6 ms·

Kid gamers to adult gamblers? Investigation of childhood gaming and YA gambling

30 points by tokai 1y ago

fideloper 1y ago
I might just be too dumb to read even an abstract, but it sounds like they said "meh idk, no strong evidence" (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 1y ago
  As someone who doesn't gamble, I have no idea how to interpret this statement: >> online gaming at 17 was associated with 1.4 higher odds of more frequent online gambling at 20 years
- SirFatty 1y ago
  They're not talking about playing Mario Kart, but more about things like loot boxes, which really is akin to gambling. "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-fortnite-loot-box-lawsuit-settlement-rocket-league-v-bucks https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295676/epic-games-fortn...
Willingham 1y ago
Likely correlation and not causation, Gambling addiction is just like any other addiction, and no one has answered the question of ‘why’ one becomes an addict. Most likely the causation is more closely related to the upbringing of the child, and the genetics passed down from the parents.
- Ygg2 1y ago
  I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss the causal links. Online games have a strong gambling component - lootboxes, randomized awards, etc. An advance enough, Skinner box is indistinguishable from slot machine.
  - HideousKojima 1y ago
    Except you actually sometimes get money back from the slot machine, with gaming lootboxes/gacha/microtransactions you're just getting imaginary digital goods that will disappear as soon as the company shuts down the game's servers.
    - sdenton4 1y ago
      First currency is only as good as the government that prints it, maaaan. (/me hits bong, buys more bitcoin.)
    - Ygg2 1y ago
      You are being trained to earn intermittent rewards. Not to earn money. Getting money is merely a formality/justification.
- mslansn 1y ago
  It’s basically genetics, but it’s not politically palatable to say that someone was doomed from birth. We’re all equal or something.
oersted 1y ago
Maybe I'm being reductionist, but it is rather obvious that if someone likes gambling but doesn't have access to it due to their age, they will reach for gaming as the closest substitute, sure. 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.
- bitmasher9 1y ago
  It makes some basic sense to say gambling is increasing among young men, and gaming is increasing in young men, maybe they are related. Their data is lacking to draw strong conclusions, but the question is interesting.
  - dgfitz 1y ago
    Gambling increased because many states recently legalized it. Any other correlation is puff science. 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.
    - tokai 1y ago
      This research is not about the US. Also don't use a slur for homosexual to denigrate anything.
      - Macha 1y ago
Fokamul 1y ago
Without reading the article, I bet these problems exists because kids/teens are playing "games" on mobile phones. 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.
- benoau 1y ago
  There's a push to get rid of most of the common practices: https://www.beuc.eu/reports/game-over-consumers-fight-fairer-game-purchases https://www.beuc.eu/reports/game-over-consumers-fight-fairer...
- oersted 1y ago
  Interestingly the dataset they have on 9 year olds is about computer gaming specifically, and they show no correlation with gambling. The other dataset of 17 year olds is specifically about online gaming.
bni 1y ago
Gaming and Gambling used to be separate until what year? What gaming product broke this barrier?
- snapcaster 1y ago
  Magic the gathering 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
  - KingOfCoders 1y ago
    Never worked for me that way, for one we found out how to find certain rares at that time, bought boxes (Second edition I think), got the good rares out, sold the rest packs. 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.
- _mlbt 1y ago
  Casinos? 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.
  - bni 1y ago
    All of those I would say are gambling from the very beginning. Computer Games used to have nothing whatsoever to do with Gambling, until about 2010 its seems (going from the other comments in this thread).
    - _mlbt 1y ago
      Atari blackjack was released in 1977… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackjack_(Atari_2600_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackjack_(Atari_2600_video_ga... I remember Texas Hold’em being a thing on the early days of the internet as well. Gambling video games have been around a long time. I see this as just another moral panic not unlike the “Doom causes school shootings” narrative.
bitmasher9 1y ago
I’d be interested in seeing if specific gaming activities is associated with increased gambling, as well as longitudinal studies to determine a timeline (first I opened loot boxes, then I started gambling). 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.
- HideousKojima 1y ago
  I remember watching some pirate streams of UFC pay per view fights about a decade ago. The streams were being provided by someone in the UK, and apparently had commercials between each fight. Every single commercial was for sports gambling, and I just remembered thinking every time "I'm glad this isn't an issue in the US." I'm a bit sad that's no longer the case.
