‘No way out’: how video games use tricks from gambling to attract big spenders

but how is this even possible? my parents never gave me direct access to a credit card as a child. eventually I got a debit card to spend my own allowance chore money, but if I blew it all in something dumb that was my own problem. no pizza/movies with friends until I built it back up

Shame on me for not locking it sooner. Shame on every goddamn company that knows for a fact this is happening—probably a lot—and prefers to keep robbing people rather than do something about it (say, something ethical—like shut down their company). $100 doesn't mean much to me (like, I'm not well-off enough that I don't think a thing of spending $100, but unexpectedly losing that much every now and then has basically zero effect on my life) fortunately, but that could really screw over a lot of people, in a ruin-their-whole-month kind of way ("why do they even have a playstation to begin with if $100 can really mess them up?!" PS4s are pretty cheap, used, or may have been handed-down for free or very cheap from a better-off relative or friend, and have basically the same store and most of the same games—besides, a planned expense is very different from an unplanned one)

I actually think the opposite. Spending $200 as a kid and having nothing to show for it is a lesson you won't forget in a hurry, but not life altering. We should let kids experience the risks and consequences of gambling while they still have a safety net, rather than setting them loose at 18 when it's for real.

I'm not trying to be snarky or anything. I mean it. It's not a newsworthy number when it comes to modern pay-2-win games.

What's newsworthy today? Let me show you: https://www.mmobomb.com/news/player-spent-3-5-million-lineag...

If you're doubting me, take a look at hobbies like ham radio or cars or golf or whatever really strikes your fancy. The vast majority of hobbies are expensive, they will make your eyes water if you aren't used to throwing wads of money around for fun. Even a gaming computer can run you a few thousand dollars, not to mention the games themselves, and I think gaming is a hobby most of us can relate to.

Another thing I've come to find, from keeping a journal of my own spendings, is that while the total sum might seem ridiculous it's actually nothing unusual when considering the length of time that money was spent over.

To use myself as an example, I've spent somewhere around $12,000 on FGO over a span of about 7 years now. Is $12,000 a huge sum of money? Yes, absolutely. But according to my Excel spreadsheet it's also about $1,700 a year or $140 a month or just under $5 a day averaged out. I spend more than that per month on just costs of living, even just eating out a couple times will cost as much per month. And remember, that's averaged out: I can go for weeks and months without spending anything if the game doesn't interest me.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is, a lot of the anti-video game and anti-gambling crowd have started to sound more like a certain segment of people demanding others shouldn't have fun. It almost sounds like a new spin on "Video games are making violent children!" because that topic has gotten stale.

Is gambling addiction a thing? Yes, and it is unfortunate; some people really do need help from themselves. Irresponsible parents and children who don't know better also inevitably exist, and they too need some safety wheels so they don't trip over too hard.

But responsible adults spending significant sums of money for fun is not and should not be a problem by itself.

This same pattern is behind a lot (if not all) addictions. It's not just a physical addiction or a dopamine rush, and it's not generally the upside that addicts are addicted to.

I'll assert that dopamine is the actual reinforcement in both cases.

> 1.1.4 Overtly sexual or pornographic material, defined as “explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.”

[0] https://www.history.com/news/that-time-america-outlawed-pinb...

This is unlikely simply due to the size of the market. Video games are played by >60% of the population and generate more revenue than movies with hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake.

Uh... it's actually very, very common to cash back from Steam. There is a subreddit for CSGO's real money trading[1]. It has 230k subscribers. And it's just a single game, not the whole steam.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensiveTrade/

They were also designed to replace numbers -- a similar game run by mobsters that took money from the poor. The rates of return of lotteries are much better than the old numbers games.

Of course some states have gotten greedy and have changed the rules to encourage more impulse spending.

A cynical part of me wonders if the hope with NFTs from game developers was actually that it could run around this problem and provide a more direct way to allow monetary payouts without running into issues with regulations on gambling.

