I work in the gambling industry, making literally slot machines.

Slot machines are heavily regulated and there is a lot of "engagement" tricks that can not be used in the gambling industry. The kind of trick that Candy Crush will use.

The dangerous side of gambling is for people that think that they can "win money". But the games themselves are kind of boring by design. Regulations force us to make them boring. (And that is a good thing, I will not work on this industry otherwise).

The future of on-line games and mobile games is regulation. Micro-payments, push-notifications, etc. cannot be used without limits. People have right to their mental health more than companies have to higher profits.

I'm also curious about want Candy Crush does that a slot machine can't by regulation? Is it a level of interactivity?

Candy Crush can (and does) let you play freely, only to popup the "insert coin to get help" when you are stuck. It also adjusts the game play to your level (by advancing to harder levels) so that you are always challenged and possibly get stuck. If you advance by paying, you probably will need to pay more to get further (if you failed an easier level without help you will probably fail later levels without such help).

In an imaginary world, a slot machine could have a camera to track who is playing. It would let you play for free the first few times, even give you some money, but leaving you one "advance" short of the stronger payments. After some rolls, you are prompted to insert coins to get extra advances. Of course, the machine keeps the payment structure favorable to itself, but tricking you into inserting more and more coins, all the while getting you hooked into the game. It could even adjust the payment structure to be more and more in its favor the more "hooked" it detects you are.

Regulation that prevents the above:

1. Slot machines cannot track users by any means.

2. The payment distribution has to fit certain parameters (think X% of money given back within N rolls)

They’re intended for people that gamble a lot - not so much if you lose, it’s more about the level of money your putting at risk over time. Long run, the casino will make money off you. They want you to stay at their property. It’s also a way to recoup losses if you’ve won a lot.

I had a good run on slots and craps once at the Venetian, and was invited to a slot tournament with a free dinner and 3 free nights stay. I then won the slot tournament. But my broader non-tournament play didn’t keep up with the level they were looking for (they wanted you to take the tournament money and spend it there) so the comps got fewer and weaker. They came back months later when I started playing and winning (show tickets, dinners, etc). A bit of play credit can happen but it’s usually not a lot unless you’re a high roller (tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars).

Before the casino cards it was the pit bosses that would keep an eye on you, so this predates surveillance technology, it’s old school.

The industry is getting too greedy these days, even paid AAA games have this microtransaction crap, they are milking gamers dry.

Ironically the gaming press barely talks about this.

Candy Crush seems to specialize in near misses, for example by creating levels where almost all of the achievements required to pass a given level are easy, and then one is next to impossible. You don’t keep $1 billion+ per year coming in on a years-old game without some serious psychological tricks.

Is that a state-by-state regulation? A federal regulation? And does the regulating code specifically mention physical machines?

Thanks in advance for satisfying my curiosity.

Slot machines are regulated because they fall under the category of gambling and video games don't meet the legal definition of gambling. (Although, I'd agree that it's starting to seem more and more as if they should.)

There's a pretty good explanation of the criteria at https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti... but the brief summary (from the article) is "Gambling consists of three elements: consideration, prize and chance. If any one of those three elements is missing, the game is simply not gambling (Rose, 1986))."

By looking at those criteria, there's a lot of ways video game companies can defend themselves. The strongest one IMO being that, from a legal standpoint, there is no prize. You "win" things or get drops but the TOS of all games say that the player does not own them (or anything else in the game) in any legal sense. The analogy would be more like a carnival ride where you are paying for the experience rather than the expectation of getting anything material in return.

Yet loads of people sell their in-game items (that they got through chance) for real money. So in a sense, they do own them.

More problematicly, im not sure how youd stop it from extending to say WoW gold-selling, or even cartridges with 100% saves on them.

People will attribute value to anything for any number of reasons, but I’m not sure you can make regulation on anything beyond “encouraging” such behavior. (And I would assume these companies already actively discourage it; you’re not supposed to be able to get money back out of the system!)

There are some game developers looking at sanctioned RMT right now because it would be a huge selling point. "Make money playing video games" used to be a popular slogan on tacky banner ads. That could see a comeback in a different way.

Sanctioned RMT works through some official marketplace (think Diablo 3's ill-fated Auction House). Not only does the developer not pay out anything (all money flowing through the auction house is coming from buyers of items), but they even take a "transaction fee" cut. All while continuing to own all the items being traded. There's no downside for the "house".

