Change Game was the name of two separate, short-lived lottery games. The game was available in Michigan and Georgia in the early 2000s.
Though separate games, both operated on essentially similar procedures. The idea was for lottery customers to buy other items, and use the "change" from the purchase for a Change Game ticket. Players bought computer-generated tickets with alphanumeric selections. The cost of each ticket ranged from 25 to 99 cents. Many players bought tickets for the 25-cent minimum.
Winning tickets were selected by computerized drawings; three winning numbers were selected for each drawing in Georgia, while Michigan selected six winners. The prize pool for each drawing was 50 percent of sales, with each winner's share dependent of the wager for that ticket (e.g. for a particular drawing with a 25-cent winner and a 99-cent winner, the 99-cent wager won almost four times that of the 25-cent wager.) There were no lower-tier prizes, although the basic idea of betting under $1 for a ticket could have been applied to concepts that would have allowed multiple prize tiers.
Initially, prizes were in the thousands of dollars. The games rapidly lost sales, however; by the time each game ended, winning tickets were only in the low hundreds.