[HN Gopher] Understanding gambling addiction (2012)
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Understanding gambling addiction (2012)
Author : robbybaron
Score : 48 points
Date : 2022-09-06 19:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I will forever maintain that loot boxes are inherently worse than
| casino gaming because they target people who haven't had the
| education to understand probability, and laws should be altered
| to regulate them just as all casino games are regulated. What is
| a loot box but a way to groom children to gamble away their
| money? And even worse, there's no return on these boxes. Not only
| are they randomized, but in the event that you win a desirable
| prize (and these are few and far between... the game developers
| know this), you receive a digital asset that can't be traded.
| Some companies are going into NFTs in order to justify this
| behavior by allowing people to trade these assets, but that's
| essentially just gambling one step removed.
|
| EA made $1.6B last year from "Ultimate Game Mode" in their FIFA
| game, which essentially allows gamers to gamble away their money
| to access players from across FIFA leagues to build into a custom
| team. A reddit thread I found showed that many people were
| spending $1K+ annually just to have access to the same characters
| year after year in this gambling scheme because the characters
| are not transferable to next year's game.
| philippejara wrote:
| Framing gambling in that matter is quite interesting and does
| line up with the allure of the quite recent explosion in
| streamers doing straight up "online casino" gambling. Also shines
| a light in the other forms of gambling videogame streamers do
| related to lootboxes and why it attracts so many eyes, you're
| almost living in this "zone" thru the broadcaster.
|
| It does seem to be kind of similar to the "zone" in programming,
| it's not uncommon to finish a task you were planning and just to
| keep in the zone I started doing extra features, many times that
| would be scrapped later because it was not relevant but just due
| to the inertia and to not have to switch context.
|
| There's also an interesting question there regarding adhd and
| gambling, I'd imagine the hyper fixation would definitely make
| the issue more acute. A quick search got me this[0] meta-study
| which seems to find some link between adhd symptoms and problem
| gambling, I'm no medical scholar however so don't take my word
| for it.
|
| [0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26832122/
| Bakary wrote:
| I wonder if the term 'hyper fixation' isn't a bit misleading
| when it comes to ADHD. It's often marketed by sufferers as a
| light superpower, but rather than being able to focus it's more
| an inability to defocus, which is a significant difference even
| if the end result seems similar.
| davidhay wrote:
| Good point and there is an overall high correlation between
| addiction in general and ADHD.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| ADHD has a very well-established connection to substance abuse
| and addiction so a link to gambling makes sense as well. ADHD
| can be difficult to diagnose but the substance abuse connection
| is frequently discussed in the community as it relates to
| compulsive behavior.
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| The article doesn't explicitly say it, but "the zone" certainly
| sounds a lot like flow state[0].
|
| Like when you're really engrossed in a task it certainly is
| pleasurable, and it like really does make you forget about all
| the other worries and problems and anxieties of the rest of
| your life.
|
| This framing does match my own personal experience with video
| games, I could waste hours grinding queues - it's like just
| putting everything else on pause.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I believe that the human mind is a symphony of signals, and a
| cacophony of contradicting forces at work. Flow-state is a
| broad description of "active and steady" but that could
| describe lots of very different things.. the torpid insensate
| cocoon of the opiate user, to the comfortable zen of a
| regular meditator; an accountant doing their third week
| Wednesday "rollups", an aerobics instructor doing a regular
| routine with thirty students at a gym; the captain of a small
| sail boat going down a regular route.. many more. These
| mental states are quite different, yet could be described as
| "flow"
| boilerupnc wrote:
| And mine as well ... but in art. I would lose track of hours
| during a pencil sketching session. It was partially
| meditative, partially distraction and partially hyper-focus,
| but 100% relaxing and enjoyable.
| alexander_singh wrote:
| It would be interesting to see a Reframe-like company in the
| space of gambling addictions.
| tomgp wrote:
| Addiction By Design is one of the very best non fiction books
| I've read. I highly recomend it to anyone interested in the
| intersection of tech/ society/ psychology/ capital/ design and a
| whole bunch of other stuff. It really is fantastic (if
| occasionally more than a a little bit bleak)
| yamrzou wrote:
| (2012)
| throwaway188ga wrote:
| I have an addiction (not gambling) and my life has been changed
| by a 12 step program. I can't say it will work for everyone, but
| it's worked for a lot of people.
