Comments on: Natasha Schull’s Refreshing Skepticism on Gambling Addiction Intervention

By: bearing

bearing — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 02:23:51 +0000

@11 “If it was really about the pretty colors on the video poker board, the same personality types wouldn’t blow huge sums in the stock market, riding bad bets to the bottom.”

Do you have any evidence that these are, in fact, the same “personality types?”

By: Fluffy

Fluffy — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 01:53:12 +0000

If it was really about the pretty colors on the video poker board, the same personality types wouldn’t blow huge sums in the stock market, riding bad bets to the bottom. Which they used to do with no video element at all, but with just a telephone and a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

1. Small bet. For fun.

2. Oh shit, I lost!

3. Damn, I don’t want to tell my wife. Wait, I’ve got an idea! Bet more! I’ll win back what I lost.

4. Oh shit, I lost again!

5. Repeat #3 for as long as you can, until you hit Skid Row.

By: Fluffy

Fluffy — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 01:49:44 +0000

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe it.

Every degenerate gambler I have ever known has been lying to someone – or everyone – in their lives about the extent of their losses. The real hook, the real reason they keep playing, isn’t even that they’re “addicted to the adrenaline of playing” or what have you, but because they are unwilling to abandon the fantasy that they will win big, recover all their losses, and avoid the looming Judgment Day where their spouse (or whoever) will find out they’ve lost all their savings, or their boss will find out about their embezzlement.

Every fresh bet is an act of blessed procrastination. The avoidance of judgment and responsibility is the most addicting “drug” of all.

They’re not all that different from, say, the various governments of Greece. It’s all about delaying the inevitable, and avoiding the consequences of what you’ve done – and the original loss that had to be kept secret is usually relatively small to the losses that pile up in the end. “Please, God, please, let this horse win so I can keep all my balls in the air for just ONE MORE DAY. Please!”

By: Meiczyslaw

Meiczyslaw — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:55:56 +0000

CSPS, it actually seems more likely that we’ll see video games move to incorporate more spending-and-gambling elements.

Check out some of the current crop of iOS game apps. One of the big things right now is the in-app purchase, where you trade real money for fake money so that you can ramp up (for example) your characters’ equipment.

Couple that with a sudden step up in the power curve — where you have to buy really expensive equipment to get over that hump — and you’ve got a cash cow.

By: Jess

Jess — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:35:22 +0000

CSPS, it actually seems more likely that we’ll see video games move to incorporate more spending-and-gambling elements. DLC used to be considered lame, and now it’s one of the main points on which players judge a game or platform. A system in which one purchases digital counters, chits, or similar signifiers, completes some tasks of skill and chance with respect to those items, and then may cash out the some of the original items along with some additional items one has accumulated during those tasks, is a gambling system. It’s also a concise description of the modern MMORPG.

By: H man

H man — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 22:56:47 +0000

Sounds like it could be more addictive if you combined an actual video game with a system that paid out for skill rather than just luck plus some skill. It would be much harder to get the payouts right for the house.

By: el coronado

el coronado — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 22:50:37 +0000

Naw, this ain’t like Space Invaders. Video Poker, one rapidly learns when living in Vegas, is a beast. Have heard stats that something like 60%+ of all the compulsive gamblers here are VP junkies. #4 is exactly right: something IS going on with the neural risk-reward system – it’s adrenaline. Win or lose, that’s real $$ you’re playing with. The brain knows – even if the addict ‘forgets’ – that ‘money is paper blood’. Couple that with rapidly changing, brightly colored images on a video screen, along with long happy songs when you win big, and you couldn’t invent a more addictive system (that doesn’t dispense meth and/or crack) if you tried.

By: MingoV

MingoV — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 21:48:53 +0000

“This is rapid, fast, continuous spending where people lose track of time and space…”

Hah! That’s what they said about quarter-a-play arcade games back in the 1970s! Must… shoot… more… space invaders.

By: MH

MH — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 21:05:00 +0000

That almost seems too easy. Surely someone would have noticed by now if gamblers could appease their appetites with pinball. I’m guessing something’s going on with their neural risk-reward system, which then combines with the experience of playing the slots.

By: C. S. P. Schofield

C. S. P. Schofield — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:42:13 +0000

If people who are addicted to gambling machines are addicted to the ‘zone’, are they similar to heavy console gamers? If so, could they be weaned onto console games, which at least don’t hover their wallets for every round of play?

Just a thought.

By: En Passant

En Passant — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:49:51 +0000

Machine gambling, Schull emphasizes, “is not like buying a movie ticket or making a purchase at a store and then going home. This is rapid, fast, continuous spending where people lose track of time and space, and their ability to make decisions shifts over the course of the encounter.”

I think there is some truth in that.

I’m old enough to recall ubiquitous pinball machines in places where people congregate with time on their hands and some change in their pockets.

They were relatively inexpensive to play, that only “paid off” in free games. People could “zone out” all afternoon on them. The really good players could zone out all day for the price of one game. The rest, not so much. But that’s the principle she’s talking about.

By: MH

MH — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:46:02 +0000

It seems like you could test the hypothesis by asking gamblers to play machines that work identically, but don’t actually pay out any money. And I’d bet the hypothesis would be disproven. It would be natural for gamblers to exaggerate the degree to which they are motivated by the “experience”, which isn’t as repulsive as admitting greed drives them.