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Comment by creep | Hacker News Reader

> Feel free to exploit young underdeveloped brains to addict them to gambling for profit

Games are designed to keep you interested and engaged-- that's just what a game is. Children's games have included gambling since toys have existed (dreidel, jacks, marbles, to name a few). Children learn about the real world through play, and gambling is a part of that. Risks give benefits or consequences that are often unpredictable. I don't see the explicit benefit of excluding these gambles from children's games.

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> Games are designed to keep you interested and engaged-- that's just what a game is. Children's games have included gambling since toys have existed (dreidel, jacks, marbles, to name a few).

You're not wrong, can also point to baseball cards, magic the gathering or pokemon cards. The key differences today are

1) Instant-availability of the secondary market and third party sites that allow you to gamble with virtual currency you've won.

2) Devs/Publishers hiring psychologists and cognitive behavior specialists to design these loot box experiences to release the perfect amount of dopamine to get users addicted, with frightening efficiency. In comparison your examples are extremely mild.

You could say it's the parents responsibility to educate and protect their children from these practices - but would you say the same about the tobacco industry advertising to children? For me this is the same addiction from profit motive the tobacco industry exploited for many years until they were rightfully regulated.

there "Instant-availability of the secondary market" you're just talking bullshit, there is no such thing, as per your second point so what? do you think pokemon cards people didn't hired "specialists" either? What are those design choices to make them addicted, is a box it opens and that's it. This kind of post is what I hate about NY, people thinking they are so smart, while having quite a narrow/naive/first world view.

> there "Instant-availability of the secondary market" you're just talking bullshit

https://steamcommunity.com/market/search?appid=730

https://steamcommunity.com/market/search?appid=578080

https://gamdom.com/

https://csgoempire.com/

https://csgoroll.com/

https://csgodose.com/

https://csbets.org/

https://flashyflashy.com/

https://csgospeed.com/

First page results from a quick google search, who's talking bullshit

> This kind of post is what I hate about NY

New York? What?

>Devs/Publishers hiring psychologists and cognitive behavior specialists to design these loot box experiences

Honestly, I think this happens in children's television programming more than in electronic games, and I can actually find sources for this if given an hour or two (I used to be very interested in the developments that took place towards psychology around the 60's). If you can provide sources for your claim I'd be more inclined to discuss this seriously, but as it stands it seems unlikely that a small, 5-employee company pushing racing games for children would hire psychologists and CB specialists to advise their games. I am not specifically talking about the example used in the article, but most such games are released by very small companies and independent devs. I think they rely on heuristics and statistics to tell them which games work and why, for sure, but that's just good design.

It's the difference between kids gambling with each other and kids gambling with a professional adult con artists

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