Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The casino in your pocket

blog.curtii.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 265 posts

Re: The casino in your pocket

#61

Post by tomwojcik »

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 always considered it to be a "dirty" sector. I was surprised to see how many things are regulated. Examples: ID age verification, sometime you need to ping the government API to let them now, there are casino level limits, country/global level limits (can't be exceeded), daily/weekly loss limits, num of tabs opened in the browser limited to 1, max spin time etc.

It's surreal that kids play on an unregulated casino without any winning ods.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#62

Post by somerandomqaguy »

TylerE wrote: post #11
Eji1700 wrote: 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…

There's absolutely no reason for a casino to cheat - they don't need to, they already have the house edge.

Don't they?

Let's say I rig the slot machines so that they can win on command, and then I hire a couple of actors to come in once every two or three days to 'win' a jackpot. The odds of anyone else actually hitting a win is actually 0 - nada, nothing, zilch. But I can't leave it at zero, if people don't think they have at least a chance, they're not going to throw money at it.

With cheating, I have all the benefits of convincing people into thinking they can win, without actually loosing any money in reality.

Probably a multitude of other sneaky things you can do with an unregulated casino if someone were to put their mind to it.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#63

Post by anonymous_sorry »

efitz wrote: post #45
beebmam wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are dumb enough to consentually waste time and money on casinos, they deserve to lose their time and money. Some might say the government should intervene; I personally don't care.

In a casino, you know what you’re there for and what you’re up against. Gaming commissions have curbed many of the worst abuses with inspections, posted odds, etc. With mobile gaming you have a free for all that is intentionally exploiting the same neuroanatomy of addiction, but it’s wrapped up in pretty pixels and you can do it anywhere, privately. The industry is too big for gaming commission type controls to work.…

In a meatspace casino, if someone shows you 4 face down cards, asks you to pick one, and then turns them all up to reveal 3 prizes and 1 "you lose" card, you can be fairly sure you had a 25% chance of losing.

If the croupier used sleight of hand or secret e-ink cards to turn your card into the "you lose" card after you'd picked it, that would be fraud.

The dark patterns and dopamine manipulation are bad enough, but isn't it fraud in this case? They're using a visual metaphor that is a straight-up lie.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#64

Post by throwaway290 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #55
ehnto wrote: post #32

It has been fascinating and demoralizing to watch monetization roll out. To younger generations like my brother, they don't know any different, it's just part if gaming for them. But at least something like aesthetic loot crates are a sideshow to the actual game. Some games are good at keeping the separate and you can understand that it's just how they choose to fund the game. When the whole game is just a loot crate…

gamification? No, this is illegal use of casino algorithms and payoff psychology / slot machine psychology, outside of regulation, restriction from exposure to children, without disclaimers for gambling problems and hotlines. The middle-tier issues I have: the same issues that used to exist with gambling and introducing it officially: moral concerns over degeneracy, the family impacts of gambling addictions, the regr…

> Apple and Google should be ashamed of themselves, and fined billions of dollars over this. Why Europe has not woken up to this, which is the only real hope in the short run for substantial fines, is beyond me.

Perhaps EU hopes that sideloading would address issues like this.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#65

Post by hef19898 »

WA wrote: post #58
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gamification? No, this is illegal use of casino algorithms and payoff psychology / slot machine psychology, outside of regulation, restriction from exposure to children, without disclaimers for gambling problems and hotlines. The middle-tier issues I have: the same issues that used to exist with gambling and introducing it officially: moral concerns over degeneracy, the family impacts of gambling addictions, the regr…

> Why Europe has not woken up to this, which is the only real hope in the short run for substantial fines, is beyond me. Thing is, regulations do exist but as long as Apple and Google are not forced to comply at least partially in these regulations, nothing will ever change. Take the GDPR as an example: - Europe says: "Your app must comply with the GDPR if you want to be in the European market." - Apple says to app d…

I think the logical conclussion is to force app store providers to do the enforcement. After all, the app store providers are monopolists in their environments. I guess, one day, if Apple, Google and company (all those crapware stores from e.g. Samsung) don't enforce it themselves, an EU regulation will come.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#66

Post by spondylosaurus »

efitz wrote: post #43
ehnto wrote: post #32

It has been fascinating and demoralizing to watch monetization roll out. To younger generations like my brother, they don't know any different, it's just part if gaming for them. But at least something like aesthetic loot crates are a sideshow to the actual game. Some games are good at keeping the separate and you can understand that it's just how they choose to fund the game. When the whole game is just a loot crate…

>something like aesthetic loot crates are a sideshow No, they are very much a part of the experience. The anticipation of the reward and the tension build while the opening animation plays is an addiction mechanism. This is why we wrap presents and why “blind bags” are so successful (and also why toddlers will watch “surprise egg” videos for hours).

Aesthetic loot crates are for sure still predatory/addictive, but I think the point here is that they don't directly impact the core gameplay experience. You can still get fragged by a player who's wearing the default skin (and sometimes that's a flex in itself...).

Re: The casino in your pocket

#67

Post by jonasdegendt »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #55
ehnto wrote: post #32

It has been fascinating and demoralizing to watch monetization roll out. To younger generations like my brother, they don't know any different, it's just part if gaming for them. But at least something like aesthetic loot crates are a sideshow to the actual game. Some games are good at keeping the separate and you can understand that it's just how they choose to fund the game. When the whole game is just a loot crate…

gamification? No, this is illegal use of casino algorithms and payoff psychology / slot machine psychology, outside of regulation, restriction from exposure to children, without disclaimers for gambling problems and hotlines. The middle-tier issues I have: the same issues that used to exist with gambling and introducing it officially: moral concerns over degeneracy, the family impacts of gambling addictions, the regr…

Some countries have taken steps to curb loot boxes, Belgium comes to mind and games like the Diablo mobile one aren’t even available to play there because of the regulations.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#68

Post by throwaway290 »

WA wrote: post #58
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gamification? No, this is illegal use of casino algorithms and payoff psychology / slot machine psychology, outside of regulation, restriction from exposure to children, without disclaimers for gambling problems and hotlines. The middle-tier issues I have: the same issues that used to exist with gambling and introducing it officially: moral concerns over degeneracy, the family impacts of gambling addictions, the regr…

> Why Europe has not woken up to this, which is the only real hope in the short run for substantial fines, is beyond me. Thing is, regulations do exist but as long as Apple and Google are not forced to comply at least partially in these regulations, nothing will ever change. Take the GDPR as an example: - Europe says: "Your app must comply with the GDPR if you want to be in the European market." - Apple says to app d…

Perhaps the effective solution will be per country app stores, the natural next step after alt app stores are made mandatory by EU.

Re: The casino in your pocket

#69

Post by spondylosaurus »

peterlk wrote: post #49
beebmam wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are dumb enough to consentually waste time and money on casinos, they deserve to lose their time and money. Some might say the government should intervene; I personally don't care.

> If people are dumb enough to consentually waste time and money on casinos, they deserve to lose their time and money. I find this to be a very naive perspective. It’s not how addiction works, and even people who want to stop sometimes cannot. And even if you buy into the belief that we shouldn’t help them, what about their kids? What about the communities around them that are worse for having addicts who are pourin…

IRL casinos employ all kinds of tactics to get people in the door, too. Cheap food, "free" gifts, all in the hopes that you'll cave and start gambling once you're in. And then they have their claws in you.
Post reply on HN