Plenty of retirees flock to casinos as soon as their Social Security check clears, then spend it all and go home without selling their grandchildren into sex trafficking. There is a difference between poor people and gambling addicts. A subset of all gamblers (addicts) struggle with rationality and will reach for someone else's wallet when theirs is empty-- and eventually find themselves encased in concrete at the bottom of what's left of Lake Mead. They would do this to obtain more heroin or meth just the same.

You're describing a worst-case scenario. Most gamblers are just poor people, who are poor because they make poor choices with money (like spending it at casinos). The type who trade in functional cars and finance a new truck every time they get a raise, or buy new appliances that cost exactly as much as their tax refund check. Money burns a hole in their pocket, but they don't become the neighborhood firebug. Ironically winning the lottery usually ruins the lives of them and everyone connected to them, since their spending scales linearly with available resources. They're just cows that consume until nothing is left, then they switch from pleasure-seeking to subsistence. They're not intelligent, but they are rational.

Kids don't have vaults full of money, and they have no equity worth loan-sharking for. Their rationality is up for debate, but there's no money to be made in kneecapping or drowning child debtors. What they do have is a surplus of attention. So you keep them engaged through all means available and milk them for quarters as long as you can. Dopamine derived from playing the game is the payout children get. Casino "games" are fucking lame beyond all comprehension, so casinos have to give adults some incentive to play the push-this-button-and-leave-nothing-to-your-children game.

To me, I don't see the situation being any different than traditional arcade machines (some games had owner-adjustable difficulty settings, and I swear some games outright cheated), and yet the current state of things feels more exploitative. Maybe it's the RNG-dependence and not skill...at least you could earn extended time and rewards if you were good at the game. Everything is gacha-crap these days.

I've always been amused that the Spice channel and the like were 100% scrambled by default. Seems like they could have done way better showing the non-explicit parts of movies/shows as a "free sample," then only scrambling the signal with a quick-activation hotline overlay the second the sexy parts start.

This isn't really true for any games that I'm aware of. Some games allow you to sell the skins for money (CS:GO), and for the rest you can sell the account. It's likely against ToS, but unlikely to be enforced. People selling WoW accounts with high-level characters and top-end equipment has existed since I can remember.

> If, as in casino games, there is hope for you to get your money back, and more, there is temptation to play just to cover your losses, which will eventually result in a downwards spiral. That is, you already can't pay the bills, so you take a loan to play more.

That's just someone rationalizing an addiction. It's probably a better rationalization than the people making in-game purchases they can't afford have, but both groups would almost have to be addicted first to even tell themselves something like that.

I don't believe a rational person without an addiction would gamble with their rent money. I definitely don't believe that they could then be convinced the best way to get out of the hole is to keep doing the thing that got them into the hole in the first place.

Once someone has gotten to that point, the money doesn't matter. They'll gamble with money they don't have, and they won't stop if they somehow manage to win enough to break even. It doesn't matter whether they're up or down, the answer is always gambling.

Anyone who has passed a middle school math class knows that gambling is as much of a money pit as in-game purchases, there's just more steps involved. The house always wins, after all.

I think this point is missing the evolution of virtual clout. As a thirty year old I can agree with your point that these rewards are valueless - but I can also see the younger generation that measures social value through virtual presence where skins and appearance can be vital to self esteem. I don't think it's correct to downplay the value that some people see in the reward of these loot boxes and other chance games.

If you align your identity with your virtual presence then failing to keep up appearances can be extremely dire - that's incredibly unhealthy, but it's the way a fair number of folks operate.

Money is a specific representation of the 'want' that drives gambling. That the outcome is getting more money or more some other representation does not matter. All that matters to the human brain is that the 'want' is satisfied.

Gambling becomes a problem when a person is willing to spend a harmful amount of 'input': usually time and/or money. This is either due to a personality flaw or due to manipulation of people into believing that the odds are in their favor, making them increase their input.

