8 ms·

Casino-like apps have drained people of millions

78 points by danso 6y ago

PaulHoule 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate/Grand_Order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate/Grand_Order
- pjc50 6y ago
  There's a lot of these about, but I'm astonished to see how much money FGO has brought in.
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    FGO is astonishing in that it combines a combat system that isn't that bad, an abominable English translation, an advanced Moe character system similar to Pokemon, Neptunia, etc and (in the general 'Fate/XYZ' meta-setting) an astonishingly good pretense. Put Moe addiction together with gatcha and you will get some Otakings to spend $70k or more on the game.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
If it wasn’t apps, it was going to be the casinos, right?
- georgyo 6y ago
  At least you have to physically go to a casino. When the casino is in your pocket it's very hard for an addict to resist.
  - diggan 6y ago
    The strangest part in this story for me, is that this is nothing like a casino, you can't even win any money back! It's purely spending money for spinning wheels, without the suction that you might win in the future... > As in a real casino, players exchange money for coins to bet. Unlike in a real casino, there is no way to win money back or earn a payout on coins. But that has not stopped Shellz and her husband from spending about $150,000 in the game in just two years. This is unreal! How can you spend $200 A DAY on a game that you cannot win anything back from? I'm having a really hard time understanding how or why these people keep playing the games.
    - Joker_vD 6y ago
      Welcome to the sad reality where people are so imperfect that they can't even imagine ways in which people are actually imperfect. By the way, have you heard of the Cookie Clicker?
      - diggan 6y ago
        I've played plenty of Cookie Clicker and other video games, probably too much, and also been to my fair share of casinos, but never spent $200 per day on things that there is no chance of getting money back somehow.
        Joker_vD 6y ago
        Well, I've never been to a casino, but I did spent quite some time on videogames, including WoW. For me, the trick to actually give something like this up was to say to myself, "I can stop at any moment. In fact, I will stop right now" and... stop. The next few moments/hours/days (depending on how long you've spent and how emotionally attached you've grown) feel kinda surreal: "Have I really just spent all this time to... basically doing nothing", but it helps to switch your attention to something else and forget about that accident. I suspect, however, that this trick only works for someone pretty lazy i.e. someone who can easily refrain from doing something even when feeling like doing that something (imagine "Mood: Ich Hab' Keine Lust by Rammstein").
    - jshaqaw 6y ago
      It’s really hard for me to get in the headspace to understand this. Maybe one way to think about it is if you were ever playing a Civ game where you were in that “just one more turn” mode. You know you have just lost 8 hours of your life to something with no real world payoff. You know you lost a day of productivity at work/school/life with real quantifiable impact and need to get back to real life. But ... “one more turn”
    - zrobotics 6y ago
      The article actually has a pretty good explanation for this- part of it is the social aspects of the games. Spending big allows one into higher-tier VIP clubs. So there can be friendships that have developed where, in order to maintain status and stay in the same league as your friends, one needs to maintain spending habits.
- cpitman 6y ago
  The article is implying though that actually winning money is not required for people to become addicted. It's as if you go to a casino to play slot machines, with no expectation of ever being able to cash out. You just get high in winning and losing chips, with no attached monetary value. I wonder if an actual casino could get away with that business model.
  - clegs 6y ago
    Many casinos operate these apps as well https://www.wynnlasvegas.com/casino/wynn-slots https://www.wynnlasvegas.com/casino/wynn-slots
    - cpitman 6y ago
      Sure, but I'm asking if a physical casino could operate without cash out being an incentive? Say you get a certain number of chips for free each day you come, and then you can pay for more chips.
      - clegs 6y ago
        Probably with some market downsizing. It’d essentially be an arcade but with slots. The appeal might be to use large denomination machines, like with the apps - lots of zeros
  - mimixco 6y ago
    Churchill Downs, the former owner of Big Fish, is a casino and racetrack company and Aristocrat, the current owner is a slot manufacturer.
- mjohn 6y ago
  In the UK there are regulations that require casinos and other gambling venues to block access if a problem gambler doesn't show restraint. It's much like how we would expect a barkeeper to tell a alcoholic who has had too much that they won't be served more and shouldn't drive home. Similar addictive behaviour occurs with these apps and the games are designed to be as addictive as possible. While users should take personal responsibility, it would be trivial for these app producers to provide users with some protections from themselves.
  - trengorilla 6y ago
    Having worked in that industry within the UK, these "requirements" are seldom carried out.
- caymanjim 6y ago
  Casinos, at least in the US, are heavily regulated. All games are checked for fairness; there are minimum payout odds mandated by law (for example, slot machines in NJ must return 75% or more, depending on locality); casinos must keep cash on hand to cover payouts; they must pay immediately on demand; etc. In addition, they're liable if they allow clearly-addicted people to continue playing or if they explicitly encourage unhealthy behavior (although this is loose, as they can ply you with "free" rooms, drinks, transportation, entertainment, etc.). It's not even the same ballpark as these apps run by criminal organizations that have no rules. Banks ought to block any payment to them and cut off the source.
runnr_az 6y ago
The strangest part of this - winning is literally impossible, right? They buy chips in the game, but there's no way to turn them back into money...
- recursive 6y ago
  Maybe most players never get around to realizing this. In order to try to cash out, you'd have to beat the house.
- badRNG 6y ago
  I'm completely confused here. I have always assumed gambling addiction is centered on winning it big, to recoup prior losses, or to otherwise change one's station in life. None of these things are possible on these apps. I'm actually at a point of disbelief. I simply don't believe that gamblers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a game they know will never make them any money. I'm open to the idea, but it certainly strains credulity. Why? Why would anyone do that? What would even drive one to do that?
  - mimixco 6y ago
    From what I've read, gamblers are actually addicted to losing. They expect it and keep coming back, which is why a zero-win game is addictive, too.
  - vsareto 6y ago
    >Why? Why would anyone do that? What would even drive one to do that? It's addiction, it isn't rational.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    You overestimate the human potential to be a rational actor. You pay for the dopamine hit you get when you "win." The money - in real gambling - is a nice bonus. But it's the hope of a neurotransmitter cascade in the brain that's really in charge. See variable reinforcement schedules: https://allpsych.com/psychology101/learning/reinforcement/ https://allpsych.com/psychology101/learning/reinforcement/
  - 6y ago
themodelplumber 6y ago
This article makes me wonder about the value comparison between spending even $3.99 on an app store game you really like vs. buying some scratch-off tickets. They both come with an excitement factor, but only one puts a substantial payoff on the table, generally increases the tax revenue base, and gets you out of the house...
Koala_ice 6y ago
They're talking about Robinhood, right?
- soylentcola 6y ago
