
Engineers of addiction - colinbartlett
http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machine-gambling-addiction-psychology-mobile-games
======
downandout
Casinos like to say that roughly 2% of players become addicted. What they fail
to mention is that approximately _half_ of all their revenue comes from these
2%. A more telling statistic is that approximately 10% of players account for
_90%_ of all casino revenue [1]. The numbers are quite similar for games with
IAP [2].

While every casino in the US displays signage claiming to support "responsible
gaming" and claims to have policies in place to stop addicts from gambling,
the reality is that if addicts were stopped, all casinos would be closed and
bankrupt within a month. No capital-intensive industry could survive if 90% of
their revenue suddenly vanished. And with that, we arrive at the truth:
casinos are built explicitly for the creation and exploitation of addiction.

This is pretty evil, but it will continue happening as long as politicians can
be bought to keep it legal. The only meaningful way to address it is to focus
resources on treatment and prevention.

[1]
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023046261045791233...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304626104579123383535635644)

[2]
[http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-12-12-monetizing-...](http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-12-12-monetizing-
games-crucial-advice-from-key-players)

~~~
wdr1
> This is pretty evil, but it will continue happening as long as politicians
> can be bought to keep it legal.

You could make this exact same argument for liquor sales.

The top 10% of regular drinkers have 10 drinks a day. If they reduced their
consumption to that of the next decile, total ethanol sales would fall by 60
percent.[1]

We tried banning alcohol sales. It didn't work very well.

[1] [http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/10/05/the-
alcohol-...](http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/10/05/the-alcohol-
industry-needs-alcoholism-to-thrive/)

~~~
droopyEyelids
We still don't culturally embrace alcohol as a good thing. You don't see the
states advertising vodka like they advertise the lottery.

There is a lot of room between making something illegal, and promoting it to
take advantage of people.

~~~
CONTRARlAN
> We still don't culturally embrace alcohol as a good thing. You don't see the
> states advertising vodka like they advertise the lottery.

I'm having a hard time with this. Something doesn't have to be endorsed by the
state to be culturally embraced, which seems to be what I'm understanding when
I view both sentences in tandem. Apologies if I'm getting that wrong.

But if I view the first sentence in isolation:

> We still don't culturally embrace alcohol as a good thing.

I'm still baffled, but for different reasons. Alcohol is endorsed, celebrated,
and embraced from top to bottom in nearly all corners of contemporary society.
It's served nearly everywhere, consuming it is the cultural norm, not
consuming it is viewed with suspicion, it's lauded as being crucial to one's
enjoyment of an evening, social gathering, sporting event, flight, etc. Entire
business models exist that would otherwise be unprofitable if not for alcohol
sales. Many establishments are essentially loss leaders but for their alcohol
sales (which are supposedly tangential to their primary business offering).

2.5 million deaths are alcohol-related every year. It's a factor in 40% of all
violent crimes. 24% of incidents involving police have alcohol as a factor.

And yet, sit around at dinner with a group of guys and order a soft drink, and
it's often viewed as abnormal behavior.

Why? Because, for reasons passing understanding, we culturally embrace alcohol
as a good thing.

------
jscottmiller
I found the following passage most striking:

> "I lost my husband two years ago to throat cancer," she explained. "He was
> the love of my life, and I started doing this just to — I was out of my mind
> and spent a lot of time at the cancer center." ... Singleton says she never
> recovered from the pain of her loss, and that’s why she keeps coming back to
> the slots.

The person quoted above is in need of counseling and support. Instead, she's
getting a drip-feed of low-cost morphine to mask her loss, like a debtor going
from pay-day loan to pay-day loan to stay solvent.

Academically, we seem to have strong evidence linking stress to reduced
impulse control. I'm no expert in the matter, but surveys such as this [1]
seem convincing. Despite this, the popular conversation seems to stay away
from root causes and instead ends at the label 'addict.'

I wonder what percentage slot machine and clash of clans-styled mobile gaming
revenue is due to this kind of coping-related addiction. downandout's comment
[2] suggests it is probably quite high.

[1]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2732004/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2732004/)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9557208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9557208)

~~~
golergka
This segment about people coping with loss using slot machines was really eye-
opening. And actually, it made me think better about this industry than
before. Of course, using slot machines for that is not as healthy as going
through counseling, but it seems a lot better than almost all other
alternatives. And the players themselves seem to have a pretty good
understanding of the mechanic: they're not hoping to win, they're not tricked,
they trade their money for the "flow", and are open about it.