There is only not a problem when either of the following conditions is met:

- The 'input' is not at risk of damaging anyone.

- The chance of obtaining the 'want' does not modify the 'input' to become harmful.

- The 'want' is not interesting to anyone.

Here are some quotes from _Addiction by Design_, by Natasha Dow Shüll -- a book I highly recommend if you're interested in this subject:

> Julie explains: "If it's a moderate day - win, lose, win, lose - you keep the same pace. But if you win big, it can prevent you from staying in the zone." [...] "You're not playing for money," says Julie, "you're playing for credit -- credit so you can sit there longer, which is the goal. It's not about winning, it's about continuing to play."

> [Pete says:] After sitting at the machine for fourteen hours, so tired I can barely keep my eyes open, no money in my pocket, no gas in my car, and no groceries at home, I still can't leave because I have four hundred credits in the machine. So I sit there for another hour until it's all gone, praying for me to lose: "Please God take this money so I can get up and go home." You might ask, "Why didn't you hit the cash out button?" That never occurred to me -- that was not an option.

I don't think the importance of the monetary payout is particularly clear-cut. The payin is what does the financial damage, by moving money out of the player's control. The incentives and reinforcement are what get the player hooked -- but perhaps those don't have to be financial? I won't discount the importance of the payout entirely; maybe it's critical to get hooked in the first place? But I also wouldn't be surprised if gambling addiction can arise in games which don't provide to ability to cash out.

The actual bug is that some humans get a tremendously powerful positive reinforcement for success in their brain, no matter what form the "success" takes and they're addicted to that feeling. You're thinking it's about money, but money is just one possible form of success. Winning at a video game is also success.

These people were very useful two thousand years ago, because you can set "Find out what's on the other side of that dangerous mountain pass" as the success criteria. They were somewhat useful a hundred years ago, though there were fewer opportunities, in 1923 nobody had gone to space, but they had gone to the South Pole (although only fairly recently, and one group all died on the way back because their strategy was bad and they got unlucky). Such people are not needed in anywhere near the volume they're available today. So they're going to get addicted to things with success - e.g. video games, and we should try to ensure that the game publishers don't exploit them too much, just as we prevent gambling firms from exploiting this same defect.

But the argument here is that game devs are clearly exploiting behaviors of addiction for their monetary gain, at the expense of the addicts bank account. I think the takeaway is that it doesn't even require potential monetary gain to trap people with addictive behaviors.

I do see what you're saying, I just think you are misunderstanding addiction, it isn't logical in the first place. Gamblers do know the house wins, they still gamble. People know they shouldn't spend all their money online shopping but they do etc.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=46MQ1ZMZ-l4 (0m 55s)

That's from a recent article - not sure if it changed since.

https://apnews.com/article/gaming-business-children-00db669d...

For example, your nanny state comment could easily be modified to describe chemical waste dumping.

"What's insane is that some want to replace the irresponsible CEO's and C-suite execs of those workers with a nanny state."

Well fucking hell yes I do, I want the government to have to power to ruin companies if they negligently damaged or destroyed the environment we all share, for profit, stupidity or laziness.

Government regulations are the only reason we the workers have it as good as we do today. 5 day work week, EPA restrictions, etc.

No, lawmakers are choosing to keep their eyes shut.

The push for legalization isn't about people making their own choices, it's because it's not possible for the government to have this power and not abuse it and harm reduction via regulated production (taking away choices, clearly) and medical supervision.

This argument doesn't apply to video game gambling. Nobody is getting their hit of digital lootboxes from their dealer and the government isn't arresting players for Fortnite possession. You can have all the thrill of random drops without it being tied to your credit card, there are still recovering WoW addicts.

If people en masse suddenly started spending ruinous amounts of money on Yu-Gi-Oh that's a pretty strong case against them. Regulation follows the harm not the principles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

Hold’em (assuming the bets are money, obviously friendly games are possible) is 100% gambling.

