Parents: there's been a rise in child gambling rates

[Underseer]

In recent years, game developers have been getting sleazier and sleazier in their various tactics at squeezing more and more money out of customers after the initial game purchase. Some of these sleazy tactics involve making use of Skinner Box design elements (the same psych flaws that make us vulnerable to gambling addiction).

While these aggressive monetization/microtransaction tactics have been industry-wide, they were particularly sleazy in the world of mobile games, where the games are often free or sold for very little money such that the sleazy tactics are nearly the only money developers made. A lot of people put up with it because the games themselves were free. Personally, I lost my taste for mobile gaming ever since those practices became prevalent.

It was only a matter of time before PC and console game developers took notice of what mobile customers were willing to put up with and started pushing the boundaries on other platforms.

Popular games like League of Legends and Fortnite are completely free and make all of their money on aggressive microtransactions. Games like Overwatch expect you to pay a full price for the game, and then they use Skinner box design elements (e.g. loot boxes) to get you addicted to spending money on useless personalization frivolities like skins, emote animations, etc.

Ever since the gaming industry started getting really aggressive with microtransactions (and I can't stress enough that many of these exploit the same psychological flaw that makes humans vulnerable to gambling addiction), there has been a rise in child gambling rates:

https://www.newsweek.com/child-gamblers-loot-boxes-gambling-gaming-ban-illegal-underage-1226841

Some nations have already started to ban the most egregious of these practices. Of course America is not among them.

So how did the online gambling industry react to all of this?

By targeting ads at children, of course.

https://www.theguardian.com/society...-ad-spend-fuels-fears-over-impact-on-children

Just what we need, right?

Anyway, for any parents on this forum, you may want to keep a particularly sharp eye on what your kids do when they game. If you see that they are buying loot boxes, maybe sit them down and explain to them the famous Skinner box experiment and how game developers can exploit those psychological flaws in everything from Overwatch to those stupid Monopoly game pieces McDonalds gives out every year.

 

[Ford]

Anyway, for any parents on this forum, you may want to keep a particularly sharp eye on what your kids do when they game.

I dunno. Just shy of 10 years ago I was sitting at a video poker machine in the casino at the Atlantis in the Bahamas. My daughter sat down at the machine next to me with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

The thing that bothered me most was that she was still smoking. Second was the drink because her mom's side of the family has a propensity for substance abuse to put it mildly. The gambling? Not so much.

 

[Underseer]

Anyway, for any parents on this forum, you may want to keep a particularly sharp eye on what your kids do when they game.

I dunno. Just shy of 10 years ago I was sitting at a video poker machine in the casino at the Atlantis in the Bahamas. My daughter sat down at the machine next to me with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

The thing that bothered me most was that she was still smoking. Second was the drink because her mom's side of the family has a propensity for substance abuse to put it mildly. The gambling? Not so much.

I don't mean adult children. I'm pretty sure you would have had a problem if your 10 year old was blowing a lot of money on online poker.

 

[ronburgundy]

Anyway, for any parents on this forum, you may want to keep a particularly sharp eye on what your kids do when they game.

I dunno. Just shy of 10 years ago I was sitting at a video poker machine in the casino at the Atlantis in the Bahamas. My daughter sat down at the machine next to me with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

The thing that bothered me most was that she was still smoking. Second was the drink because her mom's side of the family has a propensity for substance abuse to put it mildly. The gambling? Not so much.

FYI, those prone to substance abuse are more prone to gambling addictions and more likely to suffer harmful consequences from severe gambling problems. Those who go into gambling addiction programs are about 3 times more likely to be daily smokers than the general pop.

Destructive addictions tend to transfer from one area to the next. Part of this is clearly due to genetically influenced tendencies, but it is plausible that environment could lead to an addictively compulsive behavior (like gambling using mobile devices) that then rewires one's reward system in a way that makes one more prone to other forms of addiction and compulsion. We don't have enough science yet to know with any confidence, but it wouldn't be surprising if mobile gaming wound up indirectly making these kids more likely to develop other harmful addictions.

 

[Underseer]

Anyway, for any parents on this forum, you may want to keep a particularly sharp eye on what your kids do when they game.

I dunno. Just shy of 10 years ago I was sitting at a video poker machine in the casino at the Atlantis in the Bahamas. My daughter sat down at the machine next to me with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

The thing that bothered me most was that she was still smoking. Second was the drink because her mom's side of the family has a propensity for substance abuse to put it mildly. The gambling? Not so much.

FYI, those prone to substance abuse are more prone to gambling addictions and more likely to suffer harmful consequences from severe gambling problems. Those who go into gambling addiction programs are about 3 times more likely to be daily smokers than the general pop.

Destructive addictions tend to transfer from one area to the next. Part of this is clearly due to genetically influenced tendencies, but it is plausible that environment could lead to an addictively compulsive behavior (like gambling using mobile devices) that then rewires one's reward system in a way that makes one more prone to other forms of addiction and compulsion. We don't have enough science yet to know with any confidence, but it wouldn't be surprising if mobile gaming wound up indirectly making these kids more likely to develop other harmful addictions.

I'm more worried about the fact that online gambling sites are deliberately targeting children, and that game developers made many children more vulnerable to this kind of thing.

 

[Mumbles]

...and now it sounds like the FTC in the US is looking at what they can do about this, if anything. Belgium's already seen games pulled from their market after new rules and regulations.

I have to admit, I'm not too angry about this - this started with "free to play" games that allowed players to use real-life money to buy particular items, but quickly moved the the more gambling-esque model. Part of the problem is that companies like EA got way too aggressive, to the point of, say, slowing advancement outside of loot boxes (with Battlefront 2 basically being a breaking point) - I'm sure Underseer knows about that debacle. But the news that loot boxes seem to be responsible for getting kids into (illegal) gambling is troubling, for sure.