A better metaphor than gambling is carnival games, the prize return on investment in arcade gaming is systemically low. I've worked at several game companies an

A better metaphor than gambling is carnival games, the prize return on investment in arcade gaming is systemically low. I've worked at several game companies and never known a single gamer in my life who's been interested in gambling. The sports community is obviously what's being taken over by gambling. Sports are being so thoroughly defined by and ruined by it that it's weird to think of gambling as a big deal in other contexts. If you try to apply the gambling moral panic to video games it doesn't work because sports so conspicuously shows what it looks like when the slippery slope is real and not just hypothetical. Trying to see the effects of gambling anywhere but with sports right now is like trying to see the stars when the sun is out.