The casino in your pocket | Hacker News Reader

The casino in your pocket

blog.curtii.com

347 pointsbaggachipz252 comments

Having worked in the f2p games industry for a decade, nothing is as you perceive. Your entire reward stream is scheduled down to the coin, in spreadsheets written by people like me. I know how much you have today and how much you will have tomorrow.

Any reward presentation, assume there is a loot table behind it. You see 4 cards on the screen, but there may as well be 1 big slot lever; cuz no matter where you tap you're doing a single prng rand and getting what the loot table says.

The loot tables aren't at all what you expect, they skew heavily towards 'booby' prizes cuz that makes it easy to predict your progression. The screen might show you 4 cool things you can get alongside 1 lame prize, implying 20% odds; but the sum odds of those 4 cool things will be <5% and most of the time you're getting a predictable lame drip.

The one thing working in your favor is a 'pity' counter. Every time you get a booby prize the pity counter goes up and leads to another rand call. If you succeed at beating the pity counter, it'll give you a good prize and reset the pity counter. The net effect is that I can program the reward stream such that you're guaranteed a good item every 50 pulls or whatever. Some games are just straight with you about this, others aren't.

During the onboarding flow, which could be designed to last months depending on the game's age, your entire reward schedule will be painstakingly controlled down to the coin. Not a single rand call in sight.

My advice is to play these games if you understand all this and have friends to play it with. They've got good hobby value, on a per dollar basis. I mean, have you seen the cost of golf? If you don't get how the monetization works, and you're alone, there's healthier hobbies to spend your money on.

Do you ever regret working on this kind of software?

I played F2P games for a number of years and spent probably thousands of dollars on one. I don't regret it. I made a lot of friends, one of whom I still hang out in real life, learned leadership skills, and it was a pleasurable pasttime.

I don't think it should be demonised.

That still makes you a "social drinker" in this context. We need to hear from the 30 rack a night folks to get a fuller picture.

They said they've spent "thousands" on a single mobile game.

We might just have different standards, but that's past "social drinker" status to me. I don't know anyone in my social circle (online or offline) that have spent that much on a mobile game, and my social circle games a lot.

How many thousands does someone have to spend to move past "social drinker"?

The difference seems to be whether its social or alone. I've never spent anything on microtransactions/f2p, but I've certainly spent money on alcohol. It's a world of difference spending $100 in a night with good friends, and $50 on a night alone at home.

Alcohol recovery meetings are absolutely full of people who have to say "I thought if I wasn't doing it alone it wasn't alcoholism." The social context of use is only one factor, it can't be used by itself to determine if the use is a problem.

IDK, it's not really relevant to my point I don't think. It sounds bad to me too but you're not going to argue an addict into believing they're addicted, even if they are. My understanding of gambling addiction isn't that sophisticated but I think that sort of use still puts them firmly in the minor leagues of use.

Anyway though an essential mechanism of addictions is that they are dynamic. You can interview large groups of users of any drug (and also probably gambling) who will attest to its benefits in their lives. Even if they are currently correct, some of them will later become full blown addicts. It doesn't mean they were wrong at the time, just maybe overly confident about why it suits their lives.

A common AA dark joke is that "high-functioning isn't a type of alcoholism, it's a stage in it." A lot of normal users will end up addicts, a lot of mildly problem users will progress. AFAIK the same patterns show in gambling addiction which is imo one of the major problems with these super accessible entry points into it.

> They said they've spent "thousands" on a single mobile game. We might just have different standards, but that's past "social drinker" status to me.

Assuming “thousands” means 5000, thats 416 per month. Taking an average cost of 10/drink (5 for beer, 15 for cocktail - this skews higher in major cities, lower out of major cities, lower still outside of cities), thats ~8 drinks a week.

I regret choosing to continue the GPs use of "social drinker" to establish the "level" of spending.

If you spend thousands of dollars on a mobile game, that is dramatically outside the average (of my experiences).

how do you make friends from an online mobile game?

would make friends over chat. I had some friendly interactions with other Hearthstone players, and could see how we might have established friendships (I did playing WoW, though the game was the glue and I only have the good memories of those shared experiences now).

I finally pulled the plug on videogaming, though, because I found it too compelling; when everything else pales in comparison, and all I think about is the game, and after playing I don't feel very good (as opposed to after reading, for example), it's time to recognize my limitations and stop. I'm still riding out the withdrawals, as autumn is a time where I feel especially drawn to that escape, but I'm confident it'll get easier and I'll continue to thank myself for making the leap.

I do need to actively remind myself that my experience is not universal, and that videogames can be part of a healthy and/or social life.

"Gacha" games typically have some kind of "guild" system (often as another ploy to increase stickiness and engagement) and many better guilds will have Discord servers.

Demonized? Maybe not. But these games should be 18+ like any other gambling product.

No, I think F2P is just another way to fund game development. There's no indication that it will cannibalize premium games. So everyone can play games the way they want to play them.

Mobile gaming created an entirely new sector and doubled the total revenue of the games industry. It did it by finding people who weren't playing games, and giving them games to play. I think a lot of the panic around microtransactions is a response to the demographics shifting away from a small group of self-identifying gamers, and investors paying proportionate attention to the demographic trends.

The two markets of course influence each other, but I view that as a net good which drives innovation in both spaces. Nobody is forced to spend money on video games, so if you don't like a game's business model you don't have to spend any money on it. If others agree, it will flop; and the next generation of games will take history into account.

> doubled the total revenue of the games industry. It did it by finding people who weren't playing games, and giving them games to play

Found a way to skirt regulation and get more people hooked on slot machine type games who previously couldn't be reached due to access or legal issues.

paypal (originally): we're not a bank (we only offer payment services)

uber: we're not a taxi service (we only offer ride booking; and our employees are independent contractors)

airbnb: we're not a hotel service (we only offer short-term rentals)

f2p: we're not gambling (we only hook whales on slot machine-like games)

Has the future-self of gambling addicted eight year old been forced to spend money on video games?

> So everyone can play games the way they want to play them.

This is simply not true if a game has addictive features built in. And you know that by now, I am certain.

I think hate of micro-transactions comes from the value perspective of those who choose to not participate. More traditional games are pretty cheap if you compare them and spending on f2p type of games can rack up. To substantial numbers. When talking about hundreds or thousands spends you could get dozens or hundreds of very decent traditional titles for that money...

Maybe part of the fear is that those consuming traditional games would end up spending lot more per game and that is not entirely unreasonable...

Is the pity counter stored on the server?

The gaming data is all stored server side and subject to the tightest controls imaginable. You would never be able to twiddle bits and get an advantage in the game. Your PI however is sold to all and sundry, as well as being made available in an S3 bucket with no permissions for anyone who doesn’t want to pay for it.

What PI do mobile games even collect? Is it just payment history?

I'm sure it includes as much location data as it can divine, time of day you play, hours you play, anything it can get from too many permissions, etc.

I know at least for Hearthstone, they are fairly transparent about the odds for pulling various cards and even have a pity trigger that gives you the rarest cards if you haven't gotten one in a while (all of this is documented), so it is possible to have a relatively successful F2P game that doesn't lie to the players about this stuff.

Interestingly though, this may be documented, but is it easily accessible? I played Hearthstone in the past and never knew of such documentation.

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/32545

Again, yes it exists. But I was never directed to it until now. So if it exists but no one knows it does...

This is precisely why slot machines are one of the most heavily regulated consumer devices in existence. They simply cannot and will not ever be fair otherwise. Mobile gambling (including "loot boxes") is just another regulatory capture play like AirBnB and Uber.

The money in competitive gaming is also in gambling, I gather, from having briefly worked for a company part of which did video game gambling (and the ownership structure and relationship with various tournaments was about as muddy and twisty as you’d expect—oh and their other big thing was hard-right media, including some radio personalities you may have heard of)

> My advice is to play these games if you understand all this and have friends to play it with.

My advice to law makers is to regulate these games into the ground. Your statements enforce my world view. My kid will not play these games.

Not mobile as far as I know, but Prodigy (prodigygame.com) is allowed/encouraged at my kid's school and has a lot of these traits. There are treasure chests at the end of a battle, gems or coins collected, and a constant reminder that subscribers get more rewards. Many of his classmates subscribe.

Ugh, yes. My kids play this one at school and when I read about the game mechanics I was super disappointed. Luckily they stopped begging me to subscribe eventually since I wouldn't budge.

I encourage regulation. I don't think it will have an existential impact on the industry, however.

https://youtu.be/F9cO3-MLHOM

Regulation is always crafted to benefit incumbents and widen their existing moat.

The problem here is it's a lose-lose situation for the consumer. Either the incumbents push regulation that benefits them at the expense of new business and consumers, or regulations are removed and businesses (new and incumbent alike) get free reign to apply any consumer hostile money making scheme their hearts desire.

Maybe there's a third option?

The latter isn't the dystopia you seem to think it is.