  I recognize and understand the snark/sarcasm regarding that sort of stock market gambling, but regardless of other details, at least you can cash out any earnings in Robinhood, no? The apps discussed in the article are more like the video slots/poker/etc. that I've seen in bars around here. Real video gambling machines aren't legal so they make them for "entertainment only". Some (many?) bars let you cash out under the table as a way to keep people playing, but if someone managed to win a lot of "credits", the bar would be under no obligation to pay out since technically they aren't allowed to anyway.
- bootcampwhere 6y ago
  Sir, this is a casino, not an arcade.
nemo44x 6y ago
"We lie in bed next to each other, we have two tablets, two phones and a computer and all these apps spinning Reel Rivals at the same time," she said. "We normalize it with each other." Maybe just have sex instead? It's interesting these games don't actually payout. It sounds shocking at first. But then again, if they did actually payout you'd still end up with nothing in the end if you play it long enough. "After a long legal battle, 2 million players, including Shellz and her husband, will be eligible to get a small part of their losses back — about 20 percent for those who lost $10,000 to $100,000." I'm guessing the company doesn't care and is probably fairly assured these people will just pump it back into their machine.
- bootcampwhere 6y ago
  It is not gambling, it is stupid people donating money to an app creator, that's all.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  Probably not, I never put money into any of those apps cause I know I wont get anything back, but I do play them every few years for about a month or two just to try slot machines all over again.
- finaliteration 6y ago
  > Maybe just have sex instead? Having grown up with two addict parents I can tell you that “Just try doing something else” isn’t typically a useful strategy.
- zihotki 6y ago
  > Maybe just have sex instead? And what should they do afterwards? They will still have a lot of time remaining.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    Do it again, or do it longer. Or just fall asleep at that point and get a good nights rest. :)
danso 6y ago
The implications of this article – that addiction can happen even without real-world reward – seems to be inline with how non-U.S. courts have reasoned when it comes to regulating lootboxes (e.g. Overwatch) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box#Regulation_and_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box#Regulation_and_legisl...
- falcolas 6y ago
  In my opinion, they are identical. Purchasing an intermediary currency, buying spins at the wheel (buying lootboxes), experiencing the buildup and hype for the boxes opening, and the rush of dopamine for winning/losing. The only real difference is how you use your winnings. One lets you spin again, the other lets you show off your prestige. In this respect, Overwatch et.al. dominates the categories of 'getting more people to pay to spin the wheel', and the long term feeling of "it was worth it".
nend 6y ago
>In a response to NBC News' inquiries, the company issued a statement saying its games are not gambling and should not be regulated as such. >"These games are not gambling because, among other reasons, they offer no opportunity for players to win money or anything of value," the statement said in part. The monetary reward is 0, but you're still playing a game of chance in order to win a prize, and you still need to put down money to play (presumably after losing all your initial free coins). I don't know what the legal definition of gambling is, but that still seems like gambling to me. Maybe that's too wide of a definition, but regardless it appears to be tapping in to the same addiction hooks as gambling.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  It is indeed a very wide definition. Is going to an arcade now gambling? Perhaps this hinges on how much chance vs skill is involved in the game, but it's difficult for me to see a principled difference between these apps and any situation in which you pay money to play a game.
  - nend 6y ago
    >Perhaps this hinges on how much chance vs skill is involved in the game It does. Arcade games are typically games of skill rather than games of chance (although that obviously varies). Additionally, in the end what it probably comes down to is how much attention the purveyor draws to themselves. If arcades started becoming so successful that they create addicted children to lose thousands of dollars of their parents money, I'm sure you'd start seeing arcade regulations. And in fact when pinball games first came out, you did see lots of governments get involved as it was viewed as corrupting children.
spicymaki 6y ago
This is another example of using technology to skirt local laws and regulations. In the US we need more competent regulators and legislators to keep up with technological change. Hoping to get innovators like Andrew Yang into government to change things for the better.
bennettfeely 6y ago
Apple and Google could easily remove these type of apps from their stores but of course they won't. They're culpable. It shouldn't be possible to spend a hundred thousand dollars in in-app purchases.
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  Not that I advocate for this but: until it becomes a law they probably wont bother banning it. Unless people start protesting about it en-masse for Google to care.
- lsiunsuex 6y ago
  A problem with thoughts like this though, should I, the consumer, be able to choose what I want to do and not my app store of choice? IMO this falls inline with smoking weed or drinking alcohol. If I choose to do something and it doesn't directly hurt others, why can't I? I know, being drunk can cause accidents and kill people; same for drugs (weed is a bad example here) and destroy families and stuff, but it should still be my choice if I want to do these things myself. Too much regulation is just as bad as no regulation. All of this said, the only casino game I personally play is MyVegas which offers real rewards at real MGM properties (and others). I've spent maybe $100 real currency in the app since I started playing years ago and have gotten free nights at their hotels, tickets to shows, etc... so it's not allllll doom and gloom.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    > ... should I, the consumer, be able to choose what I want to do and not ... Society has decided that, for the good of society as a whole, this answer is no. That the good of society is more important than the desires of any given individual. For example, most countries (an organized society) have laws regulating gambling (and drinking, and smoking, and ...).
  - Joker_vD 6y ago
    > should I, the consumer, be able to choose what I want to do There is a whole field dedicated to engineering choices of individual humans, it's called "marketing". Oh, and also "recruitment". The choices are entirely yours, sure, and yet they're still malleable and largely predictable. I bet there is even statistics "such% of population is susceptible to this tactics, and such% of population is susceptible to that trick, and there is this negligible % of those who pretty much can't be swayed in a reliable way, but they don't matter (too few of them)". The thing is, government prohibition is just one of the least effective methods, but it is also the laziest and easiest and most obvious one which is why people come up with it all the time.
GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
This is actually quite fascinating. If I’m understanding the article correctly: “Unlike in a real casino, there is no way to win money back or earn a payout on coins.” These apps apparently have no monetary payout. So it seems that people are simply paying to play a casino simulator. Clearly they have an addiction to real world gambling to some degree, but I find it really curious that they still find some sort of satisfaction in playing a completely fake gambling game. Definitely in need of some regulation, no doubt this kind of gambling and others (I.e. loot boxes / skins) would only reinforce that addiction.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  These apps have been around for a decade now, since the original Slotomania and games of that ilk on Facebook. The goal is to create an experience where you feel like you're in Vegas. Recognizable sound, graphics, and slot machines that largely play like the real thing (and in some cases they are literally licensed versions of real games on the floor). Monetization is basically the same as Candy Crush, rate-limit free currency and try to get frustrated players to spend $$ to speed up the process.