> It is definitely a skill/game.

While some regulatory regimes either treat gambling different or not-gambling where a particular criterion for skill involvement is met, that’s not really material outside of consideration of the application of those regulatory regimes.

> It has an element of randomness just like most board games for example, but it's not gambling

Betting money on board games (whether or not you are also playing and betting on yourself), even those with no random element in the game itself (or nothing beyond side/turn-order selection), is gambling, too.

Where there is randomness, even if the game is largely skill-based on its face, playing for real stakes and the selection process it creates will result in games tending to be more dominated by chance than the game structure itself would suggest unless participation is mandatory and matching is random. (Even when there is not randomness in the game on ita face, as random and out-of-game events that effect player performance can’t be eliminated.)

I recall we had a few good looking people regulars who were in movies or TV or models not sure. One woman had on jeans that cost more than I made in a year. Actual diamonds for the decoration on them. They spent piles of money and on drinks.

It was amazing to see especially in small town Canada with a population of no more than 70,000.

And yes our comps sucked mainly due to laws on free booze or encouraging gambling. The odds/payback are industry standard it's all highly regulated here as other casinos. PAR sheets only allow so much adjustment.

As for housing, a collapse in residential real estate values doesn't equate to foreclosure. Lenders can't call in mortgage loans and borrowers have the option to continue paying even if they are underwater.

6. Shopping: Sales, promotions, and coupons are all designed to induce more frequent and varied consumption. Pricing for the same item can be wildly different depending on the store or the day of the week. Attempting to secure the best price is a gamble even after carefully researching your options and making price comparisons.

1. Which family you were born in

2. Literally the fucking weather

So I don't think modern society is that luck-based, relatively speaking.

Most Western, democratic countries select jurors for a trial by one’s peers by lottery and I consider this to be an important aspect of having a more “just” justice system – particularly compared to what preceded this system: trial by one’s betters (a magistrate).

In Ireland, we’ve also also recently started using Citizens’ Assemblies who are randomly selected to make recommendations on matters of public policy to the houses of parliament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Assembly_(Ireland)

The pay once titles are video games.

Which were originally included in packs of cigarettes!

* Once the bottom falls out, bag-holders get burned, but the collective nightmare is over.

that's actually one reason TCG markets don't get cateforized. They don't have a "market price" for any one card. They let the fans set that. There are plenty of 3rd party market places where you can buy a specific card but you'll never find the company endorsing them. They only sell booster packs for a set value. They can give lists of what's in a booster pack and even categorize them by rarity, but they never actually give the card a price.

DotA 2, Call of Duty Warzone 2.0, PUBG, etc.

I am looking forward to Embark Studio's 2 free-to-play games (Arc Raiders, and THE FINALS)

They also don't affect my health as I just play a normal and reasonable amount of time and it doesn't seem to interfere with my life or sleep or heath in any other way that I or anyone around me has seen or said.

Maybe it helps that don't care about loot boxes and battle passes and such? The battle pass (if free) levels up, but I rarely even look at what it does for me.

I just play and enjoy these games for what they are like I did 20 years ago (quake, counter strike, call of duty 1/2, bf1942, unreal tournament, etc). No unlocks, no progression, etc.

Path of Exile actually is unpleasant to play toward the endgame without specialized stash tabs, which cost money. PoE has possibly the most irritating item/inventory management of any game I've ever seen, and those purchased stash tabs make it tolerable. But the total cost of the mandatory tabs is still somewhat reasonable compared to what you can get out of the game.

Denying that there's a problem is one of the reasons that people are being turned off from the church entirely. Yes, plenty of churches have resisted the tide of hatred and embraced inclusivity, and I commend them. But when I accompanied my father to church while visiting him, I was dismayed to find that the new pastor had laced the sermon with anti-gay fearmongering. That's not coming from nowhere, and it is abetted by people who want to believe that there is nothing amiss.