We have plenty of existing rules that are fine for enforcing access to markets.

There are tons of people who want to make great products and tons of people who want to buy them and tons of people who want to make them discoverable.

The issue is that large lawbreaking organizations are actively inhibiting that.

Consumers are good at avoiding consumer hostile vendors when they are actually given choices and opportunities to do so.

You have just described my experience with Diablo Immortal

Off-tangent, but: IMHO all games should have pity counters for random loot drops. With millions of players, the likelihood that someone will flip the coin 20 times and get 20 tails is actually quite high. Just exaggerate the middle of the bell curve and cut off the tails entirely, please, who cares if it's no longer normal? Not the players.

This is the kind of thing people should understand about "modern entertainment".

My moment of realization was when I found out the truth of those "claw machines" that pick up a fuzzy stuffed animal. Turns out the claw itself is rigged so that it rarely grasps tightly.

Reading the owner/technical manual for a claw machine can be a real eye-opening experience.

Honestly I thought you were joking ... but the very first claw machine manual I found details how they lower the voltage available to close the claw with increasing height.

What? Any pointers?

Thank u for your blog. Very thoughtful with helpful references.

Any books u recommend on gamifications?

I don't know of any books on gamification specifically, but would be interested if others do. The Deconstructor of Fun blog is a consistent resource on microtransactions. [0]

For an introduction to game design in the general sense, there is Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design. [1] I think it's better to approach gamification as something that emerges from a holistic appreciation of game design; rather than gamification as a goal in-and-of-itself. But that's the long way. I don't know any shorter.

[0] https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog

[1] https://schellgames.com/art-of-game-design/

Couple years back I joined a paid accelerator program to write a mobile game under the wings of some company. My eyes were opened after having a fun time creating my game when the time came to publishing and tweaking. My mentors from the company explained to me the _requirements_ for it to succeed. Basically every change from that point was about manipulation. In order for the game to be high on the charts it needs to meet very specific metrics so subsequently the game was dumbed down so as much people can "have fun" as possible, levels were tweaked to control exactly how much time people spend on their "sessions". Mechanisms were introduced to limit how fast the game can be played and for how long (without paying). Certain tresholds were introduced where difficulty would be unfairly raised in order to create frustration and at the calculated times fake "promotions" of in-game purchases were supposed to be introduced. Updating the game exactly after getting a positive google review with game rating option - click 5 stars to get a reward and be forwarded to game page to post a review ; or click less than 5 stars and just have the pop-up closed without forwarding. Even thogh my game wasn't a simple clicking and getting rewarded and I put a lot of work into making it fun, challenging, dynamic and generally _mine_ I was sucked into the same situation as everyone else on the mobile games market. My game lost all the appeal to me and I couldn't keep it up. Creating another exploitation machine takes all the fun out of gamedev.

Why doesn’t anyone who tells such stories also reference the game and the company that made it? Wouldn’t it be good to call out the actors explicitly?

It's a small industry and the walls have ears. Don't want to reduce your ability to get another job in the industry I guess

Reminds me of this must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4

Sometimes I wonder what is is about specifically mobile gaming that makes this sort of thing so much more prevalent. Like it is very far from absent from PC or consoles, but it's still a bit different.

Tinder and Bumble implement many of the same patterns. I expect it’s a matter of what the company feels it can get away with while maintaining their preferred brand image. Nintendo is famously protective but even stalwarts like Disney seem to be chasing breadth over quality these days.

> Creating another exploitation machine takes all the fun out of gamedev

This is simultaneously completely unsurprising and also discouraging. ;-(

This is pretty screwed up, because it kind of trains your brain to be a gambling brain. To crave the instant gratification, the high of risk taking etc.

I think the time has come when android and ios should make a special versions of their online shops for children and teenagers and simply ban those types of games from those shops. This will at least prevent children from having their brains rewired. Of course this will remove the vast majority of games from the online shops, but so be it.

I remember my experience with these types of games. I wasted a lot of time and got a lot of needless frustration but I never once paid those bastards a single cent. There was a game called Candy Crush Saga. It was very popular in its day. Their in game super power currency was something called "lollipop hammers." They made one candy disappear. It seemed a pretty simple game, assuming the game boards (i.e., the candys) were randomly generated, but of course they weren't. They were carefully created so that they present problems that are very difficult to solve under the game's usual rules but were easy and downright delightful to solve using a lollipop hammer.

I would look at the gameboard for a long time and imagine all the great combos I would achieve, if I could only get rid of a single pesky candy, but alas, one had to use a lollipop hammer for that. I actually ended up having a lot of respect for the designers, it was not easy to design a board that would be incredibly difficult unless one candy was removed but if that candy was removed, it would all solve itself in an explosion of combos and extra points.

I was very proud that I solved so many of these boards without using a single lollipop hammer. But my reward would always be a board that is even harder and where the temptation to use the hammer was even greater. Eventually I decided that this is simply torture. I did not mind hard puzzles, I liked solving hard puzzles, but the temptation of the lollipop hammer being always there and me having to constantly use willpower to avoid clicking on those hammers made the whole experience miserable.

So quit and deleted the game, but I can proudly say that I never paid for a single lollipop hammer and I left 8 of the 10 hammers you get for free unused. I hope some random King employee looked at my cancelled account with so many puzzles solved and yet so few lollipop hammers used and felt a little pang of defeat. But I doubt it.

Apple Arcade allows these types of games and removes all monetization like this. The games are still kinda predatory in their frustrations, however there’s no coin to spend. You just randomly get items and that’s it.

So it's exposing those games for what they really are: not-fun time wasters.

So I tried Bloons TD6 on apple arcade, a game which has very heavy monetization strategies, thinking ok, maybe the apple arcade version is finally playable without spending money - and no, they literally just removed the in-game store but haven't adjusted the curves it takes you to earn anything so if you want to unlock anything prepare for a VERY long grind.

The Apple Arcade and Netflix versions give you double the Monkey Money as the microtransaction version. I agree they should have changed more, but it's not true they didn't adjust it.

Wait, really? It's been a while since I tried it, maybe they've changed it(or maybe I'm just being stupid) - either way, I guess I'm wrong then!

Reviews for the PC version of Triple Town on GOG says the same thing. They removed the option to spend real money, that was part of the popular mobile version, but they did not replace it with anything else, so supposedly you have to grind forever to get anywhere.

Pity since are some mobile games that look like pretty good games. If only all the built-in gambling was removed and the game re-balanced (and drm-free) I would be happy to buy them, for my phone or desktop. But that is almost never an option.

Situations like this are very illustrative of the fact that, despite industry claims to the contrary, this kind of monetization is not "optional". It taints the whole game experience. Just like ad breaks imposed a specific format on television shows before streaming (e.g. plot cliffhangers that anticipated ad breaks), microtransactions fundamentally alter the design of most games that include them - whether you buy any of the microtransactions or not.

> I think the time has come when android and ios should make a special versions of their online shops for children and teenagers and simply ban those types of games from those shops.

IMHO this shouldn't [have to] be any of Apple or Google's business. It's a parent's responsibility to parent their child, not some conglomerate's.

>It's a parent's responsibility to parent their child

Most won't. Call it lack of time or attention, ignorance of the problem, apathy... ultimately parents can't be aware of everything. We have shit like micro plastics in the water to contend with.

What's the effect on society?

Every time you stack on more crap to worry about, more parents will fail to do the right thing. That’s just how life is.

Policing electronics and internet access is a huge pain in the ass that wasn’t a concern at all, not that long ago, and more-recently was a ton easier than it is now. I don’t even control all the devices in my house, some belong to the kids’ schools that for some reason won’t stop giving them goddamn computers. I can solve these problems but it’s a big pain, and most parents realistically cannot. It doesn’t help that all parental controls are pretty bad, usually for no good reason.

It's an easy statement to make: "Parents take care of your kids"

Which is interestingly subverted by "Can't raise my kids if we don't have enough money to eat" leading to both parents working, sometimes multiple jobs, and the kids left to their own devices/daycare

The older I get, the more I'm reminded pat/easy/black and white solutions just flat don't exist.

The fact that I'm in my 30s and still have to sometimes show ID to buy booze points to the fact that society doesn't really agree.

Societies have been raising their young collectively since time immortal

You need car manufacturers that propose models with seatbelts so you can choose a safe option. After some years anyone agrees seatbelts are great and then they become required.

Responsible parents could choose a platform over another based on what they want for their children but that’s only possible if this option exist. It’s a mental health issue versus free market business, and we know what side wins when it’s not regulated.

Apple lost that "shouldn't have to" when they decided to parent society by using theft as an excuse to serialize parts and prevent third party repairs.

Do you think that it should be legal, or illegal, for people to sell drugs to teenagers? Genuine question.

Genuine answer! You've made me reconsider quite a lot, actually. Intuitively I'd say yes, it should be legal to do that. But then, I would consider that a violation of property, because really, a child is unlikely to understand the consequences of a herion addiction. But then I suppose nobody addicted to herion really understands the consequences of addiction, or they wouldn't buy herion.