- falcolas 6y ago
  The act of spinning the wheel is its own reward, dopamine wise. The anticipation of winning it big. The colorful displays. The hope as the wheel looks like it's going to land on the big payout. Even losing is its own rush. And if you do win... can cashing out for boring dollars ever compare to the excitement of being allowed to spin the wheel again - for the chance of an even bigger prize?
- rightbyte 6y ago
  I made an account at bigfishgames.com and it doesn't say anything about no payouts unless you scroll down abit to the fineprint under the game frame. It's really easy to buy chips though. However it feels like only a small part of revenue is from people taking them for a real casino?
ve55 6y ago
Gambling (in its many forms) has been getting out-of-hand for so many demographics recently. Not just loot boxes and in-game casinos, but cryptocurrency gambling, sports betting, options and stock gambling, and much more. It seems like everywhere I go I enter huge gambling markets, and I see the same patterns of behavior in all of them, and the amount of people that are hurt terribly, sometimes to the point of complete financial ruin or even suicide, is immense. More immense than we believe if you ask me, because it's very shameful to admit this stuff, and I think most of it goes unnoticed. In theory I like the idea of consumers getting to spend money however they want to, but it's clear that the downsides of letting apps manage their 'virtual item' gambling however they want to is terrible for so many consumers, and it's unfair how addictively-engineered these games are, often using optimization techniques and psychological tricks that the users do not understand, and doing whatever it takes to deceive people about their luck, odds, prospects, and so on. Just that these companies will do anything they can to retain their whale shows how predatory it can be - they will not just offer free in-game items to keep you, but the true high-spends they will offer free products to like a free iPad or iPhone, and will sometimes dedicate significant employee time to using any trick they can to make sure these people keep spending their money on gambling.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  As a student I worked in a casino for a short time. It just really drags you down immensely if you get to know people spending their last dime. All kinds of people were there from completely different backgrounds. People know that the chances are rigged against them (it is mandatory in my country to write down winning odds directly on devices and tables), but they are all waiting on this one time they will finally win. Some do so, but just continue playing again because they cannot stop anymore. It is a disease and addiction and people are profiting off it. The coffee might be free as the bank always wins anyway.
drchopchop 6y ago
Worked in this industry for quite a while (too long, in retrospect). The amount of micro-targeting towards "whales" was insane. People would essentially pay for the experience of feeling like they were in Vegas, and a certain small percentage of them would have latent gambling addictions that we'd unlock. Economically you only needed a single-digit percentage of whales in your player base, simply because the LTV of those users was so incredibly high. Even at $10+ CPI's, you could still make tons of money, and sell in-game coin packages at a straight-faced price of $99 (or even $199!) Additionally, there is no reason that these games had to be "fair" (unlike a regulated casino). You needed to know your payback percentages, but that was just to avoid destroying your economy. People start playing a new game, and get tons of wins and bonuses, and then it slowly settles down to ~85% RTP and sucks all their cash away.
- GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  I’m not super familiar with the industry what are LTV, CPI, and RTP?
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    Long Term Value, Cost Per Install (I'm assuming this includes things like ad spend), and Return To Player (avg. percentage of stake that players get back) I believe.
  - drchopchop 6y ago
    LTV = lifetime value, how much $$ a player is expected to spend (usually expressed in cohorts) CPI = cost per install, needs to be lower than LTV or else you have a failed product RTP = return to player, which means on average how much a game pays back to the player over time. In Vegas, this is regulated and is generally in the 85-93% range for slots. Unless you stop playing after a lucky winning streak, you will lose money long-term. The house always wins. For a non-regulated online game it can be whatever the devs want.
    - GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
      Any reason the RTP doesn’t approach zero?
clegs 6y ago
Not only can’t you cash out these apps but the apps are basically charging for zeros. They give players the option of buying and playing $10,000 chips for $3.99 or you can get “value” instead by buying $1,000,000,000 chips for $99. Gameplay is the same in both just with more zeros
- hunterloftis 6y ago
  And according to the article those $99-type whales are elevated into the "high-rollers" areas where the amounts gambled for are larger... leading to a similar amount of playtime at "higher stakes" only because of digital zeros. $3.99 to make 100 spins at fake-$100 each, vs $99 to make 100 spins at fake-$10,000 each. (numbers totally made up, btw)
ramoz 6y ago
I saw how much my mother spent on Candy Crush after she passed away. It breaks my heart with a whirlwind of emotions... like whether I should be angry these apps know how to exploit human emotion, or at peace because they provided her comfort in a rough time. They're not gambling, but clearly they know how to trigger some personal & psychological investment. This wasn't $5-10 here or there or on weekends... this was a daily pattern and with some of the larger in-app purchases. I had to sift through email receipts to get the exact amount, the Google play store also does a fine job of obscuring the spend.
tuna-piano 6y ago
There are so many "basically online gambling" adjacent companies. They seem to take advantage of the same psychological loophole, but likely leave the vast majority of people involved worse off. -Penny Auction sites. Tons of TV commercials for these. They let you bid on expensive items. For example, bid for a $500 iPad for $4. The trick is that you must pay for each bid, so it's more like a lottery than an auction.[1] -Omaze is an interesting one, and seems to be growing pretty large. It's a type of lottery, but they seem to give the majority of proceeds to charity.[2] Of course people should be able to do stupid things with their own money. But when you read the stories of folks involved with this stuff, it does feel sad. I used to be quite overweight. There were times in my life where I was mentally weak, and I would absolutely have paid money to remove the temptations (fast food) from the streets for my own benefit. Of course, there is no real market way to pay to remove temptation. This really does feel like a true market failure, the same as having these apps in the app stores... Perhaps legislation to remove temptation is actually what is best for most everyone involved. Anytime there is an industry/company with high percentages of dissatisfied customers, that is not a net positive thing to have. [1]https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0037-online-penny-auctions https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0037-online-penny-auct... [2]https://www.distractify.com/p/is-omaze-a-scam https://www.distractify.com/p/is-omaze-a-scam
- drchopchop 6y ago
  That is a great point, and I have been fascinated by these, especially the penny auction sites. DealDash is clever and has a mechanic where if you bid it keeps the auction alive for 10 more seconds (which must keep user engagement sky-high). Someone does actually win something, but everyone else loses both time and money - which is the difference between this and, say, eBay. The difference, I think, in online casino gaming is that the vast majority of players do not actually spend money at all. Only a small amount of players do, and of those only a fraction are the hardcore people mentioned in this article. Thus it's hard to show it's causing harm in court, because the companies will simply say "it's a free app, microtransactions are not mandatory", and ignore the people who are taking our second mortgages on their houses. It's a scenario where a small fraction of the consumer base spends so much money that they subsidize the free players.
