7 ms·

It's those addicts that would be willing to use an alternative payment mechanism if that was made easy and there was some benefit to them. That might be why App

• treeman79 5y ago
  If people make there own money. Then fine whatever. If the set of gamblers has a large crossover with the set of people on welfare. Then people paying taxes have a right to be grouchy. Like watching a who Person is always out of money and gets a lot of hand outs; blow all the money on scratchers. I have a family member whom I only buy food for because every dollar I give them goes straight to scratchers. She once won big. 150 out of the 100 dollars I gave her. she then proceed to buy our kids expensive crap. Umm that was so you had food for week.
  • grogenaut 5y ago
    .5% is half of the 1% who can easily afford an expenditure like this for fun. Or if you don't go to bars 2 days a week the same for top 10% earners. I think your fitting your own narritive to these numbers with no data.
• diebeforei485 5y ago
  High end restaurants don't use casino-style tricks (random rewards or non-rewards) to get you hooked.
  • void_mint 5y ago
    Are all businesses to be compared to high end restaurants?
    • gravypod 5y ago
      I may be ignorant but I don't know many businesses who operate mainly on dopamine hooks other than tech and gambling.
      • void_mint 5y ago
        Is it coincidence that high end restaurants usually involve lots of alcohol?
        • gyc 5y ago
          If anything given the cost of high quality ingredients, high end restaurants might even be losing money on food alone, and may depend on alcohol sales to make up the difference.
          • void_mint 5y ago
            I really really doubt that.
            • alasdair_ 5y ago
              This is true, or very close to true (some just break even on the food rather than actually taking a loss). Certainly if everyone became tee total the restaurants could not afford to stay open at the prices they charge for food alone. Source: my brother spent 20 years in fine dining up to executive chef levels.
      • DrBenCarson 5y ago
        Um... * pharmaceuticals * alcohol * soft drinks * tobacco * fashion * media (film, tv, publishers like Buzzfeed, People, etc.) * half the useless shit I buy on Amazon
  • HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    No, but low-end ones do. cf Domino's Surprise Frees (https://surprisefrees.dominos.com/ https://surprisefrees.dominos.com/) program.
    • _fat_santa 5y ago
      Personally I don't see that as getting people hooked, more so incentivizing online ordering. My theory is Dominos has figured out that online orders are much more efficient to take than phone orders. As such they are doing everything they can to nudge people to order online. So no I don't think it's to get people hooked on Domino's pizza because of a roulette you can play when you order, I think it's a "nudge" to get you to order online. Regular Joe wants to order a pizza and goes to call Dominos, when he looks up the number he sees the promotion but only if he orders online. Even though Regular Joe usually orders over the phone, he orders online this time, even winning some breadsticks for his trouble. Regular Joe now orders online whenever he gets Dominos.
      • judge2020 5y ago
        > Personally I don't see that as getting people hooked, more so incentivizing online ordering. Not much different than the Phone then. I can assure you there are at least a few dozen people who buy Domino's once a day thanks to this promotion.
        • Dylan16807 5y ago
          At that point they're winning regularly and it acts more like a 50 cent discount on each order, with no way to win big either. If you want to get hooked on that you can just pick your own random day of the week. So whatever, not predatory in the way that going for whales usually is.
      • secabeen 5y ago
        Online orders save staff time, and are much less error-prone.
    • suprfsat 5y ago
  • gowld 5y ago
    High end restaurants use social status tricks. What's the difference?
  • johnnyanmac 5y ago
    Games as an entire concept use these tricks. mobile games aren't fundamentally different. The difference is that there was always a spending ceiling until mobile came along. Even if that spending celing was still something absurd in a few cases, like $2000 of train simulator DLC. Regardless, people spending this much money are likely old enough to choose to gamble (or stealing their money, which is a different issue altogether). So I'm as concerned for them as any other gambler/alcoholic. Wish them the best but I don't care to bring the government in and regulate everyone's behaviors (My country historically tried and failed with alcohol. And is slowly losing similar efforts with drugs).
    • wyre 5y ago
      Most (US) cities already have regulations against gambling and I don’t see people having underground casinos where they are losing their life savings. AFAIK there is even regulation against e-gambling like online poker. Microtransactions give the brain the same chemicals but without the possibility of a cash payout and are engineered to take as much money from the user using techniques casinos don’t have access to because they exist in a physical space and not digitally inside a mobile phone without having to offer cash payouts for winners.