Which almost makes me reconsider my entire political standpoint. So thanks! I can't answer your question, but I assure you, you have me thinking.

To be perfectly clear, most addicts understand that their addiction is killing then, but caring about that pales in comparison to the addictive urge to continue using. It's not some cerebral choice- once addicted, you are no longer in control of your body, or it's urges.

With that said, we as a society do have a responsibility to protect children - free access to heroin (for instance) would be incredibly harmful to children, who have not formed the ability to properly assess risk. Allowing for unfettered access to heroin for adults is much more complicated. Given how easy it is for most adults in America to access the drug, I would argue we are already contending with many of the complicated factors of unrestricted access already. How to deal with those problems is something I don't have many good answers for.

> most addicts understand that their addiction is killing them

Of course, yeah, I meant it more in the "no rational actor would choose to use heroin" sense :)

We're all irrational actors, though. Various life events drive people towards drug use. It doesnt have to be a rational decision: a split second moment of desperation is all it takes. And heroin is just _that_ addictive.

Google + Apple's responsibility as store operators is to label clearly + unambiguously the features of the product they are selling.

If the apps offer gambling real money for in-game progress, they should say that upfront.

Children become the people I have to share society with. If their education drops bellow a certain level I'll be affected.

It might sounds like a 19th century preacher talking, but it's in everyone's interest that your fellow citizens aren't tempted into vices. It really makes for a shitty society when everyone is gambling and addicted to brain altering substances.

Ah, but you only notice it if you yourself is not addicted to the aforementioned brain-altering substances. Please take the blue pill and stop straying from the line already.

I upvoted this comment because it seems like an opinion that is not uncommon, and I want this visible so others reading the responses have some context.

I do not agree with the opinion that the only responsibility with child-raising lies with the parent. Schools, businesses, government, random people on the street; my opinion is that it would be best if we all felt an obligation to help young people learn and grow into healthy adults. If not an obligation, then at least a shared value. There are so many people I will never meet, and it still feels right to support their well-being. I could see this perspective still being a selfish one, based on my experiences around the world and feeling enriched by a diversity of cultures and perspectives.

Not today, Reagan.

Deregulation is not the answer. Its a bad hack to claim "personal responsibility" on societal systemic issues.

Gambling, and control and regulation of, is one of those societal systemic problems that can kill communities.

This describes my frustration using Tinder. Every mobile app, regardless of its purpose or theme, has become like this.

> I hope some random King employee looked at my cancelled account with so many puzzles solved and yet so few lollipop hammers used and felt a little pang of defeat.

Nope, the low paid employee in scam-center somewhere in Balkans, Eastern Europe, or South Asia doesn't care. This is not a tournament against some super mind, it's addictive money drain run by lowlifes.

One thing to be thankful for is the Apple privacy changes have absolutely wrecked their business model that essentially requires targeted UA spends to go “whale hunting”. It’s really interesting to hear the reaction on mobile oriented dev podcasts like Deconstructor of Fun even though I have little sympathy with these predatory business models.

> I think the time has come when android and ios should make a special versions of their online shops for children and teenagers and simply ban those types of games from those shops. This will at least prevent children from having their brains rewired. Of course this will remove the vast majority of games from the online shops, but so be it.

Amazon did this with their Kids+ service, at least they did 5-10 years ago. They had a selection of popular apps with all the monetization removed. My daughter and I played a lot of OG Plants vs Zombies as a straight game, really fun. I later installed the public Google Play version to revisit it, and it felt completely different, with all the gates and upselling we avoided back then.

> In a casino, any rational adult expects this.

Whoa, no way we don't. I do expect that while the game has a house edge in a casino, if something seems random (roll of dice, draw of cards) then it's random in the way it seems, e.g. that there's a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a 6.

I'm pretty sure that's regulated in most places. That online casinos and casino-like games rampantly cheat is another matter, I do expect that but I also think the people making those things are the scum of the earth.

It is regulated. If it looks like a die in a game of chance then it is a fair die. If it looks like a deck of cards, it is a fair deck of cards. This is written into the gambling laws of each regulated gaming jurisdiction.

And like most regulations, these rules exist precisely because someone tried exactly this scheme at some point. And the regulators saw it and said "Oh hell no" and made a rule. As the saying goes, regulations are written in blood.

Source: Casino game developer and mathematician for 20+ years.

normally it is something like: it looks like poker (single player) but with some bonus side game/bet added to add more edge to casino, where it tries to give you an illusion that you have more chance.

Does it apply to video slot machines as well? Is there some leeway?

It applies to all regulated gambling devices in a jurisdiction that has that rule. Virtual dice/card decks must behave like a fair version of their physical counterpart. And they basically all have that rule because Nevada has it. Every manufacturer wants to sell in Nevada and they only want to make one version of their software, so even if some places doesn't have that rule it's highly likely that the game still behaves that way anyway.

The majority of game mathematicians work on video slot machines. These games have somewhat complex payout structures, seeing that they may have 40 or 50 "lines" (directions in which identical symbols trigger a payout), one or more "scattered symbol" prizes (payouts based on the appearance of a minimum number of special symbols, regardless of lining up), wild symbols, multiple progressive jackpots (individual and shared), one or more bonus games, free spins (often at an increased payout multiple, with the possibility of triggering jackpots), and possibly more gameplay features.

Incorporating all of these features into a single games with an acceptable "hold percentage" (theoretical percentage of wagers that result in casino profit) that is still fun to play that gives players a feel that they have a good chance of winning and generates repeat play, is a difficult task that every slot machine vendor is trying to achieve, and the mathematicians are tasked with balancing frequency of payouts with amount of payouts to keep players playing.

Right now Aristocrat Gaming is the most successful, they have the most titles (and the top spots) on industry-wide slot performance surveys.

> Casino game developer and mathematician

That sounds like a kind of incredible job description to me, what does it mean exactly to be a casino game developer?

Sounds about as exciting as being an actuary. Or probably less so.

I'd rather be a mathematician making boardgames or cardgames, because they are allowed to have strategy. Casino games are by and large really dumb.

What value are you adding here by shitting on another poster's job? Just because it isn't something that interests you personally, is it necessary to announce that?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37664414 for a more considerate and nicer expression of a similar sentiment.

I'd describe it as being a mashup of voting machine development with game design. Gambling is a form of entertainment for most people who do it. When they go to a casino they vote with their dollars on which games they find entertaining. But we can't send our games directly to players, we sell to casinos. And every single one gets tested and approved by and independent regulatory board whose rules create a lot of boundaries/limits on how creative our designs can be.

And the mathematician part is exactly like being a "fun accountant" for the game. We set your fun budget and make sure the player (randomly, on average) never exceeds it.

I did gaming math in Vegas for what I believe to be the biggest gaming math consultancy in Nevada (at least at the time). The games were divided between Table, Slot, and Video Poker. I did table games, because I find slot and video poker math to be boring.

Each assignment to me I was provided the rules of the game and the payout table. It was my job to determine the optimal way to play the game and calculate the house edge if you played with the optimal strategy. When I turned in my assignment I only provided the exact house edge. The owner of the business worked independently to determine the house edge as well, and if our numbers matched then he was confident that it was correct. If we had different numbers then we had to dig in to see who made a mistake.

I found table games fun to work on because of the variety of games people came up with, and it was mostly fun to determine the optimal strategy.

The owner of the company was very ethical. He attempted to convince clients to not spend money on introducing new table games. He would tell them that there was about a 1 in 1,000 chance that they would be able to convince a casino to let them do a 3-month trial run, and another 1 in 1,000 chance that the game would outperform blackjack in terms of dollars earned per square foot per month (not necessarily because it isn't a good game, but just because people love blackjack and are more wary of a game they aren't familiar with (it is intimidating to walk up to a game you don't know how to play, especially if you can't practice online first, and you don't want to feel dumb in front of strangers)).

Slots do fine in terms of making the casino money and plenty of room for variety. They have a high house edge. Video poker has a lower house edge, but a new variant of video poker is just adding the game to the menu of a video poker machine already in the casino. There is also less risk for someone that hasn't played a slot or video poker game because it is just them and the machine and no one to feel embarrassed watching you figure out how to play. So he didn't need to warn people that came to him with those types of games.

For new table games the gaming commission requires a trial period to verify that the drop (the profit the casino made) was statistically consistent with the calculated house edge.

I wouldn't have wanted to do it full time, I did about one game a month on a contract basis. I was going to work on a game a month no matter what to satisfy my curiosity and need to do math (finding a new game in a casino). I found a new game with a mistake that gave the player and edge, shared it with the guy that ran the company and he hired me when he confirmed I was correct.

The exception to his warning about table games was adding side bets to existing table games. That doesn't take up any additional square feet, and the house edge is much higher on all of the side bets, and very easy for the player to understand how to participate in the side bet.

