My son is old enough that arcades are interesting to him now. I was pretty shocked to see how they have declined into shitty skinner boxes and games of chance to win tickets. That was always a factor, but is much more prominent today.
The casual acceptance of sports betting is another example of that shift. There’s probably some free marketeer who will opine that teaching children about gambling is a good thing!
Nah. Some people in it shifted, dragged a whole lot of fools with them, didn't experience a reckoning right away, and now think the air's clear. The main punishment for what they've become is being what they've become, that stigma remains whether they can see it or not. They might find themselves scratching at closed doors for undiseased sources of nourishment at some point.
I'd say that's stigma-free.
Letting kids gambling is a parental choice, but if you think it's teaching your kid a valuable lesson you are dead wrong.
I'm thinking more about games like roulette, poker, dice with chores money. maybe it would need to be in a more controlled environment, like family game night.
not exactly gambling, but I learned a great lesson from my father this way when I was about eleven or twelve. I really wanted some expensive Lego so I begged my dad to lend money to purchase it. at first he wouldn't do it, but eventually he decided it might be a good learning experience for me. I had a blast playing with that set for a month or two, but after a while it was just one more toy that I owned. it took a lot longer than that to pay him back, so I had ample time to reflect on how much it sucked to be in debt. I never asked my dad for another toy loan, and I've basically never considered borrowing money again for anything other than college.
I don't think calling it a slot machine is fair.
It is designed to be addictive with compulsion loops and reinforcement, exploiting brain mechanisms you are not aware of such as disproportionate feedback coming directly from slot machines. Candy crush is a sort of glorified skinner box.
Same as gambling machines, candy crush makes use of "illusion of control" by congratulating the player for being skilled for things that actually happened by chance (or were made to happen by the game itself).
The comparison does not stop here, similar to gambling machines candy crush makes money not on the vast majority of people but on a limited few that will spend lots of money the "whales". The fun thing with candy crush is that as long as you never pay the game plays fair but once you've become a paying customer the game starts to play tricks on you to nudge you into paying more, it will become harder or impossible to win without the use of bonus you have to pay to get. The game actually adapts to you to maximize profit it can squeeze out of you.
There was a detailed article about all this mechanism a few years back when I did not shaarlize[0] all my interesting findings so I can't link it here, but everything I just written comes from memory of what was described in this article.
So, in your opinion what makes something a slot machine is which psychological effects it tries to use?
Do you know where else all of these same psychological effects come up? Human interaction. Candy Crush is basically somebody trying to sweet talk you and wrap you around their finger. Do you consider that to be a slot machine too?
I'm not OP, but to me it's the triggered randomness with occasional wins that makes it a slot machine. The intentional psychological effects and engineering to persist the desire to subject oneself to those effects are how King and Zynga are evil companies and deserve to have their corporate charters dissolved. IMHO.
I hope a reckoning is coming in this regard. Many games include mechanics that are hard to distinguish from video slot machines and should be regulated the same way gambling is (rated 18+, audited for "fairness").