------
n72
First employee, pseudo-founder of Doubledown Casino here (now the highest
grossing game on the iPad). The interesting thing is that we were absolute
crap at the actual gamification stuff. It was simply the slots machine
mechanic which drew people in. I (and another person) kept trying to push the
principles of gamification, the psychological tricks, etc which had worked so
well for the likes of Zynga (not entirely proud of that, of course), but were
for the most part utterly ignored by the other couple of guys who didn't
understand their value. So, what I find interesting here is that even without
the gamification bells and whistles, the simple mechanic of a poorly skinned,
very buggy slots game (which is what we had in the begging) was enough to
skyrocket us (along with ridiculously cheap facebook ads back in the wild west
days of the platform.)

~~~
ryanjshaw
Given that you are aware that you are basically exploiting the digital
equivalent of an highly addictive substance that does lead to ruined
lives/families/careers, does this weigh on your mind, and if not, why not? [1]

[1] Casino licenses in most countries are tied to paying for treatment of
people with gambling addiction/compulsions - similar to how many countries
approach decriminalisation of addictive substances. I assume you do not fund
any such programs - is that correct?

~~~
n72
I'm not sure why I'd discuss this with some random person on the internet. If
you'd like to tell me that you think I did something morally wrong, feel free
to do so, but have the courtesy of not disingenuously cloaking it as a
question.

(FWIW, I haven't been with the company since 2012.)

~~~
Klapaucius
Well, I for one would be genuinely interested in how someone working in a
field that I personally (and many with me) do find morally reprehensive
(whether it be gambling, drugs, weapons, fossile fuels...) think about their
role in the big picture. Do they have good arguments that I fail to see, do
they not care/think too much about it, does the salary/benefits trumph any
moral qualm, do they not have any other choice, etc. If you don't want to
discuss it, that is fine, just pointing out that the original poster's
question might not be fully rhetorical.

~~~
n72
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but the tone seemed a bit over the top. E.g. I
could have been something like "Given that you worked in a morally
questionable field, does this weigh on your mind, and if not, why not?"

Some very random thoughts and (sorry to yell but I know someone is going to
tell me how one of these doesn't justify things but...) NONE OF THESE ARE
MEANT TO JUSTIFY ANYTHING:

1\. I am just a dev and had never been to a casino in my life prior to
developing the game. I just took the job since I wanted to go the high
risk/hard reward route. I am fully cognizant of the "I was just the accountant
at Auschwitz" counter argument. I just developed the thing and had fun,
frustration, and huge amounts of stress learning about things like high
concurrency and such.

2\. I am guilty of compartmentalizing and avoid thinking about the effects.

3\. I was under the understanding that for a a while at least we were cutting
people off when they spent over a certain amount. I assume at some point we
stopped doing this, but avoided asking when.

4\. Due to political reasons, I was sidelined and didn't have any decision
making clout. I was just a dev once we grew to a certain point.

5\. I'm fairly far to the left politically, but found some of the more
libertarian arguments persuasive in terms of adults are adults and should be
able to smoke weed, drink beer, and play slots if they want to.

6\. I tell myself that with the money earned, I can now do good things for the
world and any projects I do from now on will be non-profitish. I have yet to
do anything of the sort.

7\. It was all very gradual. If an existing casino company had tried to hire
me, I would likely have not worked for them. We started off with multiplayer
games like Blackjack and Roulette and the focus was on social really more than
casino. It's the kind of lobster boiling problem: Since it was so gradual, it
was tough to see if/when a line was crossed.

8\. Casino has a particularly bad reputation. Is working for J.P. Morgan any
better? What about Starbucks, which has basically built their empire on a
caffeine addiction?

~~~
ryanjshaw
This is a great answer, thanks! Of course I knew I was going to push some
buttons and don't pretend to be a saint myself, but I thought many here would
be interested in hearing what you had to say because as digital hackers we
have the ability to operate in a somewhat unregulated space and face many
moral and ethical dilemmas. BTW, I don't feel I was over-exaggerating the
risks of untreated addictions - I encourage you to research it if you still
feel that way. It is almost certain if the app was as popular as you say, and
people used real money, that at least one person killed themselves or ruined
their lives/families/careers by now.

Re: #8. I don't see casinos and drugs (including alcohol) going away any time
soon, and attempting to stop them is misdirected in my opinion. The problem is
that for a small proportion of the public (typically people with mental health
issues) they end up being used as self-medication, often unknowingly, and can
make bad situations worse - leading to financial ruin, families torn apart,
suicide or overdose in the case of drugs. (JP Morgan & Starbucks don't have
these properties.)

For that reason, in the meatspace, casinos are highly regulated and need to
identify and protect vulnerable people. So yes - while your app is a
substitute for a physical activity, in the physical world that person would
have gone through many more hoops that would have allowed people to help them
or notice their problem. In digital space, there is no such visibility and
there are no regulations, which is why it becomes interesting to see what
people do and say about what they do.

~~~
n72
I absolutely agree that there should be more regulation online. My hope is
that legislation just needs to be given time to catch up.