spelunker 6y ago
This is an interesting insight into slot machines too - take away any opportunity to win any money at all and some types of people will _still_ throw tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at them.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Semi unrelated, I remain stunned at how effective free2play games are at generating revenue. I occasionally play World of Warships, which is one of those games where you can either grind your way up to a better ship, or pay real currency to accelerate the process. Being a cheap <explicative deleted> I’ve ground my way up to medium high tier ships; it’s fun enough. Then I looked into the company, and they have 1,750 employees, which is really expensive! It’s unbelievable that a “free” game can float such a massive development budget. I think the positive spin is that the great thing about free2play is that you get to “try before you buy”. If I tried World of Warships and loved it, spending $10 on more slots for ships makes sense. But the cynical part of my brain suspects that a small number of whales are draining their personal accounts in order to support development and subsidize the free play of people like me.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > they have 1,750 employees, which is really expensive! That is astonishing given how little development they seem to do! Even allowing for the small army of CSRs required to run any PvP game. I don't mind a few dollars a month for the ongoing exp bonus, but the people spending £50 on a single ship are clearly in a different zone. On the other hand, compared to other sorts of collector hobby, that's cheap. I could buy every ship in the fleet with what some people spend on a camera lens.
- johnatwork 6y ago
  They have a few other similar games that uses the same tech and feel to them (Tanks instead of ships), but your point stands (and they are all F2P AFAIK, same formula). I've had a insight as to what you're suspecting (for another similar game), and I can say that it is definitely something like the top 1% that generate most of the revenue, and the rest of the 99% serve as kind of an AI for them to dominate.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    It’s not even clear that spending money gets you an actual advantage in the game, it appears to mostly just accelerate the process of getting the higher tiered ships in a given nation’s tech tree.
admax88q 6y ago
I wonder, if instead of trying to regulate these companies, it would be more effective for the government or some sort of support organization to award a grant to some free software developers to flood the market with actually free "casino simulators." Similar to the "give drugs to drug addicts" approach. Give them something of minimal harm they can use to satisfy their addiction until they can find a way out. It's not like these would be particularly difficult apps to make, just need some good UX to make feel satisfying.
- SQueeeeeL 6y ago
  I would imagine there's a strong psychological benefit to earning coins with "real" world value. People love the feeling of "winning" $10 of tokens; even if you can't cash them out...
- saddestcatever 6y ago
  Interesting. What a fascinating idea. I have no idea how I'd go about the problem, but I wonder if there's an opportunity to buyout some of the licenses and software when some of these gambling companies go bankrupt, and pass the maintenance and support to a public good organization....
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mrhappyunhappy 6y ago
A ton of games use psychological tricks to get people to spend. Look at hearthstone from Blizzard. You have to keep buying cards until you get lucky... and you never do. The randomized fashion makes it so you never stop spending even though you are one card away from your ideal deck. It has all the elements of gambling minus the real life rewards. There definitely needs to be some sort of regulation — perhaps punishing the randomized reward mechanics.
currymj 6y ago
"Addiction By Design" by Natasha Dow Schull is a really great book about the slot machine industry. The author draws a distinction between two types of gambling addiction. One kind of addicted gambler is what you would typically think of -- they are motivated by some kind of perverse desire for a thrill, they may try to bet big to make back their losses. They tend to play table games or bet on sports. This is a stereotypically masculine group. She describes the gamblers who play slot machines (stereotypically feminine) as having a very different psychology. They're not really trying to win big and don't imagine what they will -- they're in it to keep playing, to stay in what she calls the "zone". So for this group of gamblers, it kind of makes sense that it's possible to reproduce the same mental state without the possibility of actually winning money. Winning more tokens really is rewarding, because it increases the amount of time they can continue playing. An interesting thing is that lot of techniques recognizable to the tech industry were done first as early as the 90s by slot machine companies and casinos. Very sophisticated A/B and UX testing of both the slot machines and the casino environment with a focus on optimizing time on device. Also, an incredibly sad story I remember from that book: Schull describes a gambler who got to the point where she could not compel herself to get up from the slot machine, yet was exhausted and wanted to go home. She began to mentally treat each loss as a win and each win as a loss, because she knew she wouldn't be able to leave until she had lost all her money.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  The psychology is very important. All the big players in this space employ people with experience designing actual Vegas slot machines, and the goal is to try to replicate it as much as possible. Everything from the line patterns, to the way words and icons pop, to the arpeggiated audio cues, is taken straight from tried-and-true Vegas templates. For someone who has spent time in real casinos, these games will feel very familiar, and trigger the same emotions. The trick with online, free-to-play versions is to forcibly stop the player when they've run out of coins, and say "come back tomorrow to collect your small refill, or pay us $2.99 right now to keep the fun going". And then throw every pricy psychology trick in the book at them to try to get them to break the seal of that initial purchase (because then the rest come much easier).
panda21 6y ago
It obviously wouldn't be nearly as lucrative but these no-payout virtual slots could easily avoid exploiting people by simply selling access to these slots with a one time purchase. The whales would probably still purchase every slot available but at least you set an a cap on how much they can spend and they can still get their fix.
anm89 6y ago
> A 42-year-old Pennsylvania woman said she felt saddened that she spent $40,000 on Big Fish Casino while working as an addiction counselor. Crazy and very sad and kind of funny all at once. I lean very very heavily in the let people do dumb stuff if they want camp but it feels like they have just found a way to break the minds of a certain group of people. It feels to me like this would be a good case for regulation. On the other hand this already makes zero sense. How would you even legislate against it?
canada_dry 6y ago
As an aside, I used to love playing slots in Vegas when real coins would fall into the hopper when you won. Apparently they spent a fair amount of effort making sure that sound was memorable. Now that physical coins have disappeared there's absolutely nothing 'fun' about the process! Playing a computerized slot machine is about as pleasurable as feeding a parking meter.
rasz 6y ago
>about $150,000 in the game in just two years. Probably still cheaper than two years of mental health care for two people in US.
Balgair 6y ago
Related: Online and Mobile sports betting is legal in Colorado now. Watching a few of the games this weekend, the ads for the mobile apps are everywhere. Like with the fantasy football craze a few years back, I have a feeling that this will also be dialed back a lot. https://www.denverpost.com/2020/02/25/sports-betting-colorado-online-casinos/ https://www.denverpost.com/2020/02/25/sports-betting-colorad...

