Last year, the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals (DIA) ruled the Trestle Corp.’s arcade-style “game of skill” actually is a game of chance that should be considered a state-regulated gambling device.
Trestle officials argued the game simply is an amusement device and the outcome primarily is determined by the player’s skill. Players can win merchandise vouchers they can redeem where the game is installed.
Trestle sued the DIA over its ruling. The arcade game at the center of the dispute offers two themes, Duck Game and Bug Crazy, which both have three phases. Polk County District Judge Samantha Gronewald recently ruled the first phase involves no skill and truly is a game of chance. Phase two requires some level of skill but Gronewald said chance “still dominates the outcome” of that phase.
Phase three, she said, clearly is influenced by a player’s skill or knowledge. Therefore, the judge ruled, the inspections department correctly concluded Trestle’s game must be registered with the state as a gambling device since two phases are dominated by chance. Trestle appealed that decision to the Iowa Supreme Court. It has not yet indicated if it will hear the case.
In court filings, Trestle compared its game of skill device to “the quintessential amusement device, the Cherry Master 8-Liner, which is a mainstay in bars and taverns across Iowa.”
According to DIA Director Larry Johnson Jr., however, the Trestle device’s randomized ordering and game value determines which players will win a prize at the end of the game. “Unless a player is fortuitous enough to encounter positive-value prize screens during play of the game, player skill or knowledge is relegated to, at best, a secondary role in producing a successful outcome,” Johnson ruled.