|
| https://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/
| Sin2x wrote:
| Gambling addiction is not different from social media addiction,
| i.e. brain seeking dopamine rush. The question is how to
| practically desensitize.
| jstx1 wrote:
| This seems like a very superficial conclusion, they're very
| different in practice.
|
| - you can't go broke from spending too much time on
| facebook/twitter/instagram
|
| - doing something dumb on social media usually doesn't come
| with the same feeling of regret that's common in people who try
| to stop gambling but can't
|
| - social media might be addictive but it's a weakly negative,
| comfy, it-feels-good-when-my-attention-is-here type of
| addiction, gambling is a whole other beast
|
| - there is very little shame in talking about how much time you
| spend on social media, hiding gambling losses on the other hand
| is much more common
|
| Sure, dopamine is probably something they have in common,
| that's where the similarities end.
| Flankk wrote:
| banannaise wrote:
| Or to build things that use that attention/addiction in less
| harmful ways. Gambling addiction is only a serious problem if
| gambling is a process of consistently losing things of value.
| Casinos (defined broadly) are not an inherent feature of the
| world; they are an optimization to convert other people's
| attention and/or addiction into revenue.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| I mean, it takes time too, not just money.
| banannaise wrote:
| And if time is used enjoyably, what problem is that? We're
| not here to be productive at every waking moment.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think about this Australian woman[1] all the time. It's clear
| that the prospect of winning money isn't the primary motivation
| for most problem gamblers and gambling addicts and it scares me
| to think of the implications, especially when helped along by
| technology. I think those of us who aren't problem gamblers have
| an easier time turning a blind eye to the predatory nature of
| gambling because for most of us the fun _is_ winning a few bucks
| on a penny slot or putting $10 on black. (Or at least we think it
| is!)
|
| But, like the app in the article I linked, what's a casino that
| takes in real money but never pays out? It's hard to see it as
| anything other than predatory. And while the woman shouldn't have
| embezzled funds from her employer we've sent her to prison and
| then allowed the obviously exploitative app to continue
| operating. And when some other unlucky person who is, for
| whatever reason, predisposed to problem gambling becomes addicted
| to this app and it ruins their life and possibly the lives of
| their friends and family we'll again focus on the "personal
| responsibility" of the victim and ignore the system and industry
| that not only facilitated but targeted and then nurtured the
| victim's problem in order to profit.
|
| [1]https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7547225/woman-
| stole-9...
| tomgp wrote:
| There's a fairly large section in Addiction By Design (the book
| which the OP is talking about) dealing with the specifics of
| machine gambling industry in Australia. Highly reccomend it!
| ratg13 wrote:
| > _It's clear that the prospect of winning money isn't the
| primary motivation for most problem gamblers_
|
| It's been measured that the dopamine rush for gamblers comes
| when they place a bet, not when they win.
| Teever wrote:
| This excerpt from a memoir by Norm Macdonald provides insight
| into this mindset:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0V-C5yr5sg
| fernandopj wrote:
| Which anecdotally is what I've noted playing poker against
| phenomenal losers (and also in a few poker blogs) - it's
| all about the moment where their "life" hangs in the
| balance and the final cards haven't been dealt yet. The
| results don't matter, wins are celebrated just because they
| allow to play longer.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Interesting. Do you know whether this is true for _all_
| gamblers? Or only for problem gamblers? If it's true of
| everyone then I wonder what the difference is between people
| who can walk away and those who feel compelled to keep
| playing.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "these games become an all-consuming pursuit, a way of shutting
| out the world and its problems for long, long stretches of time."
|
| So like all other addictions.
| spaghettiToy wrote:
| Does anyone else see gambling as worse than ever?
|
| Maybe I'm young and didn't experience it, but in the 90s you
| would plan a trip to Vegas and lose a few hundred dollars.
|
| Today I see people doing this from their phone on every random
| sports game. Further there are constant ads on TV, the Internet,
| and on billboards.
|
| I'm fortunate for a teacher who says "gambling is a tax on people
| who can't do math". And having tried gambling, it was a labor
| intensive way to lose money.
| fishcrackers wrote:
| not at all, I saw this ad yesterday and everything seems fine
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjsv5haDg7E
| spaghettiToy wrote:
| Yikes!....
|
| Not sure if I want to advance brain science, maybe these
| companies can be legally held accountable... Or maybe
| gambling companies will get to the research first and
| manipulate us.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Legally held accountable for what, exactly? Providing a
| service that is explicitly legal and heavily regulated?
| nico wrote:
| Like subprime mortgages?
|
| Sometimes legal and heavily regulated activities can
| still have devastating results.
|
| Legal != moral
| jaywalk wrote:
| My question had nothing to do with morality (which is
| subjective, of course) but with legality. So I'm not sure
| what you're getting at.
| nico wrote:
| The comment you replied to above, expressed that
| organizations and people involved in exploiting gambling
| addicts should be punished for doing so.
|
| Sure, they said "legally held accountable" and you
| replied that these organizations are already operating
| legally.
|
| So then the matter is: should these companies be allowed
| to continue operating as they currently do because it's
| legal? Or should we push for laws/regulations to be
| changed so they stop exploiting people?
|
| This is not a matter of fact issue. It's a moral,
| political, and yes subjective, issue.
|
| So your question, even if you didn't intend it to, very
| much has to do with morality.
| bearjaws wrote:
| I was born in Miami and I would say its become far more
| accessible, specifically fantasy sports betting.
|
| Maybe Miami isn't a great example, but you had every form
| available, cock fighting, dog fighting, grey hound racing,
| horse racing, dice, cards, illegal street racing...
|
| Any event that brought people together had its gambling, it
| just wasn't available in an app.
|
| My guess is the apps have actually reduced the amount of
| gambling in these other areas (both illegal and legal).
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Here in the Netherlands the government decided to legalize
| online gambling smack in the middle of the covid crisis. There
| were adverts for it everywhere, to the point that even many
| regular people (who in my experience normally aren't against
| advertising at all) expressed their annoyance and there is talk
| of curbing advertisements for online gambling (not sure if and
| to what extent this has actually happened). Completely nuts
| that they were giving weekly press conferences about how
| vulnerable and lonely people are and that we have to take care
| of each other, and then do this at the same time.
| ianbutler wrote:
| The only gambling I've done was a Sunday poker night with
| friends for relatively low stakes and that was over 4 years
| ago. Right now I see ads for sports betting all the time and
| its ridiculous. Not only do I really not care much for sports
| (except formula 1 --- maybe football during end of season) I
| have never gone to a casino, never so much as looked at a
| sports betting site and I see them all the time. I'm simply not
| interested.
|
| I keep blocking them on twitter and sharing not interested on
| reddit but it doesn't seem to change much.
| coldpie wrote:
| Check out uBlock Origin.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The freedom crowd loves gambling. It's nuts.
|
| Everything from kids arcades to sports has turned into a grand
| casino. The sports thing is a particular bummer as it will
| change sports in what imo a bad thing.
| Bakary wrote:
| I don't think it's just gambling. Gambling is a subset of a
| larger problem, which is that it's easier than ever for smart
| but ruthless people to extract money out of the rest of the
| population.
|
| It's probably the case that the majority of the smartest people
| in the most recent generations are involved in rent-seeking,
| Ponzi schemes, advertising, and/or skinner box creation in the
| form of FAANGs or other tech/fintech/crypto companies.
| synu wrote:
| Children have been on a gambling funnel thanks to loot boxes
| for about ten years, so we should start seeing the societal
| impacts now.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Kids have been at it for way longer than that. What are packs
| of trading cards, if not loot boxes in the physical world? I
| knew plenty of kids who spent all their allowance money on
| packs of Pokemon cards, hoping to score that rare Charizard.
| synu wrote:
| They've really amped up the dopamine triggers and optimised
| the addiction loop since the days of opening up a pack of
| cards.
| elliekelly wrote:
| And removed _all_ of the friction. They're available 24
| hours a day in unlimited quantities. You don't have to
| wait until after school. You don't have to wait for the
| local toy store to open. You don't have to wait for the
| store to have them in stock. The next box is always just
| one push of a button away.
| kradeelav wrote:
| I got introduced to a gacha game for the first time about 2
| years ago, compared with classic mid 2000's Gamecube games.
