner can just adjust the ticket payout to meet a pay-out %. Since skee-ball has "high entertainment" value, i.e. the player has fun playing, the payout can be lower: https://frank-thecrank.com/fine-tuning-arcade-game-room/ https://frank-thecrank.com/fine-tuning-arcade-game-room/