When I was in High School, I worked in an arcade for two years. It was slowly dying because after home video game consoles, arcades have been dying a long, slow death, unless they are in a resort or otherwise get secondary customers from something else. Working in an arcade mostly just involves having patience with really spoiled kids. Most interactions are "I want the RC airplane", "That is 10,000 tickets, you have 10, so do you want the tootsie roll or the plastic vampire teeth?" The one upside of working in the arcade is that even as a borderline on-the-spectrum person, I developed a large amount of patience and the ability to talk to children, to where I am constantly told I would make a great father.

The other, more practical side, is that crane games do have an adjustable difficulty/odds. It is dependent on the knowledge and motivation of the worker. But if the arcade guy knows enough about the machines, you can bribe the worker to make the crane game work in your favor for your child. I did this once for a father that wanted to make sure his daughter won the giant teddy bear she had her eye on.