As far as I can recall the only new table game introduced in the last few decades that succeeded was Three Card Poker, and the other poker-variants that spawned from it.

If you want to get into this, you are probably better off working for a company like IGT or Arsitocrat that makes their own games and is constantly trying to come up with new ideas and testing them.

as I understand it, they are allowed to get pretty creative with the odds on "reel" type video slot machines.

the odds of a given outcome have to match the published odds in the payout table, but the animated reels don't have to be an accurate physical simulation of reels -- they are allowed to make it look like there was a "near miss" of a jackpot for instance.

For online casino, I'm not sure a random Caribbean island has good gambling laws or not.

Exactly! This isn't a casino, it's three card Monte. It's not gambling it's being conned. This should be outright illegal.

The rules for slot machines are quite intricate in many jurisdictions. Ontario for example requires minimum payouts of 85%, no change in payout schedule based on eg patron or day of the week, monitoring of machines, rules around serving intoxicated patrons etc.

https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports...

But then when an app is involved, it's complete lawlessness and we go back to 19th century street scams. The app stores should be regulated so much harder, they are literally running illegal gambling games.

There's some countries that enforce making the % of payouts publicly available for apps. Hope that goes global at very least.

It has been fascinating and demoralizing to watch monetization roll out. To younger generations like my brother, they don't know any different, it's just part if gaming for them.

But at least something like aesthetic loot crates are a sideshow to the actual game. Some games are good at keeping the separate and you can understand that it's just how they choose to fund the game. When the whole game is just a loot crate/gambling mechanism it's just a sad outcome.

If people are dumb enough to consentually waste time and money on casinos, they deserve to lose their time and money. Some might say the government should intervene; I personally don't care.

If the main audience is the uninformed or the desperate, isn't that just predatory behaviour

In a casino, you know what you’re there for and what you’re up against. Gaming commissions have curbed many of the worst abuses with inspections, posted odds, etc.

With mobile gaming you have a free for all that is intentionally exploiting the same neuroanatomy of addiction, but it’s wrapped up in pretty pixels and you can do it anywhere, privately. The industry is too big for gaming commission type controls to work.

I think that mobile game monetization is populated by morally deficient actors and we should consider banning the whole thing.

In a meatspace casino, if someone shows you 4 face down cards, asks you to pick one, and then turns them all up to reveal 3 prizes and 1 "you lose" card, you can be fairly sure you had a 25% chance of losing.

If the croupier used sleight of hand or secret e-ink cards to turn your card into the "you lose" card after you'd picked it, that would be fraud.

The dark patterns and dopamine manipulation are bad enough, but isn't it fraud in this case? They're using a visual metaphor that is a straight-up lie.

In that specific case sure, but Casino slot machines do a loooooooot to present distorted odds.

But they do it within, often, quite tight regulation on game mechanics. People compare loot boxes to slot machines, but often loot boxes are allowed to be much more manipulative than would be allowed for a casino slot machine in many jurisdictions. For example, slots can juice the number of near misses (two cherries, and the third reel has a cherry that's just offcenter), compared to what would arise naturally if the reels were independent. But they might not be allowed to vastly increase the likelihood of near misses just as the player gets to the last few spins before inserting more cash (each spin has to be essentially the same game). Mobile game monetization does stuff like this all the time.

Do you mean people should be held personally accountable for their actions? Next thing you know we might be living in a country full of responsible citizens. /s

People probably should be held personally responsible for defrauding punters, yes.

They are accountable, they lose their money just like you'd expect. But I don't think we should let companies get away with exploiting people either. They have the upper hand, when it comes to exploiting psychology of the everyman.

Like advertisers do? Every day. All day long. We might be in agreement about the pernicious effect those have on society. Education is the antidote, not more feckless laws.

> If people are dumb enough to consentually waste time and money on casinos, they deserve to lose their time and money.

I find this to be a very naive perspective. It’s not how addiction works, and even people who want to stop sometimes cannot. And even if you buy into the belief that we shouldn’t help them, what about their kids? What about the communities around them that are worse for having addicts who are pouring money from their jobs into a black hole?

> I personally don't care.

I’m sorry to hear that, and I hope you can change your mind one day. We’re all going to die one day, and life is better if we care about each other

IRL casinos employ all kinds of tactics to get people in the door, too. Cheap food, "free" gifts, all in the hopes that you'll cave and start gambling once you're in. And then they have their claws in you.

Yes. IRL casinos are also bad.

Everybody and their dog has a vice of some kind. If casinos knew what your vice was, they would serve it up to you with a pretty bow and tell you that the first hit is free.

One problem is a lot of those people spending that money (or should I say their parents money) are not old enough to be allowed into a casino or otherwise gamble. But since it's a reward of bytes and not dollars it's currently legally okay to take advantage of a child the way a casino takes advantage of adults.

>something like aesthetic loot crates are a sideshow

No, they are very much a part of the experience. The anticipation of the reward and the tension build while the opening animation plays is an addiction mechanism. This is why we wrap presents and why “blind bags” are so successful (and also why toddlers will watch “surprise egg” videos for hours).

Aesthetic loot crates are for sure still predatory/addictive, but I think the point here is that they don't directly impact the core gameplay experience. You can still get fragged by a player who's wearing the default skin (and sometimes that's a flex in itself...).

> the tension build while the opening animation plays is an addiction mechanism

Is this why BG3 has this extremely annoying and unskippable dice-rolling animation (technically, the rolling of the dice is the only thing you can actually skip)? Because other people somehow enjoy this?

It’s so bad, that the dice thing popping up induces a feeling of dread and annoyance in me.

That’s there half because it’s a tabletop system and half otherwise there is a break in causality. Just having a random chance of success or failure isn’t very obvious and you don’t see near misses and so on. For most people showing the action is more satisfying.

The underlying system comes from D&D so is full of quite crunchy randomness where results are usually rolled in front of everyone so you get a much more social experience and failure isn’t quite so bad (usually).

My main complaint about BG3 is actually how far they changed it from D&D. My favorite games are owlcat’s two Pathfinder games which is a tabletop system far crunchier than the streamlined D&D 5e.

But you are missing what I said. The information is great, the unskippable animations are not.

Yeah I misunderstood where the dread and annoyance came from, apologies!

At least on PC, you can click a couple times to avoid the animation. I tend to when the outcome is pretty likely (trying to roll above 10 with a +8 modifier for example) but the anticipation is exciting to my monkey brain if it's a tougher roll.

Not all of it, it has about a second before and after that are not skippable. All I do is spam clicks during those damn dice-rolls.

Especially bad when trying to pick a lock ten times in a row haha

Which luckily rarely happens once you get the "advantage on sleight of hand" gloves.

I very much understand loot crates, I meant a side show to the rest of the game rather than tightly integrated into the gameplay. CS:GO for example, some people take the loot crates very seriously sure, but that's on them. Even the crate economy, as big of a market as it is, does not impact the gameplay. The actual game of counter-strike doesn't change based the crates sideshow.

On that aesthetic, and promised satisfaction - I once read some offhand BBS post that catharsis works slightly differently in gambling and other entertainment, such that, the anticipation phase is built up the same, but the release phase is crippled. This is so that the player is only partially satisfied and left frustrated in seek for a deserved full gratification, which closes the loop.

One clear demonstration of this I have seen is the lootbox screen in a pay-once game Vampire Survivors[1], which developer has background in casino software. This one is rather absurd that I almost believe it's intended for cultural preservation.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20pFsokokjo

It's a Skinner box. If the pigeon never gets a reward, it'll lose interest in the key. If it always gets a reward it'll hit the key, but not that much because the reward is always the same and its boring. If the reward only occurs sometimes, the pigeon'll go nuts hitting that key. We're the pigeons, and the "randomness" is constantly being tweaked to make sure we never get bored.

The point is, if the reward not just occurs rarely but were actually-kinda-disappointing, the pigeon gets even crazier than it had been huge jackpots, somehow.

Discrepancy between perceived and mathematical expectation is a big factor in keeping us hooked. So techniques to exaggerate the former are used.

I remember reading about Yanis Varoufakis studying the economics of games for Valve at a time when I played TF2 occasionally. Several years later I went back to play some games and it seemed like a wholly different world with loot crates and markets for cosmetics. My timing may be off, and I suppose the idea was already there. But hearing someone talk about markets inside popular games was a bit concerning.

gamification?

No, this is illegal use of casino algorithms and payoff psychology / slot machine psychology, outside of regulation, restriction from exposure to children, without disclaimers for gambling problems and hotlines.

The middle-tier issues I have: the same issues that used to exist with gambling and introducing it officially: moral concerns over degeneracy, the family impacts of gambling addictions, the regressive cost nature on poor/middle class.

What I'm really concerned about: outright cheating. There is implied probabilities involved here, and the apps are not doing the implied distribution. Sure, go ahead and point to the fine print. There is a reason gambling is so heavily restricted and regulated. These games are acting like they aren't subject to these laws.

