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Comment by ordinaryradical | Hacker News Reader

I think if we could wrap our minds around what is happening psychologically in these games, most of them would be off-limits to children.

What's interesting is that we've decided to define gambling according the rules of the game—in reality, "gambling" is probably more akin to a psychological state that can be induced by many different rulesets and experiences.

Mobile games today are largely thinly-veiled attempts to induce this state in children through various Skinner Box mechanics in order to get at their parents' wallets. Fine.

But the real question is: what happens to the mind of an eight-year-old if they have a gambling simulator in their pocket every day? What happens to their neurological development after five years of exposure to this "gambling" state?

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I think this is an important point. The fact that some countries have started to impose regulation against some of the tactics these gaming companies use (like Belgium banning loot boxes[0]) suggests that this is starting to be recognized.

I'm a big fan of video games, but games that are essentially thinly-veiled attempts to get people addicted and extract money make me queasy.

[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43906306

On a side note, I find it extremely interesting that that same law you mention explicitly sidesteps an even older form of "child gambling" in the form of trading and collectible card games.

I feel these games are less dangerous than gambling is. It seems to me gambling has a greater ability to suck money out of peoples pockets. It's also the case these games are doing nothing magic the gathering hasn't been doing for decades.

There is zero reason these games should not have 13+ restrictions however. Under 13 and you're too young to play these games. Don't care if this means there's a bit of a double standard.

I don't know. Magic the Gathering, while flawed, is a real game that can be played with skill. These online "games" have barely any game in them at all; it's very telling that in many of them you essentially spend money to bypass the tedious parts, which is actually all there is (as well as buying trinkets, skins, etc).

If there's anything to compare these kind of "games" with, maybe it's precisely with online gambling. They are thinly disguised online gambling, which makes them worse in my book.

Speaking an ex- and now current MTG player, it most definitely has a strong gambling aspect to it. If you've hung around box openings and such, you'll see the same highs and lows, especially right now when an IN PRINT card can and will retail for > 1000 USD.

I made the "sad" joke to my kid who loved arcades like Dave and Busters/etc. while growing up that the ticket games are kid gambling.

If you look at the last 10 years in those places, the "gambling" games basically are taking over an ever-increasing amount of floorspace. Many games may as well be slot machines for all the interaction and experience they give.

Underrated comment IMHO. Those "casual"-games look like a gateway drug to gambling addiction to me. They borrow mechanics from games usually found in casinos and it is frightening to see how we let our kids play these games without much thought.

Many of those games are actually implementing gambling with their virtual currency. They have events where you buy an entry ticket using the in-game currency then either double/triple-up or lose-it-all as the result of some random event.

I'm surprised this is even legal in the US, and not caught for app store TOS violations. It seems they've simply replaced the concept of casino chips with virtual currency. They do have some 'gameplay' outside of this but it is not much different from the various frills on video slot machines.

As long as you don't have a way to exchange back for cash, it's likely protected under all the same laws that make Chuck E Cheese legal.

And a lot of these basically copy the 'packs' mechanic from collectible card games, so those would have to be affected too, by any new law.

That's the beauty of it, they don't even have to hand money back to the user.

The trick is to make the user perceive value in whatever digital artifact their are providing. In the eye of the user it then becomes the same as money.

Make the user invest their time into the game. Time is money right? Create fake rewards for arbitrary actions. Then when they are properly hooked, ramp up the difficulty level to a limit where just paying a bit of money would make the game as fun as it was during the evaluation phase.

This is sort of like what advertising does to people in real life.

No really.

An ad convincing me to try X energy drink at least results in me getting an energy drink.

Games like this are selling you on a worthless digital item.

The idea is that advertising often gets people to buy things that are bad for them (like maybe an energy drink?) that takes up resources to produce. Maybe people buying virtual digital items is better for society than buying a brand new Corvette.

Countries have already started banning some games with such mechanics, like loot boxes; e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43906306

> But the real question is: what happens to the mind of an eight-year-old if they have a gambling simulator in their pocket every day? What happens to their neurological development after five years of exposure to this "gambling" state?

This. Absolutely this. And scary as hell.

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