78 points by danso 6y ago

PaulHoule 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate/Grand_Order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate/Grand_Order

pjc50 6y ago
There's a lot of these about, but I'm astonished to see how much money FGO has brought in.
- PaulHoule 6y ago
  FGO is astonishing in that it combines a combat system that isn't that bad, an abominable English translation, an advanced Moe character system similar to Pokemon, Neptunia, etc and (in the general 'Fate/XYZ' meta-setting) an astonishingly good pretense. Put Moe addiction together with gatcha and you will get some Otakings to spend $70k or more on the game.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

If it wasn’t apps, it was going to be the casinos, right?

georgyo 6y ago
At least you have to physically go to a casino. When the casino is in your pocket it's very hard for an addict to resist.
- diggan 6y ago
  The strangest part in this story for me, is that this is nothing like a casino, you can't even win any money back! It's purely spending money for spinning wheels, without the suction that you might win in the future... > As in a real casino, players exchange money for coins to bet. Unlike in a real casino, there is no way to win money back or earn a payout on coins. But that has not stopped Shellz and her husband from spending about $150,000 in the game in just two years. This is unreal! How can you spend $200 A DAY on a game that you cannot win anything back from? I'm having a really hard time understanding how or why these people keep playing the games.
  - Joker_vD 6y ago
    Welcome to the sad reality where people are so imperfect that they can't even imagine ways in which people are actually imperfect. By the way, have you heard of the Cookie Clicker?
    - diggan 6y ago
      I've played plenty of Cookie Clicker and other video games, probably too much, and also been to my fair share of casinos, but never spent $200 per day on things that there is no chance of getting money back somehow.
      - Joker_vD 6y ago
        Well, I've never been to a casino, but I did spent quite some time on videogames, including WoW. For me, the trick to actually give something like this up was to say to myself, "I can stop at any moment. In fact, I will stop right now" and... stop. The next few moments/hours/days (depending on how long you've spent and how emotionally attached you've grown) feel kinda surreal: "Have I really just spent all this time to... basically doing nothing", but it helps to switch your attention to something else and forget about that accident. I suspect, however, that this trick only works for someone pretty lazy i.e. someone who can easily refrain from doing something even when feeling like doing that something (imagine "Mood: Ich Hab' Keine Lust by Rammstein").
  - jshaqaw 6y ago
    It’s really hard for me to get in the headspace to understand this. Maybe one way to think about it is if you were ever playing a Civ game where you were in that “just one more turn” mode. You know you have just lost 8 hours of your life to something with no real world payoff. You know you lost a day of productivity at work/school/life with real quantifiable impact and need to get back to real life. But ... “one more turn”
  - zrobotics 6y ago
    The article actually has a pretty good explanation for this- part of it is the social aspects of the games. Spending big allows one into higher-tier VIP clubs. So there can be friendships that have developed where, in order to maintain status and stay in the same league as your friends, one needs to maintain spending habits.
cpitman 6y ago
The article is implying though that actually winning money is not required for people to become addicted. It's as if you go to a casino to play slot machines, with no expectation of ever being able to cash out. You just get high in winning and losing chips, with no attached monetary value. I wonder if an actual casino could get away with that business model.
- clegs 6y ago
  Many casinos operate these apps as well https://www.wynnlasvegas.com/casino/wynn-slots https://www.wynnlasvegas.com/casino/wynn-slots
  - cpitman 6y ago
    Sure, but I'm asking if a physical casino could operate without cash out being an incentive? Say you get a certain number of chips for free each day you come, and then you can pay for more chips.
    - clegs 6y ago
      Probably with some market downsizing. It’d essentially be an arcade but with slots. The appeal might be to use large denomination machines, like with the apps - lots of zeros
- mimixco 6y ago
  Churchill Downs, the former owner of Big Fish, is a casino and racetrack company and Aristocrat, the current owner is a slot manufacturer.
mjohn 6y ago
In the UK there are regulations that require casinos and other gambling venues to block access if a problem gambler doesn't show restraint. It's much like how we would expect a barkeeper to tell a alcoholic who has had too much that they won't be served more and shouldn't drive home. Similar addictive behaviour occurs with these apps and the games are designed to be as addictive as possible. While users should take personal responsibility, it would be trivial for these app producers to provide users with some protections from themselves.
- trengorilla 6y ago
  Having worked in that industry within the UK, these "requirements" are seldom carried out.
caymanjim 6y ago
Casinos, at least in the US, are heavily regulated. All games are checked for fairness; there are minimum payout odds mandated by law (for example, slot machines in NJ must return 75% or more, depending on locality); casinos must keep cash on hand to cover payouts; they must pay immediately on demand; etc. In addition, they're liable if they allow clearly-addicted people to continue playing or if they explicitly encourage unhealthy behavior (although this is loose, as they can ply you with "free" rooms, drinks, transportation, entertainment, etc.). It's not even the same ballpark as these apps run by criminal organizations that have no rules. Banks ought to block any payment to them and cut off the source.

runnr_az 6y ago

The strangest part of this - winning is literally impossible, right? They buy chips in the game, but there's no way to turn them back into money...

recursive 6y ago
Maybe most players never get around to realizing this. In order to try to cash out, you'd have to beat the house.
badRNG 6y ago
I'm completely confused here. I have always assumed gambling addiction is centered on winning it big, to recoup prior losses, or to otherwise change one's station in life. None of these things are possible on these apps. I'm actually at a point of disbelief. I simply don't believe that gamblers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a game they know will never make them any money. I'm open to the idea, but it certainly strains credulity. Why? Why would anyone do that? What would even drive one to do that?
- mimixco 6y ago
  From what I've read, gamblers are actually addicted to losing. They expect it and keep coming back, which is why a zero-win game is addictive, too.
- vsareto 6y ago
  >Why? Why would anyone do that? What would even drive one to do that? It's addiction, it isn't rational.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  You overestimate the human potential to be a rational actor. You pay for the dopamine hit you get when you "win." The money - in real gambling - is a nice bonus. But it's the hope of a neurotransmitter cascade in the brain that's really in charge. See variable reinforcement schedules: https://allpsych.com/psychology101/learning/reinforcement/ https://allpsych.com/psychology101/learning/reinforcement/
- 6y ago

themodelplumber 6y ago

This article makes me wonder about the value comparison between spending even $3.99 on an app store game you really like vs. buying some scratch-off tickets. They both come with an excitement factor, but only one puts a substantial payoff on the table, generally increases the tax revenue base, and gets you out of the house...