What I'm really really really concerned about: the use of gambling payoff/reward psychology/neurotransmitter biology in games that CHILDREN are being subjected to, or even worse, they are ACTIVELY targeted by the "free to play" games, by the "click/watch ad to keep playing" ads in the FTP games.

This is OUTRAGEOUS. This has to end. This has to be strictly regulated. Many of these free to play games, which even cursory experience educates you to a world where "whales" that are paying thousands of dollars a month or more. These games are among the most popular/heavily downloaded games in the app stores, with hundreds of millions of revenue, which Apple and Google are feasting at the trough on.

Absolutely outrageous. Apple and Google should be ashamed of themselves, and fined billions of dollars over this. Why Europe has not woken up to this, which is the only real hope in the short run for substantial fines, is beyond me.

> Why Europe has not woken up to this, which is the only real hope in the short run for substantial fines, is beyond me.

Thing is, regulations do exist but as long as Apple and Google are not forced to comply at least partially in these regulations, nothing will ever change.

Take the GDPR as an example:

- Europe says: "Your app must comply with the GDPR if you want to be in the European market."

- Apple says to app developers: "It's up to you to comply with local laws."

Obviously, Europe can only go after companies, which have a presence in the EU, such as the big tech ones.

Now how would anyone ever enforce regulation such as the GDPR for app devs from China, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, ...? There's simply no way. There is no one responsible for that. There is no customs office checking goods (apps) imported to the EU. And the same is true for casino apps.

So, the solution might be to force Apple/Google to comply with all local laws for all apps in the stores. Sounds like a lot of work, but that's the only way. After all, if you buy in-app-items, Apple/Google are the sellers, not the app developers. If you think about it, it's odd that Apple and Google get away with this, because they effectively "sell" these apps to end customers.

I think the logical conclussion is to force app store providers to do the enforcement. After all, the app store providers are monopolists in their environments. I guess, one day, if Apple, Google and company (all those crapware stores from e.g. Samsung) don't enforce it themselves, an EU regulation will come.

Perhaps the effective solution will be per country app stores, the natural next step after alt app stores are made mandatory by EU.

You cannot just take payments from citizens of the USA or Europe into some unregulated country, forever. Sure, some fly under the radar, but most gambling-like games (including puzzle games) belong to some conglomerate.

See online casinos. They exist since the 90s, before apps. In the USA apparently you can only run a casino in Las Vegas or some places with a soecific license. Yet the online casinos still exist, but operate from jurisdictions that are off limits from the FBI or whatever (something like Cayman Islands or whatever). However the owners are identified and will be detained when entering US soil.

The internet is not some loophole to break the law. If you are taking a relevant amount of money, even in small payments, they can get back to you or at least block you.

> GDPR for app devs from [...] Brazil

It might be worth noting that Brazil has a law similar to GDPR: Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD). It's not as strong as GDPR, though.

What would the counterpart be if a product was found not to be complying with hardware regulations, such as an electronics device that was found to be a fire risk? Who gets penalised/fined, the seller, the importer, the company who made it or all three? I don't know, but if it's the importer or seller then Apple/Google should absolutely be made to regulate this in some way seeing as though they are taking on that role in the pipeline.

> Apple and Google should be ashamed of themselves, and fined billions of dollars over this. Why Europe has not woken up to this, which is the only real hope in the short run for substantial fines, is beyond me.

Perhaps EU hopes that sideloading would address issues like this.

Some countries have taken steps to curb loot boxes, Belgium comes to mind and games like the Diablo mobile one aren’t even available to play there because of the regulations.

> What I'm really really really concerned about: the use of gambling payoff/reward psychology/neurotransmitter biology in games that CHILDREN are being subjected to, or even worse, they are ACTIVELY targeted by the "free to play" games, by the "click/watch ad to keep playing" ads in the FTP games.

Toy adverts push the same buttons. I don't know how you regulate this effectively except (as toy adverts are) retroactively.

> Many of these free to play games, which even cursory experience educates you to a world where "whales" that are paying thousands of dollars a month or more

I think whales are usually adults, though. They're wasting their money, just as they waste it paying for a superchat so an influencer will say 5 words to them, but as far as I know this isn't a kid thing, unlike the other points you make.

> It has been fascinating and demoralizing to watch monetization roll out. To younger generations like my brother, they don't know any different, it's just part if gaming for them.

A step worse too: they are being trained that being bombarded with adverts is acceptable. Genuinely heard (couldn't avoid hearing, the voices were fairly loud) on a train the other week a dad explaining to his charge how he should “watch the adverts all the way through because he'd get an extra coin to spend in the game” and that if he went to a particular screen he could find more adverts to watch. No idea what game it was he was playing.

Pay-to-win is winning, and people are encouraging kids to pay by opening themselves to a little light brainwashing.

[Not a parent myself, intending to never be, before anyone weights in with “you don't know how hard it can be to keep a child entertained”: I know full well, and it is one of the many reasons I'm planning to stay childless, my position on this is an informed one!]

>A step worse too: they are being trained that being bombarded with adverts is acceptable.

We have all been trained that way. The cities in the developed world where you can step outside and walk around for a bit without seeing billboards can be counted on one hand.

Though in the case I heard the viewing was less passive: the kid was being encouraged to seek out adverts for more in-game whatevers.

No, you're right to be horrified, and I'm the mom of a three year old who will look for things to take apart if left to his own devices.

Current screen policy: only "his" laptop, only videos I've picked out for him (currently, he's into Alphablocks and Numberblocks), laptop gets closed and put up for the rest of the day the instant he whines about having to stop watching for whatever reason.

Wait, your 3 year old has a laptop already?

Not the person you replied to and don't have kids yet, but with the current state of TV, I'd much rather let my child watch their entertainment on an old laptop (or tablet or whatever) that I control rather than a TV.

They can more easily watch with headphones, they can even watch in private if they're introverted, and I'd feel a lot better knowing they won't switch channels without my knowledge or watch adverts for stupid plastic trash.

Children don't actually NEED electronic entertainment of any kind. Kids lived that way for a very long time.

They do benefit from access to technology to an extent though: they need to know about it in order to fully interact with the world they are to grow up into.

At what point this becomes necessary is a matter of much argument. They certainly don't need it in the first few years, but I'd suggest they need to be at least aware by the time they are going to school.

It is difficult to separate this from entertainment, because being entertained/interested/curious is largely how our brains do some of their best learning at early ages.

> Kids lived that way for a very long time.

Be careful with appeals to tradition.

The world doesn't exactly work the way it did a long time ago, so we are not preparing kids for the same life they were expected to experience back then.

It's a strange world. My school district gave my kindergartner (5) a laptop.

My sister was ardently opposed to screens for my niece.

She quickly capitulated when she learned that iPads are magical nannies that will totally occupy your child and give you precious time to get other stuff done.

So "screen but only with approved content in moderation" became the norm.

Why the judgemental attitude?

If I had a child and I wanted to make sure that they could only watch the videos I chose for them then I would have a laptop for them to use, and I could absolutely see myself calling it "their laptop" in casual conversation.

“His” laptop that is locked down to the point that I will be proud if/when he manages to see anything I didn’t put on there, versus all the less-restricted devices in the house.

As soon as he can figure out how to type the password and how to access a browser, it’s his.

For now, it’s a small TV that receives one channel run by a station manager who has a thing for counting and the alphabet.

I shuddered at that. There are times that parents have to resort to screen time to entertain children (e.g. a long train ride), but there are many other less harmful options than adverts or gambling-adjacent games.

You’re talking about mobile games. I have to kids, 4 and 6, and the only games we’ve introduced them to are 1) board games and 2) Nintendo Switch games. This largely avoids the problem (for now!)

Same.

The thing with content is that it costs money to produce, and so you (generally) have to pay money to get it.

I know some parents who have super strict "screen time" rules but let their kids watch (during the allotted time) any random dumb youtube show, or play those shitty iPad games. Those parents are not tech savvy, and they assume that all digital experiences are shit.

In contrast I pay lots of money for Nintendo first-party games because I know (I play them too!) that they are engaging digital experiences with good screenwriting. I pay recurring subscription to streaming services and apps because real storytelling for children DOES exist on devices with screens!

This article employs a common tautological use of ‘algorithm’ I see more often than I’d like. It explains that there is an underlying method to something, explains how the method works, then further clarifies by explaining that it’s an algorithm, with a link to the Wikipedia entry for the word. It’s framed almost as a reveal, as though the rest of the article hadn’t already explained the same thing in other words. There’s some magic to this word that gives it some kind of recursive emphasis - you can provide a completely sufficient explanation for an algorithm without naming it one, and somehow up the stakes by invoking the word all the same.

