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Addiction Markets

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Re: Addiction Markets

#131

Post by strken »

asdff wrote: post #95
nekusar wrote: post #30

People are also leaving out stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and Magic The Gathering. All of them also introduce rarities (arbitrary exclusiveness), hidden cards in a pack, and extreme gambling gamification. The only non-gambling MtG packs are the preconstructed commander decks. All 100 cards are published. But the packs and boxes? Pure gambling, especially for the chase rare cards. And before anyone asks, yes, my usern…

I feel like it only became rampant in recent years. As a 90s kid no one cared about the card packs. We all assumed they'd be junk cards and a waste of $7 or whatever. No, the move for card people back then was to wait for the card show and just buy the cards you actually want from a card dealer. The thing is now people are marketing the pack opening. You have social media accounts of them pulling cards from packs and…

In the early to mid 2000s we used to do MTG booster drafts at the local game shop. Maybe the experience was different for different people.

Re: Addiction Markets

#132

Post by lurk2 »

savanaly wrote: post #41
gcanyon wrote: post #16

This line from the ads always strikes me as darkly ironic: > if you need help making responsible choices, call… Like, the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online. What do they even think we’re supposed to take away from that line of the commercial?

> the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online I don't gamble at all in any form, but I still firmly disagree. Some people enjoy gambling in a way that never hurts them-- I've known countless friends and coworkers who talk about doing a bit of it in Vegas or what have you. You're saying every last one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from me? They know they're not going net positive on t…

> You're saying every last one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from me?

A person can be generally responsible while still making decisions that are irresponsible. Gambling has a negative expected value, and so is generally considered to be irresponsible. Gamblers will often counter that they expect to lose their money and consider it to be a form of entertainment, but the whole of the entertainment is in believing that you might get lucky; this is indistinguishable from the motivation of a gambling addict. You don’t see these people taking out $500 in 1s and setting them on fire for fun, even though this is the aggregate outcome of habitual gambling.

Some might protest that all forms of entertainment are like this: You take the $500, take it to a movie theater, and 16 hours later your money is gone and you’ve seen 10 movies. So far as I know, the identification of casual gambling with vice dates back to the Victorian Period. I suspect (but cannot confirm) that the reason gambling was identified as a vice where other forms of comparatively frivolous entertainment were not is due to gambling’s (false) promise of providing money for nothing.

Re: Addiction Markets

#133

Post by [deleted] »

stocksinsmocks wrote: post #93
brettgriffin wrote: post #8

The problem isn't the 70M people who placed bets, its the ~25M with broken risk aversion. These are mostly men, and a very specific type of men. You can try to curtail their access to gambling but we're missing the underlying problem.

I would entertain the possibility that there are at least some who cannot or will not avoid that kind of destructive behavior. The only thing you can do for them is deny access. I know that nobody asked for a lecture on 12 step, but number one is an admission that you do not have control. Do you enable the majority who can manage risk, knowing some will be destroyed by it or deny it to everyone to protect the minorit…

[deleted]

Re: Addiction Markets

#134

Post by [deleted] »

nekusar wrote: post #30

People are also leaving out stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and Magic The Gathering. All of them also introduce rarities (arbitrary exclusiveness), hidden cards in a pack, and extreme gambling gamification. The only non-gambling MtG packs are the preconstructed commander decks. All 100 cards are published. But the packs and boxes? Pure gambling, especially for the chase rare cards. And before anyone asks, yes, my usern…

[deleted]

Re: Addiction Markets

#135

Post by wizzwizz4 »

fairmind wrote: post #48
squigz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large-scale societal change requires generations of work, indeed. That may be disheartening, but it is the way it is, and we should continue to work toward those changes.

Anti-Smoking, especially in teenagers, seems to have been successful.

Vaping is counteracting that somewhat. (There's the perception among many kids that vaping is deeply uncool – and they'd be correct – but that's not something we can rely on.)

Re: Addiction Markets

#136

Post by lotsofpulp »

loeg wrote: post #115
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the logic behind the war on drugs and we all saw how that turned out. Obviously there's nuance to be had as I think some vices, in both type and magnitude, are worse/more destructive than others. But crusades against vice rarely turn out well. Instead you'll see the same people huddled around in underground betting rooms and backroom card game tables where organized crime or just other muscle-for-hire are rea…

Dude, the war on gambling was going fine before it was legalized nationwide like 2 years ago. We don't have to have long memories to remember a time before omnipresent sports betting! It was fine!

Fyi, the Supreme Court case that opened the floodgates for sports gambling was decided in May 2018, 7.5 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...

Re: Addiction Markets

#137

Post by lurk2 »

asdff wrote: post #123
lurk2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again no one thought that was fun in the 90s, everyone hated that aspect of cards in the 90s How old was everyone in the 1990s? Kids loved this kind of thing in the 2000s.

I can't imagine kids even liked it then. Again most of those packs were junk cards. Like total crap cards. Oh gee a rattata and some energy cards. All you wanted was Ash's squad from the shows.

The kids I knew who played these kinds of card games all loved buying booster packs, but they weren’t paying for these packs themselves and most grew out of playing by the time they reached high school. I can see it not being as fun for adult players who understand the probability metagame being played, but I think one of the reasons these games had so much financial success in the first place was that they identified a behavioral loop that they could exploit, exactly like contemporary developers did with loot boxes.

Re: Addiction Markets

#138

Post by hdjdnsnslsj »

lurk2 wrote: post #108
asdff wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it only became rampant in recent years. As a 90s kid no one cared about the card packs. We all assumed they'd be junk cards and a waste of $7 or whatever. No, the move for card people back then was to wait for the card show and just buy the cards you actually want from a card dealer. The thing is now people are marketing the pack opening. You have social media accounts of them pulling cards from packs and…

> Again no one thought that was fun in the 90s, everyone hated that aspect of cards in the 90s How old was everyone in the 1990s? Kids loved this kind of thing in the 2000s.

The same age as kids in the 2000's?

Re: Addiction Markets

#139

Post by jparishy »

nekusar wrote: post #30

People are also leaving out stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and Magic The Gathering. All of them also introduce rarities (arbitrary exclusiveness), hidden cards in a pack, and extreme gambling gamification. The only non-gambling MtG packs are the preconstructed commander decks. All 100 cards are published. But the packs and boxes? Pure gambling, especially for the chase rare cards. And before anyone asks, yes, my usern…

Sports, too. Recent post from the President of Upper Deck talking about it: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jmash_everything-speculative-...

Re: Addiction Markets

#140

Post by nbngeorcjhe »

array_key_first wrote: post #128
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people shouldn't be constantly buying mechanical keyboards and keycaps for farming social media karma and affirming their identity when they probably only have a few devices that need keyboards anyway. There's a whole rabbit hole of vice out there if you're interested in looking. While we're at it, I propose a Board of Ethically Allowed Activities that make sure we can only do the good and moral things.

I'm not saying that we should restrict it. I'm just saying it's not productive or healthy. The difference is that hobbies are fun . Gambling is fun in the same way smoking is fun. It's not, but you have to do it. I know, because I was a smoker. Also, on the topic of morality: morality is stupid. Gambling isn't immoral. Or maybe it is, I don't care. Gambling is self destructive. It can pretty much exclusively only mak…

> morality is stupid

least contrarian HN user

> only make your life worse

Unless you have a family with whom your finances are intermingled. This is like saying alcoholism only makes your own life worse, because obviously your actions have no effect on the people around you, right?

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