Except perhaps suddenly running afoul of gambling regulations if they can no longer argue there's no "prize" element to the gambling?

We're well past the point where virtual entitites are imaginable by the general populace.

Getting a virtual gun, creates an actual advantage in the game your are playing online.

While ultimate ownership of the code may be fraught, but practical day to day ownership and usage is not (unless you are fighting a particularly contrived case).

On one hand, this may be enough to consider it gambling for money.

On the other hand, many games may expressly forbid selling in-game stuff. This is not easy to enforce, though, unless you forbid to drop and pick up items, or make in-game exchanges. A number of games uses exchange as a important "social" / "multiplayer" feature, but likely those are not slot-machine-like anyway.

Done.

I believe if I had a slot machine that paid out in free vacations instead of cash, there would be no doubt playing it is a form of gambling.

I think it’s that the micropayments don’t get a random return. When someone buys to complete a level it is a predictable outcome, not a gamble.

People get variable return on item drops, but you don’t generally pay with money for item drops, just time.

There is a one-step-removed way in which I think video games could be regarded as a kind of indirect or obscured gambling.

1-I pay to receive an in game item like a weapon

2-I use that investment to go out and kill monsters for treasure drops

3-I end up with some randomly variable items of value that are by definition valuable, because people will pay me for them, TOS doesn’t establish a thing’s market value.

But I think this would really require us rethinking or redefining a number of concepts.

Would that not closely match this example, at least in terms of utility?

If the state wins, it could result in an expansion of regulation of this type of mobile game.

Here's an article with some more detail.

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/game-show-network-hit-online-g...

The regulations were designed for casinos before video games became so popular and way before mobile games and micro-transactions even existed.

Example of gambling regulation for New Jersey: https://www.nj.gov/oag/ge/docs/Regulations/MergedRegulations...

> Is that a state-by-state regulation?

Yes. Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania allow gambling. But I guess that at any moment local or federal regulations could be created.

> And does the regulating code specifically mention physical machines?

There is specific regulations for casinos, for on-line gambling, for jackpots, sports betting, etc. e.g. CHAPTER 69O INTERNET AND MOBILE GAMING from the linked PDF

Example of definitions:

* "Authorized Internet or mobile game" means any game authorized by the Division for use with an Internet or mobile gaming system.

* "Client terminal" means any device that is used to interact with a gaming system for the purpose of conducting server-based gaming activity.

* "Data warehouse" means a system of one or more servers located in New Jersey for the purpose of storing transactions received from the primary gaming equipment.

* "Dormant account" means an Internet gaming account, which has had no patron initiated activity for a period of one year.

I did in the 1970's, and it's perfectly legal (roulette, not slots):

https://www.ebay.com/p/Las-Vegas-Roulette-Intellivision-1980...

That you are never forced to pay is a defining aspect of “freemium”. You are always given the choice to wait out the timer/watch an ad for your next upgrade/level/continue/bonus/lootbox, rather than pay.

In the US you can't build a slot machine that accepts money and dispenses tokens that have value. That's often how things operate in Japan, but the same model is generally illegal in the US.

It's questionable if spending real money on virtual currency to buy "loot boxes" that randomly give things of value is legal. And if that's legal, it's not obvious if changing the rate of rewards is legal.

EX: People buying WoW gold.

IIRC, Blizzard doesn't profit from that directly and explicitly prohibits it in their ToS.

I could go on, but saying it's virtual is not necessarily enough to protect these companies.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-25-now-belgium-de...

Probably because the problem is not perceived as bad enough to get regulated yet. The industry was getting dangerously close to this when there were all those cases of kids racking up huge bills through in-app purchases on iPhones, but that has died down enough that it's not on the radar anymore. I think if the games industry gets too aggressive again, regulation will sweep in.

If a game has micro transactions, then treat it as gambling.

Problem solved.

What video games have to do with "white idntity politics" is beyond me.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merch...

Getting into the concrete example of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, on the other hand...

Both sides play identity politics, they just focus on different identities. Most people are blind to the identity politics of their own party because those identities feel natural or correct to them, making the identities less obviously visible. (Or, inversely, the identities of the 'other' party feel obviously wrong, making them more jarring and stand out as 'playing identity politics'.)

Not because they are boring, but because they are less addictive than they can be. So they are "boring" in comparison. If we were allowed to use all tricks that mobile and on-line games do it will be really bad for society as it will create more addiction.

