Kid gamers to adult gamblers? Investigation of childhood gaming and YA gambling

> it is rather obvious that if someone likes gambling but doesn't have access to it due to their age, they will reach for gaming as the closest substitute, sure.

How is that obvious? I'm not sure how those are connected. Maybe for a specific game, if that game has lootbox-like mechanics?

I think this might underestimate how gambling + kids games can reinforce destructive behavior.

There are lots of similar tools that casino owners/game designers/sports betting apps/social media/&c use to build addiction into their products, all while offloading responsibility onto individual consumers.

A really interesting study of this is the book 'Addiction by Design' by Natasha Dow Schüll examines this in the context of slot machines/video poker/casino games, but you can see the same process at work basically wherever you look.

Might also be a connection between risk takers and gamblers. At least when I was growing up it wasn't always games, it was often general risk taking that signified the future gamblers.

It makes some basic sense to say gambling is increasing among young men, and gaming is increasing in young men, maybe they are related.

Their data is lacking to draw strong conclusions, but the question is interesting.

Games are popular because they provide clear rules and instant rewards, almost like an "ideal job". Gambling is like the opposite of that and is tapping into a different part of the brain.

I'm not sure how much sense it makes to talk about 9 year old children "liking" gambling. Sure, genetic predisposition undoubtedly plays a role in any behaviour, but do you really think childhood experiences have no effect on shaping adult behaviour? Kids brains are still developing and it's hardly a stretch to suggest that uncontrolled exposure to heavily-optimised addiction generators could encourage a gambling habit as much as exploit an inherent tendency.

We're also getting attacked from multiple angles. When trying to set up a study, it would be impossible to control for all the gambling ads we get bombarded with, especially during events you can gamble on!

Have you played any prominent mobile games in the last few years? The gacha model is dominant, it would not surprise me at all if this is priming children for gambling.

It's not what "gamers" think of as gaming but there are dozens of mobile games each with hundreds of millions of active players, it is a massive market with a lot of it focused on children and teens. If it has any even slight contribution towards gambling addiction the social consequences will be massive over the next couple decades.

I remember watching some pirate streams of UFC pay per view fights about a decade ago. The streams were being provided by someone in the UK, and apparently had commercials between each fight. Every single commercial was for sports gambling, and I just remembered thinking every time "I'm glad this isn't an issue in the US." I'm a bit sad that's no longer the case.

I mean we could look at it from multiple angles...but commercial TV in Australia, and advertising in general is basically wall to wall gambling advertising for sports betting.

I feel like looking at the adolescent to adult years, you could basically ask "maybe a deluge of gambling advertising during the formative years has a significant impact on the target demographic audience for it (i.e. in Australia it is definitely white male coded in terms of actors and faces).

Which is the problem I have with trying to take any other factor with a demographic selector and draw conclusions from correlation: environmentally I don't see how you isolate the incredible amount of gambling targeted messaging out there.

No porn? You got that going for you at least! I believe we're all struggling with that TBH.

If you have a naturally addictive personality (or lack of strong enough mental guards against), maybe directing those affections towards something cheaper and more healthy is the solution. Find a virtue in obsession.

Get into some physical sports, gym or otherwise, indoor or outdoor, doesn't matter whatever clicks for ya. And do them without screens, they are not useful in any way. After getting deep enough, those previous addictions will look like a pathetic shallow waste of precious little short life we all have. Plus you will feel much better. Plus you will look much better and more attractive.

The entire skin gambling scene is a big reason why I don’t touch the game anymore. It seeps into everything around CS and now you can’t watch a professional match without seeing a sponsorship from a skin casino, can’t watch a YouTube video without a sponsorship.

This is also why I don’t like the way some gamers treat Valve as the only ethical company in the industry. CS skin gambling is like what if you take the lootbox mechanism and pave it over the game’s entire ecosystem.

It’s the kids who win big you need to worry about (anecdotal, not me, but a big win concurrent with a bad time during formative years can have a lasting impact on people who then ultimately become addicts).

FIFA 09 and TF2 were both huge mainstream games that had loot crates/microtransactions 15 years ago. Others followed suit immediately. Tons of cookie cutter free to play online games (think Facebook FarmVille style games) did as well. I think there's a reason that's when they started.

Magic the gathering

edit: not hating, i love magic but booster packs started this whole thing IMO. The idea being you can get players to purchase products many times over

For sure all the mobile gaming based on microtransactions, collectibles, the Skinner box principle and other dark patterns leading to addition.

In east Asia, about 20 years ago with gacha games like Maple Story and slightly later with games that you'd play for free in an Internet Cafe, but would offer you loot crates. It became news in the west when EA took notice and added loot crates in FIFA 09, then TF2 famously was made free to play in order to hook more people in and push loot crates on them. It took off from there. Throughout this time there were Facebook games like this and eventually games like Puzzle and Dragons were pretty mainstream on mobile platforms by 2011.

Also of note, in many jurisdictions that regulate gambling, companies have found loopholes that offer arcade style "games of skill" that are still like 99.9% games of chance to get around gambling regulations. So gambling is also becoming more like gaming. It's enshittification all the way down.

CS GO lootboxes that then get adopted by the rest of the industry. I don't think it's because people like to gamble though, but rather that demand for cosmetics (especially in Asia) is more inelastic than thought so far greater profits can be gleaned then slapping a definite price tag.

Casinos?

Blackjack, roulette, craps, slot machines, poker, and many other games have long been used for gambling.

Also sports betting has been a thing for nearly all of human civilization.