Another comment, more on-topic: it may surprise some to learn that the ‘crane’ or ‘claw’ games in arcades and rest stops are also games of chance, not games of skill. They are programmed with the value of their prizes, the cost to play, and the operating margin the operator would like to have. The machine handles the decision of who wins, when.

"Another comment, more on-topic: it may surprise some to learn that the ‘crane’ or ‘claw’ games in arcades and rest stops are also games of chance, not games of skill. They are programmed with the value of their prizes, the cost to play, and the operating margin the operator would like to have. The machine handles the decision of who wins, when."

It wouldn't surprise me a little bit if it was true, since it's almost impossible to get any prize using those cranes, but if it is in fact true, it should definitely be illegal. When I see a game in the style of these crane games, I and pretty much everyone believes it is a "game of skill", and if you just get the crane in the right position, it would be able to get your prize. Down here in Brazil those machines are everywhere.

I’m sure there are some ‘dumb’ machines out there but on p8 you can see the basics of how a ‘smart’ machine works [pdf]: https://www.betson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/E-Claw-Ser...

It's all out there in the open if you know where to look, huh.

The claw strength is controlled in software. You can set the percentage of time it's actually strong enough to grip, and even the percentage of time it will lose its grip on an object it's already picked up.

It's true and it's not illegal. (at least in the US) Mark Rober did a couple videos on YouTube about arcade scams. (there are many) They are highly entertaining and depressing at the same time.

I was working in mobile gamedev and igaming. Coming from Europe, I was not that familiar with the real gambling, the one we can see in movies. But I was familiar with mobile games.

Let me tell you, mobile games are much more addictive than casino games. There's more mechanisms to make you addicted, to squeeze the money out of you and everything is sugar coated.

I felt terrible when starting a job in igaming, as I always considered it to be a "dirty" sector. I was surprised to see how many things are regulated. Examples: ID age verification, sometime you need to ping the government API to let them now, there are casino level limits, country/global level limits (can't be exceeded), daily/weekly loss limits, num of tabs opened in the browser limited to 1, max spin time etc.

It's surreal that kids play on an unregulated casino without any winning ods.

Yes, in addition to traditional casino tactics, they also employ false community/social manipulation/ group psychology (aka guilds/clans), bullying/targeting, abuser/savior bait and switch, resource devaluation treadmills, and others

This reminds me of the claw machines you see in malls.

They look like something you can be good at - place the claw more accurately, choose a toy placed at a cleaner angle - but what they actually do internally is randomly give you a (say) 10% chance, if you hit it you will grab the toy (unless you're REALLY far from one), if not you won't.

The illusion is there, but the profit is stable and guaranteed.

Is there a source for that? Has anyone ever reverse engineered the code driving one of these machines? Would be interesting to read about it.

You can just read the machine's manual: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37658844

Also applies to other supposedly skill based games at arcades, like "Cyclone"[1]. Interesting to contrast this to how pinball machines were considered gambling for a while, even though they were not[2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXBfwgwT1nQ

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

Prize game machines (crane games, stacker, etc.) are scams (though technically not gambling since they are predictable?) but they seem to be the last arcade machines standing in many venues.

I was encouraged recently to find that Mountain Mike's chain pizza restaurants seem to have mini-arcades with emulated retro cabinets from Arcade1Up.

Many years ago I worked for a company that offers a very popular in-browser game. The company branched and expanded and had more than 10 games with various levels of profitability, but this game, which was bringing in about 30 millions EURO per month, was the only thing keeping the company alive.

Then they decided they want to try to sell the company to a fund and wanted to increase the revenue this golden goose was bringing, so they implemented a wheel of fortune. You could spin the wheel for free once per day and get some sort of in-game resource, but you had unlimited spins if you paid coins, which, you guessed it, costed real moneyz.

There was a huge uproar from the community stating that the game was now pay-to-win and virtually unplayable otherwise and they had to reverse the change. The company didn’t get sold in the end, but they’re doing fine still

>...which was bringing in about 30 millions EURO per month, was the only thing keeping the company alive.

I am curious what were the expenses. Few things are as simple as they appear, but from the mobile games I have seen, they look like they could be put together by tiny development teams: simplistic (+recyclable) art and rules. Once the foundational app is created, feels like the further development could happen on a shoe string budget: artist to make new cosmetics and/or someone to develop additional puzzles. Presumably minimal server load from the whales to handle converting dollars into tokens.

I suppose the trick is in getting lucky with the one app that happens to hit it big due to some unknowable pattern of the universe. How many $0 flops preceded the blockbuster hit?

I know for a fact that there's at least one company (that I can't name) that offers what I would call "Addiction as a Service".

Their system allows to create n-dimensional currency systems (coins, diamonds, etc), currency conversion rules, collectible management, in-game stores with their schedules, crafting/merging logic, probability distributions (including "dark distributions" like OP's link) and even prices (for profitability hints/warnings). Basically everything a fleecing game needs. They even offer templates inspired in famous games to get you started and tune as you go.

They charge quite a bit, but the "foundational app" upfront cost is much lower: it's limited to UI and a relatively thin business logic that targets their API endpoint (mostly mapping API ids to in-game assets and use or server-side logic).

> I know for a fact that there's at least one company (that I can't name) that offers what I would call "Addiction as a Service".

Ouch. Of course they do.

I don't even know why reading this surprised me at first. With the explosion of mobile games following pretty much the same addiction mechanics but with different skins, it was only a matter of time for someone to package mechanics and offer them in form of a backend service.

The problem is competition to get to the top and competition to stay there. Mobile games companies are machines in optimising user retention, user acquisition and market analysis.

Most spend is on advertisement. The churn rate of users is very very high because it's a time waste game play.

I am assuming they had pretty high costs, more than 120 employees working on more than 10 different games, none of which was profitable. Offices in a high-rent European city for all these people and so on. Then comes marketing

The blockbuster hit was actually the first game, with success never to be replicated

>in-browser game

>euro

InnoGames/Gameforge?

I can't, of course, name the company, but no, none of the two

The Squeal of Fortune was one of the stupidest things that Jagex added to RuneScape.

Vegas machines are calibrated with a certain win rate. The author surmises that this game has something more like a loss rate at pre-determined points.

Would such a machine be legal in the regulated real-world? Or only in the wild-west of online casinos?

Absolutely not. Nevada requires two things that are very important:

1. Anything that appears to be a representation of a physical object or device must behave exactly as the thing it represents. So, like in this case of the article if you have 4 cards, one of which has a rock behind them, each must have exactly a 1/4 chance of containing the rock. Wether this is pre-determined or after the choice is made is irrelevant if the odds are fair.

2. Any manufacturer selling games to Nevada must abide by the Nevada rules for any machine they sell anywhere in the world, so no switching a machine out for something that looks the same but operates differently.

It should also be noted that there is a seperate class of machines called "pull tabs" that are legal in some jurisdictions (often found in places like gas stations and bars) that often present as a slot machine or video poker, but actually work more like a lottery scratch off - the result is 100% pre-determined, and any agency the player appears to be given is an illusion. So, like, if you hit the jackpot on a video poker (like) machine, and get given a royal flush on the initial deal, even if you discard all 5 cards you'll get another royal flush on the draw.

Vegas really is very well regulated. There are some extremely ugly sides to gambling, but if you're going to have it, vegas is a pretty good starting point for how to try and keep things under control.

There's no casino in town that will "look the other way" for a few 20 year olds who want to gamble, because doing it once could lose that operation it's gaming license.

There's no casino that's going to on purpose risk going above the 25% max hold, because again, you could lose the ENTIRE OPERATION.

The rules are rock solid (sorta....simplifying) and heavily enforced, and while at the end of the day all the machines give worse odds than the ATM, there's caps on what you can and can't do.

Somewhat ironically, I'm not sure if it's changed, but if a slot machine shows you a "pick 1 of 3" choice, it's never a real choice. The decision was made before you picked. Every "pull" of the lever determines your payout basically instantly, ALL the shenanigans after that (including free auto play games i believe) are just placebo/different ways of doing a jackpot.

There's absolutely no reason for a casino to cheat - they don't need to, they already have the house edge.

The entire reason Nevada regulations exist and are strictly enforced is that the casinos did, in fact, cheat.

Ehh...kinda?

For the most part, it's because they were cheating the government and skimming funds for illegal businesses and laundering money and not paying taxes on it, not cheating the players (sorta kinda....again summarizing a lot.)

That's like: "There's absolutely no reason for the executive to embezzle - they don't need to, they already have the cushy job."

Cheating means greater profit, and (unless caught) more-reliable profit.

Except they're competing.

If players think they win more at Casino B than Casino A, Casino A makes less, not more.

Unless the same company[0] owns both Casino A and Casino B

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vici_Properties

People don't first decide which casino to go to, they decide to first go to Vegas and then decide which casino to go to. If Vegas's reputation is ruined, overall traffic to casinos in general would decline.