Koala_ice 6y ago

They're talking about Robinhood, right?

soylentcola 6y ago
I recognize and understand the snark/sarcasm regarding that sort of stock market gambling, but regardless of other details, at least you can cash out any earnings in Robinhood, no? The apps discussed in the article are more like the video slots/poker/etc. that I've seen in bars around here. Real video gambling machines aren't legal so they make them for "entertainment only". Some (many?) bars let you cash out under the table as a way to keep people playing, but if someone managed to win a lot of "credits", the bar would be under no obligation to pay out since technically they aren't allowed to anyway.
bootcampwhere 6y ago
Sir, this is a casino, not an arcade.

nemo44x 6y ago

"We lie in bed next to each other, we have two tablets, two phones and a computer and all these apps spinning Reel Rivals at the same time," she said. "We normalize it with each other." Maybe just have sex instead? It's interesting these games don't actually payout. It sounds shocking at first. But then again, if they did actually payout you'd still end up with nothing in the end if you play it long enough. "After a long legal battle, 2 million players, including Shellz and her husband, will be eligible to get a small part of their losses back — about 20 percent for those who lost $10,000 to $100,000." I'm guessing the company doesn't care and is probably fairly assured these people will just pump it back into their machine.

bootcampwhere 6y ago
It is not gambling, it is stupid people donating money to an app creator, that's all.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
giancarlostoro 6y ago
Probably not, I never put money into any of those apps cause I know I wont get anything back, but I do play them every few years for about a month or two just to try slot machines all over again.
finaliteration 6y ago
> Maybe just have sex instead? Having grown up with two addict parents I can tell you that “Just try doing something else” isn’t typically a useful strategy.
zihotki 6y ago
> Maybe just have sex instead? And what should they do afterwards? They will still have a lot of time remaining.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  Do it again, or do it longer. Or just fall asleep at that point and get a good nights rest. :)

danso 6y ago

The implications of this article – that addiction can happen even without real-world reward – seems to be inline with how non-U.S. courts have reasoned when it comes to regulating lootboxes (e.g. Overwatch) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box#Regulation_and_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box#Regulation_and_legisl...

falcolas 6y ago
In my opinion, they are identical. Purchasing an intermediary currency, buying spins at the wheel (buying lootboxes), experiencing the buildup and hype for the boxes opening, and the rush of dopamine for winning/losing. The only real difference is how you use your winnings. One lets you spin again, the other lets you show off your prestige. In this respect, Overwatch et.al. dominates the categories of 'getting more people to pay to spin the wheel', and the long term feeling of "it was worth it".

nend 6y ago

>In a response to NBC News' inquiries, the company issued a statement saying its games are not gambling and should not be regulated as such. >"These games are not gambling because, among other reasons, they offer no opportunity for players to win money or anything of value," the statement said in part. The monetary reward is 0, but you're still playing a game of chance in order to win a prize, and you still need to put down money to play (presumably after losing all your initial free coins). I don't know what the legal definition of gambling is, but that still seems like gambling to me. Maybe that's too wide of a definition, but regardless it appears to be tapping in to the same addiction hooks as gambling.

wutbrodo 6y ago
It is indeed a very wide definition. Is going to an arcade now gambling? Perhaps this hinges on how much chance vs skill is involved in the game, but it's difficult for me to see a principled difference between these apps and any situation in which you pay money to play a game.
- nend 6y ago
  >Perhaps this hinges on how much chance vs skill is involved in the game It does. Arcade games are typically games of skill rather than games of chance (although that obviously varies). Additionally, in the end what it probably comes down to is how much attention the purveyor draws to themselves. If arcades started becoming so successful that they create addicted children to lose thousands of dollars of their parents money, I'm sure you'd start seeing arcade regulations. And in fact when pinball games first came out, you did see lots of governments get involved as it was viewed as corrupting children.

spicymaki 6y ago

This is another example of using technology to skirt local laws and regulations. In the US we need more competent regulators and legislators to keep up with technological change. Hoping to get innovators like Andrew Yang into government to change things for the better.

bennettfeely 6y ago

Apple and Google could easily remove these type of apps from their stores but of course they won't. They're culpable. It shouldn't be possible to spend a hundred thousand dollars in in-app purchases.

giancarlostoro 6y ago
Not that I advocate for this but: until it becomes a law they probably wont bother banning it. Unless people start protesting about it en-masse for Google to care.
lsiunsuex 6y ago
A problem with thoughts like this though, should I, the consumer, be able to choose what I want to do and not my app store of choice? IMO this falls inline with smoking weed or drinking alcohol. If I choose to do something and it doesn't directly hurt others, why can't I? I know, being drunk can cause accidents and kill people; same for drugs (weed is a bad example here) and destroy families and stuff, but it should still be my choice if I want to do these things myself. Too much regulation is just as bad as no regulation. All of this said, the only casino game I personally play is MyVegas which offers real rewards at real MGM properties (and others). I've spent maybe $100 real currency in the app since I started playing years ago and have gotten free nights at their hotels, tickets to shows, etc... so it's not allllll doom and gloom.
- falcolas 6y ago
  > ... should I, the consumer, be able to choose what I want to do and not ... Society has decided that, for the good of society as a whole, this answer is no. That the good of society is more important than the desires of any given individual. For example, most countries (an organized society) have laws regulating gambling (and drinking, and smoking, and ...).
- Joker_vD 6y ago
  > should I, the consumer, be able to choose what I want to do There is a whole field dedicated to engineering choices of individual humans, it's called "marketing". Oh, and also "recruitment". The choices are entirely yours, sure, and yet they're still malleable and largely predictable. I bet there is even statistics "such% of population is susceptible to this tactics, and such% of population is susceptible to that trick, and there is this negligible % of those who pretty much can't be swayed in a reliable way, but they don't matter (too few of them)". The thing is, government prohibition is just one of the least effective methods, but it is also the laziest and easiest and most obvious one which is why people come up with it all the time.

