[alt text: a meme drawing of a son walking into a room and saying “Are you winning, Dad?”. The dad is playing poker on a computer, and is replying, “No son, pack your suitcase, I lost the house”.]

  • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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    3 months ago

    The best way to ensure you have absolutely no interest in gambling is to go to Las Vegas, walk into a casino, turn $20 into quarters, and see how it disappears in literally 30 seconds into a slot machine, with absolutely no sense of gratification.

    I have a suspicion that slot machines only worked because Boomers+ never had video games growing up to teach them what a serotonin response from a game is supposed to be like. Casinos have been dying for a while now, because young people can play a video game and not waste $1500 in a weekend (or if you’re really bad about it, an hour). Sports betting is the unfortunate new big avenue that casinos and other addiction-exploitation companies are leveraging.

    That’s not to say there aren’t gambling addiction exploitation mechanisms in many video games, like loot boxes, but it’s not the singular purpose of video games, like casino games are.