It is like Coca-Cola. Even that so much sugar makes it problematic, I find it better that at least does not include cocaine like it did in 1891. Does that make Coca-Cola good? No, it does not. But I find that makes it a lesser evil. Even that cocaine-less Coke is more "boring" nowadays, it is the right thing to do.

I have seen people putting shit ton of money into those machines and they lost easily 100,- Euros per Hour?

I'm sure there is always a white/gray/black thing going on but i do put a slot machine at the very end of black not in gray or white at all.

Coca Cola and the water stealing and the addiction is btw. an additional example for something not that good, it does not make a slot machine any better.

I am talking about basic stuff like:

* Push notifications reminding you that you should play the game.

* Let you win some money but then lose it unless you make a payment.

* A bar that fills faster at the beginning and then starts to fill slower. So it looks like you are closer to a goal that you actually are.

* Show a deck of cards that instead of the 52 standard cards, expected by the players, has another configuration that makes you lose more often.

etc.

Any mobile games video - like https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014450/Behavioral-Economics-a... - has a lot of forbidden techniques for on-line gambling.

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Intermittent_rei...

https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machin...

I do not get this. slots pay out (RTP Return To Player) is around 90%. The article mixes volatility with RTP.

> Lower-volatility games often have greater appeal in 'locals markets' than in destination resort markets like Las Vegas or Atlantic City

This looks correct.

> During "flow," time speeds up (hours feel like minutes) or slows down (reactions can be made instantly) and the mind reaches a state of almost euphoric equilibrium.

Most sensible regulations force you to send reminders to the players that interrupt this flow. On-line betting usually has harder regulations, as to play in a casino you need to physically get there but on-line is always available.

Usually in high regulated markets each spin should last at least 3 seconds. This is so you cannot get a fast continuous flow, but the pace is forcefully slowed down.

Physical casino slots and on-line slots are slightly different as products and regulation wise.

> "People only have so much leisure time and there’s a lot of activity on iPhones"

Slot machines are competing against Candy Crush (and Royal Charm Slots from the same company), Netflix, YouTube, etc.

> Eyal criticized slot machines for what he said was a business model dependent on addicted players — "that industry, I have a problem with," he said.

And the solution is to regulated it in a way that the most addictive aspects are not possible to implement. Or to prohibit it completely, not just to move it underground. If anyone expects that the industry is going to regulate itself they are for a hard ride. No industry does that for real.

Likewise, it's fine if he wants to watch the videos we've taken of our family, it helps him to remember relatives we don't get to see very often.

Conversely, I have ZERO tolerance for advertising. I am increasingly convinced that marketing is the source of a majority of modern society's ills and I don't want it anywhere near his brain until he's able to properly comprehend its purpose.

I'm not a gamer so I don't know much about Zelda, but the sort of hypnotic hold some Youtube/Insta personalities have on kids is astonishing. They will parrot their talking points, talk about them relentlessly with friends and buy whatever they're shilling, be it makeup, game guides, phone skins, what have you.

TV, movies, and games are forms of entertainment. Advertising is a form of manipulation.

Sure, the lines can be blurred, so we do our best to filter out the bad intentions.

Modern advertising seems to become more effective as well. I never anticipated a defense of ads, but I've actually been criticized by visiting relatives for keeping commercials out of reach of our family. We're "out of the loop" now, unable to relate to a joke or situation delivered by commercial. And around holidays and birthdays, we get asked "How do your kids even know what they want without commercials?"

I think modern games absolutely do harm, I don’t think they should really be called games either, because they are build for addiction to make you play their built in slot machines.

My children never had smart devices because nobody under 15 should ever touch a smart device. They grew up much healthier than their peers and I think it was the strict rules on technology that did most of the work.

I’m not against technology or smart devices by any means, but it’s hard to use both in a healthy manner and children are really bad at making the right decision.

I mean, you wouldn’t give your kid free reign in the candy store, so why would you do it on their smartphone?

I'm noticing this among my cousins, at least among social health. I've got one cousin who just entered 7th grade this year, and might be the only person in her class without a phone. One of her best friends just got one at the beginning of the year. Those two are among the only two who actually know how to talk and have a conversation; other kids have no clue how to read tone of voice to tell jokes, or have any clue how to read facial expressions, etc. They honestly say what they want, when they want, without regards to people and then can't interpret that someone is upset.

