Gaming has become contaminated with gambling in recent years, just as much as gambling is trying to turn a page and look more like games. What are those trends about?
I remember when I was a kid, my father used to play Lotto (or National Lottery) every week.
He used to have each of the kids pick the numbers for their own grid. Do little kids have more luck than adults? We never won (big).
It was fun as a kid, we felt involved in grown up stuff and loved it. Luckily we didn’t see much into it and never caught the gambling bug, the taking part was all the fun for us.
Playing games was even more fun though, video or physical. As a kid picking numbers for the lottery was 1 minute of fun, but playing a proper game was for hours. We were using our imagination to create new opportunities, make up new worlds; and it felt good.
Eventually my dad stopped the weekly tradition; to be fair, probably strongly coerced by my mum. The reality of the accumulated wealth spent for little benefit became too strong to continue. The fun had was not worth the price of entry and luckily, noone was hooked to it so it was easy to let go.
I say luckily because gambling is known to be addictive and as a result potentially very dangerous. So it is worrying when we realise gambling is making its way into gaming.
It is actually not that surprising as the two are very closely related, but the playing field has traditionally been pretty different in each and the insidious blend that seems to be happening these days is interesting to look at.
We have all seen this trend growing and becoming more mainstream in games. When the player is invited to build up some kind of collection, and said collection is obtained or improved by way of booster packs. There are then two types, where that collection can either be used in the game anytime, or as a single use item.
Regardless of the type however, the way to obtain them is always the same: random. There is no knowledge of what is inside a pack prior to opening it. Sometimes items can be obtained outside of a pack (as a random drop or loot during the game) or as a random reward at the end of a round, but the principle remains the same and is all down to luck.
How exciting discovering what we got is!? It is like opening a present each time. And the excitement we get from the wait while it opens is a great buzz that feels great.
This used to be specific to looting and RPGs, but has now evolved and through tiny mutations made its way to virtually every type of games (Player packs in FIFA, Expedition cards in Tomb Raider, Burn cards in Titanfall, Mods cards in Forza, etc…).
This mechanic is playing on the player’s hope of getting something great giving them joy. If it isn’t, better luck next time, but I want, no I need, that item.
That behaviour is the same seen in gamblers. The desire to play with the possibility and hope of a win, and the need to keep doing so until satisfaction is achieved. Which can create addiction. And the implementation in some games is in fact not far from a game of Craps. It is often nothing more than a roll of dice, a random number generator (or RNG). So the mechanic is clearly akin to gambling.
Now I’m not talking about micro-transactions in particular but the model only, which in itself is addictive and similar to gambling behaviour. That being said, if you add the fact that most of the time those packs can be purchased with real money (either directly or via an intermediate funny money wallet) it does complete the comparison with gambling and increases the importance and effects of that strategy. And talking about ‘addictive’, I’ve always been puzzled by reviews using this adjective as a positive (I actually don’t believe many people -gamers?- know what it means anymore. Like literally…)
An argument in defense of the practice, is that those collections randomly and incrementaly built can be limited in size, so if damage there is it is controlled. Weak but better than nothing defense, however they can just as easily be expanded with title updates and/or DLC. And they are. And even if they don’t keep growing, newly addicted players can go and find their fix elsewhere, in another game with the same mechanic.
The problem is setting and encouraging the behaviour.
Obviously this is not really unique in life. When I was a kid I used to love collecting stickers for my Panini albums (didn’t have Merlin) and you could say the same apply. However in this case you could exchange your duplicate with friends 1 to 1, and parental guidance that was holding the cash was serving as control.
Gambling (or Betting) itself has rules and regulations that protect people, in particular minors, but gaming is aimed at children as least as much as adults, and there are currently no real controls in place.
Gambling is getting gamified and gaming is getting gamblified, but the fact the betting world is trying to change its image is a sign not to follow suit. Having invented the pre-order culture (effectively gambling on future quality of your purchases) is already enough and even getting questioned more and more.
Developing gambling mechanics and encouraging gambler behaviours in games is simply a dangerous trend and it should stop.
Ker
First posted on 04 January 16
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