Gambling in gaming

[James]

Further to the long-running discussion over the prevalence of loot boxes in video games and whether they constitute or encourage gambling and gambling-like behaviour, the director of mental health services in the UK's NHS has weighed in.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020 ... o-gambling

In this article, Eurogamer run a little bit of a potted, recent history of last year's UK inquiry into loot boxes and whether they should be covered by UK gambling regulation. Personally, I'm very pleased to see that the NHS are taking the issue seriously, and was unsurprised to see another mealy-mouthed response from a industry trade body, in this case UKIE.

I'll make no bones about it, I am very suspicious of, and concerned about the ways the video game industry conditions and encourages players to spend money (perhaps more than they realise) on a game in perpetuity. I think not enough has been done by the games industry itself to curb manipulative and opaque practices, and therefore this level of external scrutiny has been on the cards for some time.

Anyway, I thought this article was interesting.

[Alex79]

It certainly is interesting, and from a child development point of view there has been decades and decades of research in to how early childhood experiences directly relate to the mental health of adults. I mean it's almost so obvious is goes without saying, but hooking children in from a young age with the thrill of loot boxes and chances to win will almost certainly lead a percentage of those children in to longer term addiction problems. Thing is, when we were kids we only really got to 'gamble' if our parents chucked us a quid in the fruit machines or teddy grabber, and had relatively scant opportunities to develop any kind of habit. The implications of allowing children as young as 6 and 7 to essentially gamble with real money is worrying. And not in a Daily Mail kind of way.

[duskvstweak]

Not surprising. And how many free-to-play, freemium, pay-to-win games are addictive, but not fun? I've had to stop so many games, mobile or otherwise, because I realized I was hooked, but not for enjoyment reasons. It's interesting that on the ESRB site, they put simulated gambling under the Teen rating. It's all such a mess, the industry deserves this for sure.