If Vegas were to allow casino cheating (i.e. by refusing to regulate), if Casino A is revealed to have been cheating, then a player who plays and loses at (actually) honest casino B might have doubt (unreasonable as it may be) that their losses are legitimate. They may decide to make a fuss, complain, broadcast to their social networks that their losses were due to casino cheating. Even if casino B was actually honest, casino B now needs to constantly defends its reputation for fair play. At best, this represents an ongoing cost; at worst, casino B will lose all its traffic due to rumors that spin out of control. An honest reputation is indefensible in such an environment.

The most profitable arrangement for all casinos involved is to prioritize long-term profits and cooperate with strong policing, such that Vegas as a whole (and thereby their casino individually as well) is publically perceived as offering fair odds.

And yet people still go to casinos instead of standing alone in the street, so it can't be as simple as that.

If a person was somehow collecting all that mass statistical data in advance and acting upon the mathematical expected return... they wouldn't be a gambler in any casino in the first place.

A "casino" doesn't have a reason, in fact it has no reason at all. The people running it do, and someone with enough power could rig the games and steal from both the customers and the casino, hurting both.

Don't they?

Let's say I rig the slot machines so that they can win on command, and then I hire a couple of actors to come in once every two or three days to 'win' a jackpot. The odds of anyone else actually hitting a win is actually 0 - nada, nothing, zilch. But I can't leave it at zero, if people don't think they have at least a chance, they're not going to throw money at it.

With cheating, I have all the benefits of convincing people into thinking they can win, without actually loosing any money in reality.

Probably a multitude of other sneaky things you can do with an unregulated casino if someone were to put their mind to it.

Tell that to Donald Trump who managed the almost impossible feat to run a casino into the ground, and that not just once, but multiple times [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Entertainment_Resorts

I gambled in Vegas at age 20.

Large difference between "i wasn't caught" and "they knew and still let me"

Vegas is well-regulated, but when you move outside that realm, things get a bit more loosely-defined.

I spent a couple of years in the mid-2000s working in the edges here, so I have a bit of knowledge. Note: I've been out of this industry for at least 15 years, so some of my knowledge might have aged, but I'm fairly certain that it's still true in the general sense.

First, under federal regulations, there are three classes of gambling. First, class I, which is basically, "I make a wager with you over the outcome of a sporting event". So if I'm playing golf with you and I bet you $10 a hole on outcome, that's class I. It's not regulated at federal level, and not generally regulated at state level.

The next class is Class II. This covers things like raffles, and mid-week church bingo. There are some limits, but it's not regulated by the states generally, and not by the feds at all.

Class III is what we think of as traditional gambling. Table games, traditional slot machines, etc. This is absolutely regulated by the states, and only allowed if the states allow it. This is what your Vegas and Atlantic City casinos operate under.

But there are Indian casinos outside of this in these markets operating. How do they operate, you ask? The simple answer is, if the games are operating as Class I or (more likely) class II games, the states have no say in them. And it's very easy to make a lotto drawing, or a bingo card, appear as a slot machine play. All random wins are basically equivalent to each other. If you go to an Indian casino, and you want to play a slot machine, but it's requiring you to wait on another player, you're dealing with a class II machine.

What about class III? Well, states are allowed to negotiate compacts with the various Native American tribes where they allow them to conduct class III games. A number of states have done this. This allows them to run, say, blackjack and poker, as well as slot machines that don't fall under class II. Interestingly, in a lot of jurisdictions, you're still basically following the ideas of class II, but just not requiring competition. So if you go to a casino in Oklahoma, you'll see that you are (most often) playing a game of instant bingo on each spin, or possibly a game of instant lotto on each spin. Because that's what the compact between the state of Oklahoma and the tribes there allows.

But there are still loopholes that allow you, in some jurisdictions, to run slot machines outside of these provisions. Let's say, you're allowed to run raffles that allow up to a $1000 prize on a $1 entry. These are just numbers to use to illustrate the concept, and they vary state to state. So I set up a slot machine that you pay $1 a spin, which is an entry in a lotto that pays maximum $1000, and after the total number of tickets allocated is depleted, will pay the house 10%. Perfectly legal, though local law enforcement in the bible belt in the south may disagree. I've coded a number of systems that implemented exactly this.

Other jurisdictions may allow you to have prizes up to, say, 25x the entry on machines, to allow the legality of the claw machines. This can also be (ab)used to make slot machines.

> If you go to an Indian casino, and you want to play a slot machine, but it's requiring you to wait on another player, you're dealing with a class II machine.

This is all really interesting, but I don't think I follow on this point (and I'd like to understand!)—are you saying that two players are playing on different machines, but the second machine can't operate until the first is done? Are they relying on each other's outcomes to calculate odds or something like that?

Exactly. There is a server which is drawing bingo balls, against a card. Someone is going to eventually win. So if there is only one player, you will eventually win.

You can actually set up a situation where one player is guaranteed a win, which is why the systems will require at least two players.

These shenanigans before displaying the final result can have quite a lot of psychologic effects.

Back when I started programming, I did simulate a jackpot machine in software (no money involved). The final probabilities were fair, but I added a twist while rolling the images: before stopping, the probability of having 2 or 3 of the same image was quite significant... My younger brother was instantly hooked to it. The trick made him overestimate the probability of having 3 images the same, as he was seeing this pattern quite often just before stopping. This made me realize of fucked-up casino can be, while still abiding by the rules

That’s how the real machines work too. The symbols on each reel do NOT have an equal chance of being landed on.

Would such a machine be legal in the regulated real-world?

I live in Spain. I dislike slot machines and, a long time ago, while a friend was wasting his money, I made a quick calculation. Given the number of options and the prizes, if you assumed randomness, one in three coins he inserted would have produced a prize, even the smallest, that was reimbursement.

But that wasn't what happened. It was more of a prize for one in seven coins or maybe one in ten. My friend knew more than enough maths to understand what I told him, but he said he knew, right? (he didn't) and that the question was to wait for the moment the machine was loaded. I realized it was just an addiction.

And yes, at least then and there it was legal.

> the question was to wait for the moment the machine was loaded

"Stacker" arcade machines work like that. It's always possible to win the minor prize (a little plastic toy generally), but if you refuse the small prize and keep playing for a major prize (game consoles, gift cards, etc.), it's impossible to win until the machine has banked enough money for the operator to make a profit.

It's not a casino or falls under gambling laws I assume because there is absolutely nothing to be won.

For some, a casino in a pocket is a cryptocurrency exchange. It's probably even worse to trade with leverage than to click this colorful buttons.

At least children can't sign up for a Robinhood account.

On a trading exchange at least you have the theoretical possibility of winning more than you put in.

For others it's the Robinhood app

At least on the stock market, assuming the Efficient Market Hypothesis, the expected payout is 100% minus fees.

I think there's a major player here that most adults overlook because it's a bunch of kid-created nonsense: Roblox.

This platform is absolutely rife with gambling and scammy currency-spending mechanics, and all of this is directed towards children. You're constantly bombarded with pay-to-win, pay-to-cheat, pay-to-play, one-arm bandit, "donation" requests, "invite your friends to unlock", literally every dark pattern you can imagine... all on top of near-constant copyright and trademark violations.

I'm entirely convinced that this platform only exists because it's too annoying for adults to even scrutinize too closely but they pull in huge amounts of money from this stuff.

I would love to see this analysis applied to mainstream dating apps, which I'm convinced are rigged exactly like casino games. You win often enough to feel lucky, but infrequently enough to keep you paying and pushing buttons hoping to win more.

Funny you say that, Tinder has the exact mechanic described in the article, if you're on the free version once every while it will show you 4 hidden cards to reveal one secret match, but it's the same trick, doesn't matter which card you pick, the API has already predetermined which person it reveals.

This reminds me of when I got an emulator and found out that Toad was cheating us in the Mario 3 power up houses!

Any game that offers a virtual currency purchaseable with real currency (be it coins, diamonds or energy rays) should be avoided. Especially if you have children.

Don’t most games have those now?

Not at all. It's just that they have reached high visibility in some markets - mobile, concretely. It's a combination of marketing engineering and tacit complicity on the part of Apple/Google.

99% of mobile games do. If you want to keep your children away from these things, you don't really have much of a choice beyond not letting them have a phone at all.

One possible alternative to banning the phone or total surrender could be finding proper games for them, instead of these slot-machines-in-disguise.

One would need alternative App browsers for that, the default ones don't allow filtering out apps with in-app purchases since they are too lucrative. Here's one:

https://appapp.io/us/genre=Games;has_iap=false;supported_dev...

See also this site for safe kids mobile games:

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/

Hopefully they will open a store once Apple allows 3rd party stores

Thanks for this! I've been searching for this simple filter (no in app purchases) for a long time. Unfortunately, this particular site is Apple only, so I'll have to keep searching for Android counterpart...

Must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4

If it’s at all comforting, I remember these sort of mechanisms deployed in Neopets (was it Neopoints?) a couple decades ago when I was a teenager.

I remember going on some crazy feats in the chase of neopet points.

Perhaps it wasn’t as damaging because it was limited to a computer and not literally in our pockets.

Some in the WSOP (World Series of Poker) iPad game world (non-cash, just tokens) wonder if the game is rigged to manipulate token purchases, or if the variance is standard.

laughs in programmer

That was a pretty good read. Makes me realize how lucky we are that some games existed before in app purchases. Could you imagine playing chess and paying for an upgraded queen?

Wow. Great question. "Add knight moves to your queen for only 200 coins!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(chess)

There are still lots of great games (mobile and board games) which aren’t like this at all. It’s just that mobile gaming is an awful platform because it has fully succumbed to financialisation.

I remember having an iPhone 5 and the quality of games were pretty good, albeit pricey. I did pay for a bunch of games at the time because I thought that was fair. Coming back to iOS a decade later and the quality of games is unrecognizable from the era I started in. Even Apple Arcade has a lot of stuff that feels like f2p/p2w stuff that is basically mobile casinos.

I tried to give a bunch of modern games a shot and they're essentially slot machines that gate game progress with pulls. I'm glad console and PC gaming hasn't been completely taken over by this, but it is very close.

Looking over the best games for Apple Arcade and it’s… Temple Run, Cut the Rope, Fruit Ninja. Really! That was the peak?

The Pathless. Monster's Expedition was also great, but it's not available any more. And that exposed a nasty detail of Arcade: Once a game isn't “available” any more, all of your copies instantaneously stop working.

Unlike PC and console gaming, mobile gaming's market is practically "Everyone". So there probably are some great mobile games out there, just buried in the charts under what the masses preferred. What's most popular on mobile is going to be a reflection of a very different demographic's interests. Kind of like trying to find the "best" movie from box office charts, you will get a list of the most popular movied, not the best.

The most popular movie today is not ten years old. They have made movies since The Avengers. (Notably, Avengers: Endgame, but less facetiously, a Super Mario movie and James Cameron's Avatar sequel were pretty popular.) I'm not asking for something inventive and genre-defying, just a game that is not literally ten years old.

I started playing Hitman GO again on mobile. Really enjoying that.

Mobile is really tough to monetize the way console/desktop can monetize. If you were to make an app which is identical across desktop and mobile, you would neged to charge less for the mobile version because people don't value a mobile app as much. This is even true in cases where a mobile version is superior to desktop, such as star tracking apps.

The mobile market figured out[0] a way to monetize a customer base where the median will not pay, but the mean will. Unfortunately, the method they figured out is really harmful and really profitable. Profitable enough that other platforms are copying it.

[0] Technically many Asian MMOs were already doing this for a while before mobile apps existed. But it was the mobile market that has researched and data-scienced it into the mainstream monster it is now.

During the whole NFT boom I did stumble across a chess game where you could buy and sell NFT representations of chess pieces which gave you advantages. Can’t find the name of it now but it was a laughably bad concept

It is also a bit sad that these strategies started to leak from mobile games into other platforms. Now we can find console and PC games with random "gift boxes", daily XP limits to force you to keep playing and others.

Not that it should be blamed fully on mobile, it was already getting worse on itself, with cosmetic paid "DLC" that could be (and sometimes is) present on the base game files at release but exists purely for monetization purposes (Oblivion's horse armor) or exclusives limited to a certain retailer.

There are several concerns with dark patterns that we have to pay attention nowadays, specially when children are exposed to these games, which did not exist in the past.

I will just drop this very old Jonathan Blow video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsT-5VSqk8I which was talking about unethical games.

Console and (non-MMO) PC gaming up until the 360 and PS3 was an unusual time of transparent and straightforward monetization. Just pay once and you own the game forever.

If you go further back in time, you have arcades, which exposed children of yesteryear to the same tricks mobile is doing today.

Many people rented games and there were things like satellaview, a subscription gaming service, though it didn't take off.

Game rentals were a way to save money on things you weren't going to play as much, not a way for the developer to squeeze more money out of you. Remember: Nintendo fought tooth and nail to try and ban game rentals in both Japan and the US.

Nintendo is still mostly like that, one-time up front payment for the main game, with infrequent optional expansion packs added for particularly popular games. I played Animal Crossing: New Horizons regularly for about two years of the pandemic, and there were only two possible places to buy anything: the original game purchase for $60, and one optional expansion pack released 18 months later for $25. There were also a bunch of free content updates in between that they didn’t nickel-and-dime you on.

> Nintendo is still mostly like that, one-time up front payment for the main game, with infrequent optional expansion packs added for particularly popular games.

Have you seen what happened to the Pokemon games?

yes; it's ... similar?

Pokémon Sword/Shield released Nov. 2019, a two part expansion released June/Oct 2020. Current costs of £50 for base game, £27 for expansion.

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl (remakes) released Nov 2021. No DLC. £50 for base game.

Pokémon Legends Arceus released Jan 2022. Free content addition in Feb. 2022. No paid DLC. £50 for base game.

Pokémon Scarlet/Violet released released Nov. 2022, a two part expansion released/releasing Sept/Q4 2023. £50 for base game, £31.50 for expansion.

So, a smaller gap between the base-game and expansion, but a comparable price differential.

Now, if you were talking about the quality of the latest games you might have a point - Sword/Shield were OK with a weak story. DB/SP were remakes, but added little to the originals (and arguably took away some things). Arceus was great! A really interesting game. Scarlet/Violet - some good ideas, but very poor execution.

In the old days one would bet in a game of chess an amount significant to ones wealth or your manhood would be in question.

> From a 'Mansuba' - A Shatranj problem had this story:

> There once was a chess-addicted prince, Murwardi, who had wagered and lost his entire fortune in an intense chess session. In his desperation he offered his beautiful wife Dilaram as stake, and was losing the game they were playing for her. In the above position his wife called out to him: "Oh Prince, sacrifice your rooks and not your wife." This her husband duly did and saved her with a combination.

(Unsolicited advice is allowed if the player would have found the moves himself. No one would have dared to suggest a woman could do something a man couldn't)

We've come a long way, or maybe not since now we [pretty much] force people to carry around gambling devices if not an entire casino.

It seems we always end up doing things against our better judgement?

On the other hand the most popular way to play shogi online is an app called Shogi Wars, which has the most explicit pay-to-win mechanic I've ever seen: there's a button you can press to have an AI play out your next few moves for you, and you can pay money to buy additional chances to press the button.

Shogi doesn't have any other sites as modern and polished as Lichess or Chess.com (except for a Lichess port (lishogi.org) which has failed to gain traction), so I think there was a vacuum that allowed something like this to become popular. If people were still playing chess only on old clunky websites then maybe Zynga would break into the market with a hot new chess app that requires Facebook login.

You're gonna be able to easily get these kids to lock into all kinds of financing structures in the future.

Like a five (or even six) figure unsecured and non-discharhable loan given to fresh 18-year-olds for education that often has no market value?

No, people who took those are just morons.

I'll leave it up to the finance people to come up with interesting instruments to take advantage of these kids. Maybe their bank accounts will just become money market accounts that are tied to leveraged ETFs.

I think abstracting away their real life money into a crypto that is worth 1/10th of the dollar is a good way to go. Make that crypto the exclusive currency for their habits (games, social media) so they have no choice but to convert to it. Easy way to part them from their real earnings that way.

There's easy money here if you are ruthless. If you print your own crypto for their habits, you can effectively act like the US Fed. Just inflate away the value of their coins every time. It's a no brainer.

Too many people fell for it for them all to just be morons, but that's not my point. What I'm saying is that young people will make fall for all sorts of scams if the adults in their life (and government incentives) push them in the wrong direction. Same thing for older generations thinking that things like social security was ever going to be more than a Ponzi scheme (similarly, too many boomers fell for it for me to write them all off as morons).

Getting kids addicted to gambling with virtual currencies might shape the structure of the scams, but the idea that Gen Z is going to be uniquely vulnerable to finance scams doesn't track for me.

It's been a meme for a long time that certain majors have little economic value, the entire liberal arts major joke is just one example of this. People make fun of things like underwater basket weaving (and not majors like engineering) for a reason. If someone didn't know the worth of their major and the resultant job prospects, then that's really on them.

I think it's just the opposite. Kids who've grown up with this crap will be wise to the tricks. Those who don't get exposed until adulthood have no resistance. Just like how the younger generation is pretty good at using social media responsibly and prioritizing stronger relationships, whereas the older generation get hooked and spend their whole lives yelling in newspaper comment sections.

Huh? The younger generation lives with their phones attached to their face. They don’t prioritize actual relationships.

That might be your perception.

> Just like how the younger generation is pretty good at using social media responsibly and prioritizing stronger relationships

I legitimately can't tell if this comment is meant to be ironic or not.

Our friend has not visited Tiktok lately or played any of the popular online games. These kids are fucking HOOKED 24/7.

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