GaryNumanVevo 6y ago

This is actually quite fascinating. If I’m understanding the article correctly: “Unlike in a real casino, there is no way to win money back or earn a payout on coins.” These apps apparently have no monetary payout. So it seems that people are simply paying to play a casino simulator. Clearly they have an addiction to real world gambling to some degree, but I find it really curious that they still find some sort of satisfaction in playing a completely fake gambling game. Definitely in need of some regulation, no doubt this kind of gambling and others (I.e. loot boxes / skins) would only reinforce that addiction.

drchopchop 6y ago
These apps have been around for a decade now, since the original Slotomania and games of that ilk on Facebook. The goal is to create an experience where you feel like you're in Vegas. Recognizable sound, graphics, and slot machines that largely play like the real thing (and in some cases they are literally licensed versions of real games on the floor). Monetization is basically the same as Candy Crush, rate-limit free currency and try to get frustrated players to spend $$ to speed up the process.
falcolas 6y ago
The act of spinning the wheel is its own reward, dopamine wise. The anticipation of winning it big. The colorful displays. The hope as the wheel looks like it's going to land on the big payout. Even losing is its own rush. And if you do win... can cashing out for boring dollars ever compare to the excitement of being allowed to spin the wheel again - for the chance of an even bigger prize?
rightbyte 6y ago
I made an account at bigfishgames.com and it doesn't say anything about no payouts unless you scroll down abit to the fineprint under the game frame. It's really easy to buy chips though. However it feels like only a small part of revenue is from people taking them for a real casino?

ve55 6y ago

Gambling (in its many forms) has been getting out-of-hand for so many demographics recently. Not just loot boxes and in-game casinos, but cryptocurrency gambling, sports betting, options and stock gambling, and much more. It seems like everywhere I go I enter huge gambling markets, and I see the same patterns of behavior in all of them, and the amount of people that are hurt terribly, sometimes to the point of complete financial ruin or even suicide, is immense. More immense than we believe if you ask me, because it's very shameful to admit this stuff, and I think most of it goes unnoticed. In theory I like the idea of consumers getting to spend money however they want to, but it's clear that the downsides of letting apps manage their 'virtual item' gambling however they want to is terrible for so many consumers, and it's unfair how addictively-engineered these games are, often using optimization techniques and psychological tricks that the users do not understand, and doing whatever it takes to deceive people about their luck, odds, prospects, and so on. Just that these companies will do anything they can to retain their whale shows how predatory it can be - they will not just offer free in-game items to keep you, but the true high-spends they will offer free products to like a free iPad or iPhone, and will sometimes dedicate significant employee time to using any trick they can to make sure these people keep spending their money on gambling.

raxxorrax 6y ago
As a student I worked in a casino for a short time. It just really drags you down immensely if you get to know people spending their last dime. All kinds of people were there from completely different backgrounds. People know that the chances are rigged against them (it is mandatory in my country to write down winning odds directly on devices and tables), but they are all waiting on this one time they will finally win. Some do so, but just continue playing again because they cannot stop anymore. It is a disease and addiction and people are profiting off it. The coffee might be free as the bank always wins anyway.

drchopchop 6y ago

Worked in this industry for quite a while (too long, in retrospect). The amount of micro-targeting towards "whales" was insane. People would essentially pay for the experience of feeling like they were in Vegas, and a certain small percentage of them would have latent gambling addictions that we'd unlock. Economically you only needed a single-digit percentage of whales in your player base, simply because the LTV of those users was so incredibly high. Even at $10+ CPI's, you could still make tons of money, and sell in-game coin packages at a straight-faced price of $99 (or even $199!) Additionally, there is no reason that these games had to be "fair" (unlike a regulated casino). You needed to know your payback percentages, but that was just to avoid destroying your economy. People start playing a new game, and get tons of wins and bonuses, and then it slowly settles down to ~85% RTP and sucks all their cash away.

GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
I’m not super familiar with the industry what are LTV, CPI, and RTP?
- nicoburns 6y ago
  Long Term Value, Cost Per Install (I'm assuming this includes things like ad spend), and Return To Player (avg. percentage of stake that players get back) I believe.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  LTV = lifetime value, how much $$ a player is expected to spend (usually expressed in cohorts) CPI = cost per install, needs to be lower than LTV or else you have a failed product RTP = return to player, which means on average how much a game pays back to the player over time. In Vegas, this is regulated and is generally in the 85-93% range for slots. Unless you stop playing after a lucky winning streak, you will lose money long-term. The house always wins. For a non-regulated online game it can be whatever the devs want.
  - GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
    Any reason the RTP doesn’t approach zero?

clegs 6y ago

Not only can’t you cash out these apps but the apps are basically charging for zeros. They give players the option of buying and playing $10,000 chips for $3.99 or you can get “value” instead by buying $1,000,000,000 chips for $99. Gameplay is the same in both just with more zeros

hunterloftis 6y ago
And according to the article those $99-type whales are elevated into the "high-rollers" areas where the amounts gambled for are larger... leading to a similar amount of playtime at "higher stakes" only because of digital zeros. $3.99 to make 100 spins at fake-$100 each, vs $99 to make 100 spins at fake-$10,000 each. (numbers totally made up, btw)

ramoz 6y ago

I saw how much my mother spent on Candy Crush after she passed away. It breaks my heart with a whirlwind of emotions... like whether I should be angry these apps know how to exploit human emotion, or at peace because they provided her comfort in a rough time. They're not gambling, but clearly they know how to trigger some personal & psychological investment. This wasn't $5-10 here or there or on weekends... this was a daily pattern and with some of the larger in-app purchases. I had to sift through email receipts to get the exact amount, the Google play store also does a fine job of obscuring the spend.

tuna-piano 6y ago

There are so many "basically online gambling" adjacent companies. They seem to take advantage of the same psychological loophole, but likely leave the vast majority of people involved worse off. -Penny Auction sites. Tons of TV commercials for these. They let you bid on expensive items. For example, bid for a $500 iPad for $4. The trick is that you must pay for each bid, so it's more like a lottery than an auction.[1] -Omaze is an interesting one, and seems to be growing pretty large. It's a type of lottery, but they seem to give the majority of proceeds to charity.[2] Of course people should be able to do stupid things with their own money. But when you read the stories of folks involved with this stuff, it does feel sad. I used to be quite overweight. There were times in my life where I was mentally weak, and I would absolutely have paid money to remove the temptations (fast food) from the streets for my own benefit. Of course, there is no real market way to pay to remove temptation. This really does feel like a true market failure, the same as having these apps in the app stores... Perhaps legislation to remove temptation is actually what is best for most everyone involved. Anytime there is an industry/company with high percentages of dissatisfied customers, that is not a net positive thing to have. [1]https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0037-online-penny-auctions https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0037-online-penny-auct... [2]https://www.distractify.com/p/is-omaze-a-scam https://www.distractify.com/p/is-omaze-a-scam

drchopchop 6y ago
That is a great point, and I have been fascinated by these, especially the penny auction sites. DealDash is clever and has a mechanic where if you bid it keeps the auction alive for 10 more seconds (which must keep user engagement sky-high). Someone does actually win something, but everyone else loses both time and money - which is the difference between this and, say, eBay. The difference, I think, in online casino gaming is that the vast majority of players do not actually spend money at all. Only a small amount of players do, and of those only a fraction are the hardcore people mentioned in this article. Thus it's hard to show it's causing harm in court, because the companies will simply say "it's a free app, microtransactions are not mandatory", and ignore the people who are taking our second mortgages on their houses. It's a scenario where a small fraction of the consumer base spends so much money that they subsidize the free players.