- XorNot 1y ago
  I mean we could look at it from multiple angles...but commercial TV in Australia, and advertising in general is basically wall to wall gambling advertising for sports betting. 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.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  Have you played any prominent mobile games in the last few years? The gacha model is dominant, it would not surprise me at all if this is priming children for gambling. 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.
thinkingtoilet 1y ago
I think it's probably worse than what the study is saying: >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.
- dfxm12 1y ago
  FIFA 09 and TF2 were both huge mainstream games that had loot crates/microtransactions 15 years ago. Others followed suit immediately. Tons of cookie cutter free to play online games (think Facebook FarmVille style games) did as well. I think there's a reason that's when they started.
  - thinkingtoilet 1y ago
    Of course it existed back then, my point is that it's far worse now.
KingOfCoders 1y ago
Anecdotal, I know, have been gaming for ~45 years (started ~8), played hundreds (thousands?) of games, never bet, never gambled, neither offline or online, no inclination to ever do that.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  Eh it's like someone telling you they've had a drink twice a week for decades and been fine. Sure but alcohol abuse and addiction are still huge problems with trends affected by the broader culture around advertising and access. We're talking about population-scale influence not individual destiny.
makeitdouble 1y ago
I don't how it impacts the results, but it's relevant to keep in mind the data is self reported. 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.
Der_Einzige 1y ago
Why not study the effects of legalized gambling for children - i.e. the ticket machines at Dave and Busters/Chuck-e-Cheese? Also, to see the impacts of gambling addiction in the funniest way possible, see BossManJack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qztd9eOuwsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qztd9eOuwsc
miav 1y ago
Anecdotal, as a kid I was really into CS:GO skin betting. Ended up losing my entire collection, never gambled since.
- ryanjshaw 1y ago
  It’s the kids who win big you need to worry about (anecdotal, not me, but a big win concurrent with a bad time during formative years can have a lasting impact on people who then ultimately become addicts).
- whoisyc 1y ago
  The entire skin gambling scene is a big reason why I don’t touch the game anymore. It seeps into everything around CS and now you can’t watch a professional match without seeing a sponsorship from a skin casino, can’t watch a YouTube video without a sponsorship. 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.
Macha 1y ago
The abstract kind of covers my thought on the headline: > 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.
BargirPezza 1y ago
I am fighting gaming, TV, YouTube and phone addiction at the moment. It is very hard for me to find something else to do, especially at home. But I try to have projects going every day and try to go out and see people and have a community I visit frequently.
- bluSCALE4 1y ago
  No porn? You got that going for you at least! I believe we're all struggling with that TBH.
- jajko 1y ago
  If you have a naturally addictive personality (or lack of strong enough mental guards against), maybe directing those affections towards something cheaper and more healthy is the solution. Find a virtue in obsession. 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.
KingOfCoders 1y ago
I already think grouping these things in a sentence is problematic, "gaming and gambling opportunities in contemporary society" and putting gaming first shows bias and implies assumed causality, why not "gambling and gaming"?
BargirPezza 1y ago
A interesting 3 video series about the casino scene in CS2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q58dLWjRTBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q58dLWjRTBE
- zingababba 1y ago
  CS2 is basically the only game I play any more. Just the other day I was playing with a guy who had just dropped 3k on a knife skin.
max-leo 1y ago
Really weird that the label loot boxes and gambling mechanics in games as recent trends and mostly ignore them, as they imho are the main culprit here. 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.
curtisszmania 1y ago
[dead]
sceptic123 1y ago
There's so much wrong with the gambling industry as a whole and the way the same tactics have seeped into casual and online gaming is a real problem. I'm sure that the blame will be correctly placed on the predatory gambling and video games companies rather than the parents for letting their kids play video games. There's an eye opening look into how the gambling industry has changed in recent years on Michael Lewis' latest season of against the rules if you are interested in the topic: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules

30 points by tokai 1y ago

I might just be too dumb to read even an abstract, but it sounds like they said "meh idk, no strong evidence" (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 1y ago
As someone who doesn't gamble, I have no idea how to interpret this statement: >> online gaming at 17 was associated with 1.4 higher odds of more frequent online gambling at 20 years
SirFatty 1y ago
They're not talking about playing Mario Kart, but more about things like loot boxes, which really is akin to gambling. "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-fortnite-loot-box-lawsuit-settlement-rocket-league-v-bucks https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295676/epic-games-fortn...

Willingham 1y ago

Likely correlation and not causation, Gambling addiction is just like any other addiction, and no one has answered the question of ‘why’ one becomes an addict. Most likely the causation is more closely related to the upbringing of the child, and the genetics passed down from the parents.

Ygg2 1y ago
I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss the causal links. Online games have a strong gambling component - lootboxes, randomized awards, etc. An advance enough, Skinner box is indistinguishable from slot machine.
- HideousKojima 1y ago
  Except you actually sometimes get money back from the slot machine, with gaming lootboxes/gacha/microtransactions you're just getting imaginary digital goods that will disappear as soon as the company shuts down the game's servers.
  - sdenton4 1y ago
    First currency is only as good as the government that prints it, maaaan. (/me hits bong, buys more bitcoin.)
  - Ygg2 1y ago
    You are being trained to earn intermittent rewards. Not to earn money. Getting money is merely a formality/justification.
mslansn 1y ago
It’s basically genetics, but it’s not politically palatable to say that someone was doomed from birth. We’re all equal or something.

oersted 1y ago

Maybe I'm being reductionist, but it is rather obvious that if someone likes gambling but doesn't have access to it due to their age, they will reach for gaming as the closest substitute, sure. 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.

bitmasher9 1y ago
It makes some basic sense to say gambling is increasing among young men, and gaming is increasing in young men, maybe they are related. Their data is lacking to draw strong conclusions, but the question is interesting.
- dgfitz 1y ago
  Gambling increased because many states recently legalized it. Any other correlation is puff science. 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.
  - tokai 1y ago
    This research is not about the US. Also don't use a slur for homosexual to denigrate anything.
    - Macha 1y ago

Fokamul 1y ago

Without reading the article, I bet these problems exists because kids/teens are playing "games" on mobile phones. 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.

benoau 1y ago
There's a push to get rid of most of the common practices: https://www.beuc.eu/reports/game-over-consumers-fight-fairer-game-purchases https://www.beuc.eu/reports/game-over-consumers-fight-fairer...
oersted 1y ago
Interestingly the dataset they have on 9 year olds is about computer gaming specifically, and they show no correlation with gambling. The other dataset of 17 year olds is specifically about online gaming.

bni 1y ago

Gaming and Gambling used to be separate until what year? What gaming product broke this barrier?

snapcaster 1y ago
Magic the gathering 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
- KingOfCoders 1y ago
  Never worked for me that way, for one we found out how to find certain rares at that time, bought boxes (Second edition I think), got the good rares out, sold the rest packs. 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.
_mlbt 1y ago
Casinos? 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.
- bni 1y ago
  All of those I would say are gambling from the very beginning. Computer Games used to have nothing whatsoever to do with Gambling, until about 2010 its seems (going from the other comments in this thread).
  - _mlbt 1y ago
    Atari blackjack was released in 1977… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackjack_(Atari_2600_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackjack_(Atari_2600_video_ga... I remember Texas Hold’em being a thing on the early days of the internet as well. Gambling video games have been around a long time. I see this as just another moral panic not unlike the “Doom causes school shootings” narrative.

bitmasher9 1y ago

I’d be interested in seeing if specific gaming activities is associated with increased gambling, as well as longitudinal studies to determine a timeline (first I opened loot boxes, then I started gambling). 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.