| Gacha is a type of Japanese gambling game that is found on
| mobile phones, and can be tied to various media properties to
| link into pre-existing fondness for characters.
|
| I don't consider myself as having an addictive personality
| (only got a smartphone about the same time, etc) but it has
| been an education in how much effort one has to put into not
| making it take over your life. If I didn't have a strict "only
| money you spend on this is the flat 5$ monthly subscription
| fee, no more" rule, I can easily see a bad night wrecking havoc
| on a pocketbook. The thought with the subscription for me, is
| that the gameplay's fun enough for me to spend a starbucks-a-
| month on it.
|
| The wildest thing is, this specific gacha (Fire Emblem Heroes)
| is considered _very tame_ compared to most gachas, when it 's
| all said and done.
|
| Given the popularity (an order of magnitude larger than FEH) of
| other gachas like Genshin Impact among Gen Z ... and the horror
| stories I've been hearing of former friends backstabbing each
| other and sabotaging fandom projects to steal money for gacha
| addictions ... this worries me.
| philippejara wrote:
| I wouldn't minimize the gambling problem as just "plan a trip
| to vegas and lose a few hundred dollars", even before the
| widespread internet gambling was a serious issue. I can't speak
| for the US but from where I'm from "analog" gambling has a much
| wider array of options than just casinos(including illegal
| casinos), and those tend to be available locally everywhere in
| some manner even today.
|
| It probably is worse than ever I do agree, the internet age
| gives far too much visibility and access to it, to the point
| where the most popular sports games have progression pretty
| much tied to some form of lootboxes, and that's before even
| getting into the rabbit hole of gacha.
|
| The acceptance of loot boxes because "it was just cosmetic" was
| a tragic slippery slope, all the problems with having cosmetics
| on said loot boxes aside, that turned into "you can also buy it
| with in-game currency", which then started offering in-game
| currency for purchase and making the prices to buy said things
| extraordinary, which generated a lot of money and allowed for a
| free release that would then feed the circle over again.
| lmkg wrote:
| There are several reasons why it is more accessible than
| before. One is internet gambling. Another is that SCOTUS struck
| down a federal law banning sports betting in 2018. So gambling
| used to be a "big thing" involving a trip to Vegas (or Atlantic
| City or whatever). Now it's something comparable to scrolling
| Facebook.
|
| Many of the laws around gambling are still quasi-religious
| morality rules from the Prohibition era, focusing on Games of
| Chance. Regulation has not caught up to the current
| understanding of gambling as an addiction.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| It's DEFINITELY much worse that before, for the sufficient and
| simple reason you stated, it's just that much easier to gamble
| these days. I know a colleague at work with a problem, who
| comes into work after the weekend cussing out his wife for
| hiding his credit card after he loses a few hundred bucks on
| Friday night.
|
| I know another guy who only ever talks about his wins, which
| has me guessing he must be badly in debt just based on the long
| odds. Both of these colleagues are Asian-American, and for them
| it seems just culturally OK to do these things.
| wombat-man wrote:
| Gambling is kinda fun if you stay in your limits. I think it
| really pulls in people who are just bored in life.
|
| Online sports betting is just not fun for me. I want to get a
| betting slip and walk away with dollars. Doing it on the phone
| feels very lame to me for some reason. Probably for the best. I
| also just don't have time to actually learn stuff about what
| could affect the game, so I mostly just make fun bets.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I will counterpoint this. I seem to have very high risk
| aversion, but I still tried blowing a couple hundred for my
| brother's bachelor party. It was the first time I had ever
| done real gambling, in a casino. I was excited to play slots,
| because I've had times in one videogame or another to play an
| example of slots and it was fun to make the numbers go up.
|
| Gambling isn't fun. The slot machines are just bright lights,
| and the vast majority of their exterior is spent on
| explaining the rules so they can have extremely complicated
| games so they can legally boost payouts, without violating
| the law. The very first machine I touched was something
| involving ducks. I put in a twenty, pressed a button, and
| lost ten dollars a second later. I literally sat there
| wondering if I had missed something, or didn't understand how
| to play.
|
| Okay, whatever that's a higher stakes game than I should be
| playing. So I moved onto the "penny" slots, which are
| contrived bullshit machines. They "run" fifty "bets"
| simultaneously so that one actual play is 50 cents but can
| claim that each "game" is only a penny. So I got to actually
| playing, pressing the bet button, getting the reels spinning,
| and winning and losing.
|
| There's nothing there. There are beeps and boops and things
| moving, but like, so what? It isn't the 50s anymore, we
| shouldn't really be entertained by the most basic beeps and
| boops that were possible before transistors were invented. We
| are well past pong in this day an age, shouldn't there be
| something more? It's also VERY obvious from right the first
| second that you WILL lose more than you win. After just ten
| plays you will have a pretty good idea of the downward trend
| you face, even if you somehow get big wins here and there.
|
| So I move from machine to machine. I eventually find a
| machine made by konami, you know, the guys behind huge
| popular video game franchises, like castlevania and metal
| gear and DDR. Turns out they make a lot of gambling machines
| nowadays, and pretty much only those. This machine had a
| large high resolution display, and bright lights and loud
| sounds. But, it was exactly the same. It's just a few digital
| reels that pretend to spin and lock into whatever set up the
| RNG already decided you will get.
|
| Okay, fine, I've always wanted to play blackjack and I have
| $100 here I've decided to play until gone. So I go look at
| the card tables. Turns out, every game has bespoke rules on
| how you are allowed to bet, how you can play, and the game
| runs at an absurd pace. Not only can you not use simple and
| classic blackjack strategy because of the limited betting
| system, but it nakedly shows how stupid gambling is at all,
| because the rules unilaterally limit any possible upside for
| the player, while leaving their downside wide open. A simple
| house edge was not enough for this rule set, instead you are
| required to set a personal max bet before each round, and it
| doesn't matter how good you do that round you can't bet more
| than that ante. The quick pace also makes it impossible to
| actually think on your cards, decided how good you think that
| is, and bet accordingly. Meanwhile, all the other players at
| the table have obviously been here every day this month, are
| losing hundreds every few hands, and keep telling you about
| their "system" that totally works and definitely beats the
| super stacked rules in this game.
|
| That was it. That's when I realized that gambling isn't fun.
| Gambling games simply are not designed to be fun, because
| nobody plays them for fun. A more fun game does not bring in
| more money for the casino. Instead, they make more money by
| simply running more "games" per second, because most
| regulation is around the odds you are allowed to set up "per
| game" essentially. Look back at that konami slot. They make
| ACTUAL games, for ACTUAL fun, at least at one point. Compare
| the konami slot machine to an arcade cabinet of Gradius; It's
| literally designed to kill you and take your coin once every
| minute or so. And that is still less greedy, over-engineered,
| optimized, and hollowed out than even the simplest slot
| machine I could find. Castlevania is fun. Metal gear is fun,
| even though I think the story is dumb. DDR is incredible fun.
| Slot machines and gambling are not fun unless you get that
| magic hit of dopamine every time you press that button, and
| if you do, you are directly susceptible to being physically
| addicted to gambling, and every single light, sound, smell,
| touch in that building has been expressly optimized to give
| you that hit of dopamine and get you addicted.
|
| I don't understand why anyone defends it.
| [deleted]
| jrm4 wrote:
| I'd say the biggest takeaway from this article might not be
| gambling itself, but how social media et al exploit this _exact_
| mechanism.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| "It's the flow of the experience that people are after. Money to
| them is a means to sit there longer, not an end. They don't win a
| jackpot and leave, they win a jackpot and sit there until it's
| gone."
| MrFantastic wrote:
| It's hard to sympathize with people that play games in casinos
| that clearly state you will lose on average 3% with every bet.
| stnmtn wrote:
| Sympathy and empathy are hard, and to be sympathetic means
| stepping out of your own shoes to try to understand people and
| situations that you don't understand.
| Something1234 wrote:
| Wait I thought empathy was the one out of my shoes and
| sympathy was feeling bad on someone else's behalf?
| stnmtn wrote:
| I looked it up and you're right! I thought they were more
| or less interchangeable but it looks like that's not true.
| Similar to how jealousy and envy are different
| wikfwikf wrote:
| I do not find it hard to sympathize with them; I have a lot of
| sympathy for them.
| rpmw wrote:
| Sounds like MMO grinds to me
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