I've noticed it especially in regards to my 11 year old cousin, who's now had his phone for 3 years. He doesn't pick up on tone in jokes, and so unless the joke has an obvious punch line, he doesn't really get it. He has a lot of one-word conversations, often in a brusque tone, because he just wants to watch Minecraft videos. Often, the first thing he'll do when he gets to my grandmother's from school is go to her bedroom, lock the door, and just watch videos. No interaction whatsoever, and good luck trying to get him to talk.

I also see it to a much more dangerous degree among my high school students. The lengths they will go to to be on their phones during class (and not even to chat; merely to be on them) is, quite frankly, alarming. I fear for our future, and am looking at dumb phones for myself now (I'll keep my dual sim smartphone for when I travel outside the country and exercise because music)

(Someone else said that some fifty years ago, but Cook's quote is what comes up now in a quick search ...)

For instance 7 year olds develop at different paces, there's definitely a lot of 7 year olds without phones who don't know how to have a conversation, and it may be due to lack of practice, not due to excessive screen time - those two may overlap but are not the same thing.

Likewise, an 11 year old who likes minecraft may not be the social butterfly you expect if you take away his access to games.

Agree that phones maybe a potential candidate for social health concerns though.

And while he might not be tla social butterfly, I don't think it's difficult to say technology access is impacting his ability to develop socially fairly negatively. This is supported by quite a bit of research.

Or just not letting kids get into those games. At some point my wife pointed out that I had a problem disengaging from certain types of games (for me it was MOBAs specifically). They are super-addictive.

It never really got in the way of anything and if I had anything else to do I would go do that, so it wouldn't really qualify as "addiction" in a DSM sense. But the issue is what it does when you don't have anything to do. They have a way of swallowing up basically ALL of your free time. And I didn't feel happier or better off for having spent my time that way, it felt more like compulsion than desire. I see a lot of young people on the internet being enslaved by compulsion like this, engaging in somewhat problematic consumption of video-games, porn, or social media.

I decided to just uninstall and stop playing those sorts of games, but I was also a grown-up with life experiences, hobbies, social connections, and responsibilities before I ever started. I knew what I was missing with "real life" by letting myself sink into that so it was easy enough for me to stop, I had other, more edifying sources of dopamine to go after. Kids, often times, either don't have enough freedom of movement to go do those things or just plain don't know what else there is out there. It's the same reason drug and gambling addiction tends to take hold among people with depression.

It robs a child’s body and brain from developing social and motor skills in a 3D world. Time spent in the trance state is habit forming and is in general stolen from time spent exploring the world, and letting the brain learn from full bandwidth experiences.

So yes, It is the screen.

Children’s real life unstructured full-bandwidth play is learning on steroids. All systems engaged, constant observation, endless questions, simulations etc. think social simulations, physical and motor skills challenges, puzzles. It takes life to prepare human brains for life.

In 'old school' game you receive reward after period of effort. You have to perform better and push yourself. Game is designed to be fun but selling the game once is where the money is. Good game is measured by the short peak experiences, not by the average feeling.

Another (more advanced but evil) way to design addictive game is when it the difficulty and reward frequencies are optimized to keep you playing for as long as possible. You are offered cheats or the difficulty automatically adjusts to optimize the time you spend with the game. The goal of the game is stretch the interest over time just above the threshold where you would quit. In the end the game just removes lows from the boring moments.

I have no doubt video game addiction will at some point become an actual diagnosis, just like gambling addiction.

You can still find the oldschool-style. I.e. I just played CHUCHEL adventure game alongside my 4 year old, and it is a simple ~4 hour long adventure game, costs ~10$, no micro-transactions funny business.

Reminds me of my time at my grandma's house playing Neverhood :D

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe still works on modern machines.

Shovel knight, Tooth and Tail, Guacamele, Into The Breach, Shadowrun, Reigns, Abzu, Magicka, Undertale ... and many more. Of course, not many FPS/high-budget rpgs?

I actually am strongly considering to be the first in my family to buy an actual gaming console, once my daughter is a tiny bit older. Nintendo with its Switch lineup seems to be quite in line with the old-school mentality of "Pay once, get the game, have fun" :-)

Right... the game is designed to hook you in, that's games, they've all done that since the year dot. You're invested. Except now, in order to continue getting the same high, you need to spend money. They're purposely engineered this way. Just like drugs.