      • johnnyanmac 5y ago
        >and I don’t see people having underground casinos where they are losing their life savings. well, it wouldn't be very undergrounds if you saw it, no? I have little doubt that they exist, even if I cannot prove it. Underground betting rings is almost a cliche in modern media. >Microtransactions give the brain the same chemicals but without the possibility of a cash payout no, games do that (outside of like, Steam Marketplace where you can apparently sell digital items yourself. So the money traded IS the rush). MTX are a monetization taking advantadge of that dopamine rush. And nowhere close to the first one.
      • thegrimmest 5y ago
        > regulation against e-gambling like online poker. nit - playing poker against other people isn't gambling, it's a game of skill. Much like chess, if you're better, you win and can earn a living. No one earns a living playing roulette.
  • gwern 5y ago
    High end restaurants absolutely do those! They track customers looking for whales, and track various random gifts and upgrades. "Monsieur? The maitre d' says he put the corner table aside for you. Please enjoy a small bisque while you wait, our compliments. And I believe it is your wife's birthday, perhaps the pianist can play her favorite song?"
    • mortenjorck 5y ago
      Yes to whale-seeking, but this is otherwise not a valid comparison. Fine-dining patrons are not basing their visits around the hope that "this time they'll get the free appetizers." Put another way, I'm reasonably sure that gambling addiction support groups outnumber fine dining addiction support groups by a few orders of magnitude.
      • gwern 5y ago
        Now you are equivocating on 'hooked'. They certainly do intend to get you hooked so you come back again and again.
  • RandyGoldy 5y ago
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• lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  Thanks for the number check - too late to edit now. (Ben arrived at a number of a milion people so I think it was all a little fuzzy) Addict is a difficult term. As patio11 points out elsewhere most definitions of addiction include desire but inability to give up, plus some degree of harm. Helping addicts is a individual task, but I think social policy has a role to play in harm reduction. I like Richard Thaler's idea of Libertarian Paternalism. Yes we support each persons individual right to fuck up their lives. But we should set the defaults in life to be ... in the best interests of the patient as it were. So, each month we take taxes out of our pay packet, oh and yes, by default you pay 8% into a pension. New job? You are automatically enrolled in a union. Want to get out. Fine, fill in the form. (P.S. that one changed the course of British Politics for a century) We can question how people are persuaded by others to spend their money. We can question the polluters who muck up the rivers, so we can also question the polluters who pollute our minds. I am sure is an unpopular position, but, at the bottom level, I find it annoying that supermarkets put kids toys and chocolates right next to the checkout. (Perhaps better advice is - you are human - you will get addicted to something. booze that something carefully)
• jay_kyburz 5y ago
  >I'm also not sure if "addict" is the right term. The difference between these games and a high end restaurant is that, at the restaurant you get what you order. In the games, you roll a die and have small change to receive a big payout. I would have no problems with the games if you could just choose the high end loot and pay for it.
  • Thorentis 5y ago
    > In the games, you roll a die and have small change to receive a big payout. This is untrue of most games with IAP. You are usually buying in-game items to speed up your progression through the game, or to give you some advantage. In practice, I imagine the brain mechanics are much the same as a slot machine though. I once saw a senior couple sitting at McDonald's next to each other, both on an iPad, slowly tapping away at the screen of what looked like a Clash of Clans/other town builder game. The dead look on their faces as they tapped away reminded me of addicts at slot machines. While the gambling aspect isn't the same, the dopamine hits I'd say are largely identical.
    • jay_kyburz 5y ago
      Have a look at the Top Grossing free iOS games. They all rely on random drops from loot boxes (perhaps in addition to timers)
    • jcrites 5y ago
      Fortunately most PC games have moved away from paying for anything that gives you an in-game advantage, and instead have moved for paying for "skins" or cosmetic items for game characters. It turns out that people care enough about this that it's a substantial revenue stream, and enables a number of widely-played games to be completely free, and playable in just as effective manner as those who spend money. It's a similar desire to wear the latest fashion, not last year's or last decade's fashion. Art designers for these games are charged with creating new stylish character skins and effects that people would be jealous of every season. I'm perfectly fine with this as a monetization model. One exception is Blizzard, who charges $60 for Overwatch and then also sells loot boxes with cosmetic items. There are other games like Path of Exile that are completely free (and aren't battleground PvP games) that rely entirely on money from players buying cosmetic items. (OK, to be fair Path of Exile does allow some small in-game advantages from buying stash tabs i.e. more inventory space, but it didn't feel like a huge advantage compared to the number you get by default.)