HideousKojima 1y ago
I remember watching some pirate streams of UFC pay per view fights about a decade ago. The streams were being provided by someone in the UK, and apparently had commercials between each fight. Every single commercial was for sports gambling, and I just remembered thinking every time "I'm glad this isn't an issue in the US." I'm a bit sad that's no longer the case.
XorNot 1y ago
I mean we could look at it from multiple angles...but commercial TV in Australia, and advertising in general is basically wall to wall gambling advertising for sports betting. 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.
giraffe_lady 1y ago
Have you played any prominent mobile games in the last few years? The gacha model is dominant, it would not surprise me at all if this is priming children for gambling. 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.

thinkingtoilet 1y ago

I think it's probably worse than what the study is saying: >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.

dfxm12 1y ago
FIFA 09 and TF2 were both huge mainstream games that had loot crates/microtransactions 15 years ago. Others followed suit immediately. Tons of cookie cutter free to play online games (think Facebook FarmVille style games) did as well. I think there's a reason that's when they started.
- thinkingtoilet 1y ago
  Of course it existed back then, my point is that it's far worse now.

KingOfCoders 1y ago

Anecdotal, I know, have been gaming for ~45 years (started ~8), played hundreds (thousands?) of games, never bet, never gambled, neither offline or online, no inclination to ever do that.

giraffe_lady 1y ago
Eh it's like someone telling you they've had a drink twice a week for decades and been fine. Sure but alcohol abuse and addiction are still huge problems with trends affected by the broader culture around advertising and access. We're talking about population-scale influence not individual destiny.

makeitdouble 1y ago

I don't how it impacts the results, but it's relevant to keep in mind the data is self reported. 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.

Der_Einzige 1y ago

Why not study the effects of legalized gambling for children - i.e. the ticket machines at Dave and Busters/Chuck-e-Cheese? Also, to see the impacts of gambling addiction in the funniest way possible, see BossManJack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qztd9eOuwsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qztd9eOuwsc

miav 1y ago

Anecdotal, as a kid I was really into CS:GO skin betting. Ended up losing my entire collection, never gambled since.

ryanjshaw 1y ago
It’s the kids who win big you need to worry about (anecdotal, not me, but a big win concurrent with a bad time during formative years can have a lasting impact on people who then ultimately become addicts).
whoisyc 1y ago
The entire skin gambling scene is a big reason why I don’t touch the game anymore. It seeps into everything around CS and now you can’t watch a professional match without seeing a sponsorship from a skin casino, can’t watch a YouTube video without a sponsorship. 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.

Macha 1y ago

The abstract kind of covers my thought on the headline: > 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.

BargirPezza 1y ago

I am fighting gaming, TV, YouTube and phone addiction at the moment. It is very hard for me to find something else to do, especially at home. But I try to have projects going every day and try to go out and see people and have a community I visit frequently.

bluSCALE4 1y ago
No porn? You got that going for you at least! I believe we're all struggling with that TBH.
jajko 1y ago
If you have a naturally addictive personality (or lack of strong enough mental guards against), maybe directing those affections towards something cheaper and more healthy is the solution. Find a virtue in obsession. 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.

KingOfCoders 1y ago

I already think grouping these things in a sentence is problematic, "gaming and gambling opportunities in contemporary society" and putting gaming first shows bias and implies assumed causality, why not "gambling and gaming"?

BargirPezza 1y ago

A interesting 3 video series about the casino scene in CS2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q58dLWjRTBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q58dLWjRTBE

zingababba 1y ago
CS2 is basically the only game I play any more. Just the other day I was playing with a guy who had just dropped 3k on a knife skin.

max-leo 1y ago

Really weird that the label loot boxes and gambling mechanics in games as recent trends and mostly ignore them, as they imho are the main culprit here. 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.

curtisszmania 1y ago

[dead]

sceptic123 1y ago

There's so much wrong with the gambling industry as a whole and the way the same tactics have seeped into casual and online gaming is a real problem. I'm sure that the blame will be correctly placed on the predatory gambling and video games companies rather than the parents for letting their kids play video games. There's an eye opening look into how the gambling industry has changed in recent years on Michael Lewis' latest season of against the rules if you are interested in the topic: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules