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The casino in your pocket

blog.curtii.com

71–80 of 265 posts

Re: The casino in your pocket

#71

Many years ago I worked for a company that offers a very popular in-browser game. The company branched and expanded and had more than 10 games with various levels of profitability, but this game, which was bringing in about 30 millions EURO per month, was the only thing keeping the company alive. Then they decided they want to try to sell the company to a fund and wanted to increase the revenue this golden goose was…

>in-browser game

>euro

InnoGames/Gameforge?

Re: The casino in your pocket

#72
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegas really is very well regulated. There are some extremely ugly sides to gambling, but if you're going to have it, vegas is a pretty good starting point for how to try and keep things under control. There's no casino in town that will "look the other way" for a few 20 year olds who want to gamble, because doing it once could lose that operation it's gaming license. There's no casino that's going to on purpose risk…

These shenanigans before displaying the final result can have quite a lot of psychologic effects. Back when I started programming, I did simulate a jackpot machine in software (no money involved). The final probabilities were fair, but I added a twist while rolling the images: before stopping, the probability of having 2 or 3 of the same image was quite significant... My younger brother was instantly hooked to it. Th…

That’s how the real machines work too. The symbols on each reel do NOT have an equal chance of being landed on.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#73
post #54
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegas really is very well regulated. There are some extremely ugly sides to gambling, but if you're going to have it, vegas is a pretty good starting point for how to try and keep things under control. There's no casino in town that will "look the other way" for a few 20 year olds who want to gamble, because doing it once could lose that operation it's gaming license. There's no casino that's going to on purpose risk…

Vegas is well-regulated, but when you move outside that realm, things get a bit more loosely-defined. I spent a couple of years in the mid-2000s working in the edges here, so I have a bit of knowledge. Note: I've been out of this industry for at least 15 years, so some of my knowledge might have aged, but I'm fairly certain that it's still true in the general sense. First, under federal regulations, there are three c…

> If you go to an Indian casino, and you want to play a slot machine, but it's requiring you to wait on another player, you're dealing with a class II machine.

This is all really interesting, but I don't think I follow on this point (and I'd like to understand!)—are you saying that two players are playing on different machines, but the second machine can't operate until the first is done? Are they relying on each other's outcomes to calculate odds or something like that?

Re: The casino in your pocket

#74
post #51

You're gonna be able to easily get these kids to lock into all kinds of financing structures in the future.

I think it's just the opposite. Kids who've grown up with this crap will be wise to the tricks. Those who don't get exposed until adulthood have no resistance. Just like how the younger generation is pretty good at using social media responsibly and prioritizing stronger relationships, whereas the older generation get hooked and spend their whole lives yelling in newspaper comment sections.

Huh? The younger generation lives with their phones attached to their face. They don’t prioritize actual relationships.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Console and (non-MMO) PC gaming up until the 360 and PS3 was an unusual time of transparent and straightforward monetization. Just pay once and you own the game forever. If you go further back in time, you have arcades, which exposed children of yesteryear to the same tricks mobile is doing today.

Nintendo is still mostly like that, one-time up front payment for the main game, with infrequent optional expansion packs added for particularly popular games. I played Animal Crossing: New Horizons regularly for about two years of the pandemic, and there were only two possible places to buy anything: the original game purchase for $60, and one optional expansion pack released 18 months later for $25. There were also…

> Nintendo is still mostly like that, one-time up front payment for the main game, with infrequent optional expansion packs added for particularly popular games.

Have you seen what happened to the Pokemon games?

Re: The casino in your pocket

#76
post #37

This is pretty screwed up, because it kind of trains your brain to be a gambling brain. To crave the instant gratification, the high of risk taking etc. I think the time has come when android and ios should make a special versions of their online shops for children and teenagers and simply ban those types of games from those shops. This will at least prevent children from having their brains rewired. Of course this w…

> I think the time has come when android and ios should make a special versions of their online shops for children and teenagers and simply ban those types of games from those shops.

IMHO this shouldn't [have to] be any of Apple or Google's business. It's a parent's responsibility to parent their child, not some conglomerate's.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#77
I would love to see this analysis applied to mainstream dating apps, which I'm convinced are rigged exactly like casino games. You win often enough to feel lucky, but infrequently enough to keep you paying and pushing buttons hoping to win more.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#78
post #37

This is pretty screwed up, because it kind of trains your brain to be a gambling brain. To crave the instant gratification, the high of risk taking etc. I think the time has come when android and ios should make a special versions of their online shops for children and teenagers and simply ban those types of games from those shops. This will at least prevent children from having their brains rewired. Of course this w…

This describes my frustration using Tinder. Every mobile app, regardless of its purpose or theme, has become like this.

> I hope some random King employee looked at my cancelled account with so many puzzles solved and yet so few lollipop hammers used and felt a little pang of defeat.

Nope, the low paid employee in scam-center somewhere in Balkans, Eastern Europe, or South Asia doesn't care. This is not a tournament against some super mind, it's addictive money drain run by lowlifes.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#79
post #60

Any game that offers a virtual currency purchaseable with real currency (be it coins, diamonds or energy rays) should be avoided. Especially if you have children.

Don’t most games have those now?

Not at all. It's just that they have reached high visibility in some markets - mobile, concretely. It's a combination of marketing engineering and tacit complicity on the part of Apple/Google.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#80

I was working in mobile gamedev and igaming. Coming from Europe, I was not that familiar with the real gambling, the one we can see in movies. But I was familiar with mobile games. Let me tell you, mobile games are much more addictive than casino games. There's more mechanisms to make you addicted, to squeeze the money out of you and everything is sugar coated. I felt terrible when starting a job in igaming, as I alw…

Yes, in addition to traditional casino tactics, they also employ false community/social manipulation/ group psychology (aka guilds/clans), bullying/targeting, abuser/savior bait and switch, resource devaluation treadmills, and others
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