Online games have a strong gambling component - lootboxes, randomized awards, etc.
An advance enough, Skinner box is indistinguishable from slot machine.
That doesn't mean that gaming makes you like gambling. There are many player archetypes, some of which get enjoyment out of games from factors that are quite dissimilar from gambling, and they will probably never gravitate towards it. I could see the reverse being true though, probably gambling does make you like some kinds of gaming.
Also, this is saying that online gaming is correlated with online gambling. Well yeah, it's all sitting at the computer playing competitive games against strangers, money or not it's a similar activity.
Indeed, they show no correlation between "playing games at 9" and "online gambling at 20". It might be the age difference, but it also might be that gaming in general has little correlation with online gambling, it's just competitive online gaming that correlates, which makes a lot of sense.
Their data is lacking to draw strong conclusions, but the question is interesting.
I know more than a few degenerate gamblers. My one buddy bets ~250k/yr, the rest are about ~100k. I'm like 10k (and through luck or skill I end every year up between 2-10k).
I'm the only gamer of this group of 10 people, even as kids.
Poof on the other hand, could be taken as a slur, sure.
Let’s relax.
How is that obvious? I'm not sure how those are connected. Maybe for a specific game, if that game has lootbox-like mechanics?
In this sense, gambling is just about rising the stakes to get that emotional hit when just fake points don't do it for you anymore.
I'm assuming that most online gambling is like poker where there is a degree, or at least an illusion, of skill and agency. Having some randomness involved is also quite appealing because you can keep hoping to get lucky and can win now and then even if you are not great at the game, it can still be fun to win even if you didn't really earn it. But I doubt many teenagers just keep pressing a button like in roulette or slots.
Well there is loot-boxes of course, but that's more engaging since the rewards are tied to an actual game, there's the chance to show-off your winnings in the case of cosmetics, the collectable nature of the rewards, and sometimes the possibility to trade them for other items or real money.
In PUBG: You walk into a house not knowing whats there. You find 'loot', you hoard it...and then maybe you get into a fight somewhere along the way. The game is 70% looting, 20% running and sometimes as little as 10% fighting other players. The looting is designed to feel like gambling.
And i freaking love it.
That's all to say, there's certainly rules and structure to the game, but a lot of what hooks me to these styles of games is the chance element. I just didn't realize until very recently (I'm now 39...took a minute to pickup on it)
Types of gambling could be sorted by how much control you have over the probabilities.
There are lots of similar tools that casino owners/game designers/sports betting apps/social media/&c use to build addiction into their products, all while offloading responsibility onto individual consumers.
A really interesting study of this is the book 'Addiction by Design' by Natasha Dow Schüll examines this in the context of slot machines/video poker/casino games, but you can see the same process at work basically wherever you look.
Big difference to PC or console games.
Mobile phones games are made only with one purpose, to vacuum parent's credit card.
I hope EU will put some measures in place, to ban Pay2win mobile phone games.
https://www.beuc.eu/reports/game-over-consumers-fight-fairer...
Blackjack, roulette, craps, slot machines, poker, and many other games have long been used for gambling.
Also sports betting has been a thing for nearly all of human civilization.
Computer Games used to have nothing whatsoever to do with Gambling, until about 2010 its seems (going from the other comments in this thread).
edit: not hating, i love magic but booster packs started this whole thing IMO. The idea being you can get players to purchase products many times over
It was more people buying boxes back then, opening, and selling the cards for profits (university mid 90s) than me buying lots of MTG in the hope to find something. We also played mostly with what we had, perhaps professional tournaments changed that.
Funnily, cards that people played back then, are worthless today, cards we considered average, are worth 1000+ EUR. Still have ~5000 EUR MTG cards somewhere.
I don't know how the relative market caps compared, but I remember reading years ago that a hat in TF2 had sold for $14k...
But also never bought a key. Recently sold old loot boxes for $15 each, nice.
Also of note, in many jurisdictions that regulate gambling, companies have found loopholes that offer arcade style "games of skill" that are still like 99.9% games of chance to get around gambling regulations. So gambling is also becoming more like gaming. It's enshittification all the way down.
I’m worried about the growing amount of gambling in society, specifically among young men. I’m shocked that sports betting was allowed to become legal in my country (US). I’m skeptical of the video game gateway hypothesis, but this is such an important problem that we need to look at it from multiple angles.
I feel like looking at the adolescent to adult years, you could basically ask "maybe a deluge of gambling advertising during the formative years has a significant impact on the target demographic audience for it (i.e. in Australia it is definitely white male coded in terms of actors and faces).
Which is the problem I have with trying to take any other factor with a demographic selector and draw conclusions from correlation: environmentally I don't see how you isolate the incredible amount of gambling targeted messaging out there.
It's not what "gamers" think of as gaming but there are dozens of mobile games each with hundreds of millions of active players, it is a massive market with a lot of it focused on children and teens. If it has any even slight contribution towards gambling addiction the social consequences will be massive over the next couple decades.
>ongitudinal data from Ireland to examine whether computer game engagement at 9-years-old (collected in 2007/8), and online gaming at 17 and 20
Imagine gaming 15 years ago compared to now. Today with things like micro-transactions and loot boxes there's much more gambling adjacent behavior in games.
If for instance kids who played games at an eraly age have less stigma towards exposing their hobbies, their self reported gambling numbers will also be affected.
Also, to see the impacts of gambling addiction in the funniest way possible, see BossManJack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qztd9eOuwsc
This is also why I don’t like the way some gamers treat Valve as the only ethical company in the industry. CS skin gambling is like what if you take the lootbox mechanism and pave it over the game’s entire ecosystem.
> Given more recent introductions of loot boxes and social casino games, continuous research is needed for future cohorts which may be greater affected by such developments.
The route from COD4 and FIFA 08 (the games popular when the "early childhood" cohort had their initial gaming activity measured) to online gambling is a lot longer than the route from the latest COD Warzone and Fifa Ultimate Team to online gambling.
Get into some physical sports, gym or otherwise, indoor or outdoor, doesn't matter whatever clicks for ya. And do them without screens, they are not useful in any way. After getting deep enough, those previous addictions will look like a pathetic shallow waste of precious little short life we all have. Plus you will feel much better. Plus you will look much better and more attractive.
These kids don't transition from gaming to gambling. They switch from gambling in games like Counter-Strike, Fifa or Apex Legends, to gambling on online casinos.
Also from what I have witnessed, this transition already happens while they are still minors, as many of the big casinos have no KYC until you want to cash out again.
fideloper•3h ago
(also curious if they'd call going hard on crypto / options "gambling" or not :P, which might be more about how hard it is to get ahead in todays economy than playing games as a kid, but that point is a very hard digression from what we're talking about here).
ludicrousdispla•3h ago
>> online gaming at 17 was associated with 1.4 higher odds of more frequent online gambling at 20 years
SirFatty•3h ago
"Loot boxes have come under fire from lawmakers and regulators around the world who claim selling random chances at rare or coveted in-game items is akin to gambling."
https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295676/epic-games-fortn...