spelunker 6y ago

This is an interesting insight into slot machines too - take away any opportunity to win any money at all and some types of people will _still_ throw tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at them.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Semi unrelated, I remain stunned at how effective free2play games are at generating revenue. I occasionally play World of Warships, which is one of those games where you can either grind your way up to a better ship, or pay real currency to accelerate the process. Being a cheap <explicative deleted> I’ve ground my way up to medium high tier ships; it’s fun enough. Then I looked into the company, and they have 1,750 employees, which is really expensive! It’s unbelievable that a “free” game can float such a massive development budget. I think the positive spin is that the great thing about free2play is that you get to “try before you buy”. If I tried World of Warships and loved it, spending $10 on more slots for ships makes sense. But the cynical part of my brain suspects that a small number of whales are draining their personal accounts in order to support development and subsidize the free play of people like me.

pjc50 6y ago
> they have 1,750 employees, which is really expensive! That is astonishing given how little development they seem to do! Even allowing for the small army of CSRs required to run any PvP game. I don't mind a few dollars a month for the ongoing exp bonus, but the people spending £50 on a single ship are clearly in a different zone. On the other hand, compared to other sorts of collector hobby, that's cheap. I could buy every ship in the fleet with what some people spend on a camera lens.
johnatwork 6y ago
They have a few other similar games that uses the same tech and feel to them (Tanks instead of ships), but your point stands (and they are all F2P AFAIK, same formula). I've had a insight as to what you're suspecting (for another similar game), and I can say that it is definitely something like the top 1% that generate most of the revenue, and the rest of the 99% serve as kind of an AI for them to dominate.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  It’s not even clear that spending money gets you an actual advantage in the game, it appears to mostly just accelerate the process of getting the higher tiered ships in a given nation’s tech tree.

admax88q 6y ago

I wonder, if instead of trying to regulate these companies, it would be more effective for the government or some sort of support organization to award a grant to some free software developers to flood the market with actually free "casino simulators." Similar to the "give drugs to drug addicts" approach. Give them something of minimal harm they can use to satisfy their addiction until they can find a way out. It's not like these would be particularly difficult apps to make, just need some good UX to make feel satisfying.

SQueeeeeL 6y ago
I would imagine there's a strong psychological benefit to earning coins with "real" world value. People love the feeling of "winning" $10 of tokens; even if you can't cash them out...
saddestcatever 6y ago
Interesting. What a fascinating idea. I have no idea how I'd go about the problem, but I wonder if there's an opportunity to buyout some of the licenses and software when some of these gambling companies go bankrupt, and pass the maintenance and support to a public good organization....

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mrhappyunhappy 6y ago

A ton of games use psychological tricks to get people to spend. Look at hearthstone from Blizzard. You have to keep buying cards until you get lucky... and you never do. The randomized fashion makes it so you never stop spending even though you are one card away from your ideal deck. It has all the elements of gambling minus the real life rewards. There definitely needs to be some sort of regulation — perhaps punishing the randomized reward mechanics.

currymj 6y ago

"Addiction By Design" by Natasha Dow Schull is a really great book about the slot machine industry. The author draws a distinction between two types of gambling addiction. One kind of addicted gambler is what you would typically think of -- they are motivated by some kind of perverse desire for a thrill, they may try to bet big to make back their losses. They tend to play table games or bet on sports. This is a stereotypically masculine group. She describes the gamblers who play slot machines (stereotypically feminine) as having a very different psychology. They're not really trying to win big and don't imagine what they will -- they're in it to keep playing, to stay in what she calls the "zone". So for this group of gamblers, it kind of makes sense that it's possible to reproduce the same mental state without the possibility of actually winning money. Winning more tokens really is rewarding, because it increases the amount of time they can continue playing. An interesting thing is that lot of techniques recognizable to the tech industry were done first as early as the 90s by slot machine companies and casinos. Very sophisticated A/B and UX testing of both the slot machines and the casino environment with a focus on optimizing time on device. Also, an incredibly sad story I remember from that book: Schull describes a gambler who got to the point where she could not compel herself to get up from the slot machine, yet was exhausted and wanted to go home. She began to mentally treat each loss as a win and each win as a loss, because she knew she wouldn't be able to leave until she had lost all her money.

drchopchop 6y ago
The psychology is very important. All the big players in this space employ people with experience designing actual Vegas slot machines, and the goal is to try to replicate it as much as possible. Everything from the line patterns, to the way words and icons pop, to the arpeggiated audio cues, is taken straight from tried-and-true Vegas templates. For someone who has spent time in real casinos, these games will feel very familiar, and trigger the same emotions. The trick with online, free-to-play versions is to forcibly stop the player when they've run out of coins, and say "come back tomorrow to collect your small refill, or pay us $2.99 right now to keep the fun going". And then throw every pricy psychology trick in the book at them to try to get them to break the seal of that initial purchase (because then the rest come much easier).

panda21 6y ago

It obviously wouldn't be nearly as lucrative but these no-payout virtual slots could easily avoid exploiting people by simply selling access to these slots with a one time purchase. The whales would probably still purchase every slot available but at least you set an a cap on how much they can spend and they can still get their fix.

anm89 6y ago

> A 42-year-old Pennsylvania woman said she felt saddened that she spent $40,000 on Big Fish Casino while working as an addiction counselor. Crazy and very sad and kind of funny all at once. I lean very very heavily in the let people do dumb stuff if they want camp but it feels like they have just found a way to break the minds of a certain group of people. It feels to me like this would be a good case for regulation. On the other hand this already makes zero sense. How would you even legislate against it?

canada_dry 6y ago

As an aside, I used to love playing slots in Vegas when real coins would fall into the hopper when you won. Apparently they spent a fair amount of effort making sure that sound was memorable. Now that physical coins have disappeared there's absolutely nothing 'fun' about the process! Playing a computerized slot machine is about as pleasurable as feeding a parking meter.

rasz 6y ago

>about $150,000 in the game in just two years. Probably still cheaper than two years of mental health care for two people in US.

Balgair 6y ago

Related: Online and Mobile sports betting is legal in Colorado now. Watching a few of the games this weekend, the ads for the mobile apps are everywhere. Like with the fantasy football craze a few years back, I have a feeling that this will also be dialed back a lot. https://www.denverpost.com/2020/02/25/sports-betting-colorado-online-casinos/ https://www.denverpost.com/2020/02/25/sports-betting-colorad...