I grew up as the public internet took it's first breaths. When you had to figure out just how to get an internet service provider before you could even get started. In the era of IRC and Newsgroups and that was about all. Nobody even understood what websites were.

Google didn't hit its stride until 3 or 4 years after I started using it. Things were different back then.

These days everything is designed to hook you and keep you coming back and when those hooks are no longer enough to keep your eyes on it, it hooks you to pay something to get more of a high.

My kids have just come off a two week iPad ban yesterday, and already one of them has fallen off the rails and was unable to get out of bed for school this morning. Their behaviour was significantly improved by the time they came off their ban than it was the day the were banned.

I'm seriously considering removing iPad use on a more permanent basis.

Interestingly, that’s going back to video gaming’s roots in the arcade.

But yes, I agree with your point in the general sense!

Buy older computers (1980s/early 1990s) that don't provide access to those games or the internet.

I don't know if modern laptops can do this (modern ultra-portables can't because everything is soldered in), but I recently took the wifi card out of my (ancient) T61, it required only taking out screws[0] and disconnecting the daughter board, so that I would have a machine without always-on-internet. Haven't had much use of it, but sitting in front of it, I have caught myself starting up chrome...

[0] sadly I failed to keep track of which goes where, but that is also the only issue.

Loot crates, which are basically slot machines, don't exist. You buy what you see, a skin.

They make a lot of money from skins but once again, there's no in-game advantage. It's purely cosmetic so at the end of the day even if you don't give Epic a dime you're still on a level playing field with everyone else.

Quake and diablo 2 / 3 - no loot boxes.

Screen time modifies your behavior. That modification is compounded as the quantity of access time increases. This change is determinate and quantifiable.

You can quickly validate this with a simple experiment. Take any child and take away access to screens. Look at what they do to fill their time and how they respond to people in the first 30 minutes after screen loss and against after 2 hours. Also notice the longer term modifications to behavior after screens are removed for a week.

Part of this is a component of addiction, missing social stimulus, and lack of physical activity.

Being involved changes a lot, making agreements, talk about feelings and evaluating. So like you would with any activity.

Let they play but add mandatory walks i.e., or mix up with physical actvities. I mean, kids don't have THAT much time at hand to spend after school.

I'm now playing Crossout, where you can build your own car, and my son also loves building his own cars and fighting with them.

I don't think you have to look at it so negative, kids actually enjoy creating stuff in games, and I think that's a good thing.

Source: I have 6 kids between the ages of 9 and 16

There's a increase of 'frequency' at the expense of depth.

In the old days, the focus was on playability. Games were fun. But a new genre has emerged particularly in mobile gaming that does something strange: it compels play even when it isn't fun anymore. In the old days when a game stopped being fun, you would stop playing. But these games, when they stop being fun, you make an in-game purchase...

That's the power of positive and negative reinforcement. They want to shape the behavior of players. They want players logging into the game multiple times a day, every single day.

So they rate limit the player's game with "stamina" or whatever euphemism for a timer they come up with. Player was having fun playing the RPG with friends, only to run out of "stamina"! The choice is to stop and wait for the timer to reset or pay money to reset it. Then the player starts waking up at 3 in the morning because that's when the timer resets.

The simple timer reinforces a schedule and creates the behavior the game developer wants players to have.

This is a common technique for manufacturing commitment: if a person must suffer for a thing, they come to justify to themselves that the thing is worth the suffering, and become more dedicated the more they do. Cults often use this technique.

But I've seen so many similar games where the game itself wasn't fun at all, even though the rewards were still enticing. The Simpsons Tapped Out comes to mind. And in those cases I realized the game play itself wasn't interesting or fun and quickly quit. Basically, any game that has timers in it will fall into this category because the timers are there solely to make sure you keep coming back and have a compelling reason to do it often.

People said the same thing about WoW and Everquest and pretty much every video game. Go back far enough people said the same thing about nintendo and gameboy. Every generation thinks they are unique. You aren't unique. Your father thought the exact same thing as you are thinking right now. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

> Not sure what the fix is either, other than ruthless enforcement of quotas.

How about being a parent rather than blaming games. It's always human nature to blame others for one's own failings.

Now it's social media and smartphone games. Before that it was people were blaming video games, simpsons, south park, mtv, etc for violence, dumbing down kids, etc. In 10 years, it'll be something else. Maybe virtual reality or sex dolls. Who knows. The same complaints, different products.