------
andrewstuart2
There's no way I'm the only one wary of the moral implications of _trying_ to
addict your users without their knowledge and for a profit. It just seems like
the most self-centered possible way of using your skills when you don't care
at all whether it's going to destroy lives as long as it brings their cash to
your (and/or your investors') bank account.

I have no problem with helping people understand how to use their brain
chemistry to help themselves do things they want to do. This, however, just
feels so bad for the human race as a whole.

I guess what I'm saying is that it makes me sad that this happens and that
people are okay with doing it.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
Scott Alexander wrote this about Vegas:

>Las Vegas doesn’t exist because of some decision to hedonically optimize
civilization, it exists because of a quirk in dopaminergic reward circuits,
plus the microstructure of an uneven regulatory environment, plus Schelling
points. A rational central planner with a god’s-eye-view, contemplating these
facts, might have thought “Hm, dopaminergic reward circuits have a quirk where
certain tasks with slightly negative risk-benefit ratios get an emotional
valence associated with slightly positive risk-benefit ratios, let’s see if we
can educate people to beware of that.” People within the system, following the
incentives created by these facts, think: “Let’s build a forty-story-high
indoor replica of ancient Rome full of albino tigers in the middle of the
desert, and so become slightly richer than people who didn’t!”
[[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)]

Moral qualms will be crushed by competitive dynamics. I'm pretty afraid of
this addiction arms race, especially with the coming rise of VR.

~~~
rawnlq
>“Let’s build a forty-story-high indoor replica of ancient Rome full of albino
tigers in the middle of the desert, and so become slightly richer than people
who didn’t!”

One could argue that the value added here is the environment. Otherwise most
peoples' dopaminergic reward circuits will not erroneously evaluate slot
machines in an empty desert positively.

What exactly is the difference between vegas and any other kinds of
entertainment that could possibly be addictive then? (WoW or other MMORPGs,
tetris, board games...)

~~~
api
The biggest difference with Vegas is the direct relationship between time and
energy spent gaming and money spent. The Skinner Box phenomenon is directly
harnessed to empty peoples' wallets in a way that you don't see as completely
with other forms of addictive games and entertainment.

For example, I spend the same on an MMO subscription no matter how often I
play.

This is obviously a moral gray area. Anything can be addictive. How much is
too much? But I do feel that things like scientifically designed gambling are
certainly on the dark side of the divide.

------
Red_Tarsius
This is my field of study. Sometimes It's difficult to draw the line between
_well-designed_ and _addictive_. My personal deal breaker is when play becomes
a sinkhole for money.

A more moral strategy would be to foster user awareness with threshold
mechanisms: " _You spent more than [threshold]$ today. We won 't accept any
more purchases until tomorrow._"

If you're interested, I highly recommend N. Schüll's _Addiction by Design_.

~~~
panic
_A more moral strategy would be to foster user awareness with threshold
mechanisms: "You spent more than [threshold]$ today. We won't accept any more
purchases until tomorrow."_

I wonder why mobile app stores haven't implemented such a mechanism.

~~~
Red_Tarsius
1) It's less profitable.

2) The popup might " _break the spell_ " and frustrate players. They would
likely move to more compelling activities.

People who are severely addicted to slot machines don't care about winning or
losing. They just want to keep the _flow_. Every distraction is detrimental to
the experience.

------
ksk
The idea that purposefully creating a psychological dependence on something as
unproductive as gambling is a good thing boggles the mind. I'm glad that my
response is that of disgust rather than "admiration" or "envy" for these
businesses.

------
austenallred
I'm really just replying to this so that I can see my karma score go up and I
can get a little endorphin hit, really.

But in all seriousness, it seems that the things that are most destructive are
those things that have brains have been trained to drip feel-good chemicals -
we distill the essence of that thing and make it easy and cheap to reproduce.
Your brain likes it when you eat food because it keeps you alive? Well, it
looks like a lot of that is coming from sugar/carbs. How about we put an
absurd amount of sugar in water and call it "soda," adding a little caffeine
for good measure, and sell it for $1/bottle? Your body reacts pleasantly (in
the short-term) to fats? Here's a hamburger. Your body will eventually regret
it, and overall the outcome will be negative, but the initial spike will be
enough that you either never put the two together, or can't resist it.

Evolution has trained you to enjoy reproducing? Well really you just enjoy the
act of sex. And actually not even sex per se, it looks like we can stimulate
you with a few visuals and something touching you... porn becomes one of the
biggest industries that exist.

Drugs are a much more literal version of that, distilling what makes your
brain act certain ways in a literal sense. But in my mind whether or not
something is a "drug" isn't binary; it's a continuum. I'd like to see someone
try to take Diet Coke away from my cousin and then convince me it's not a
drug.

So is candy crush an addiction? For some people, absolutely. They've moved
themselves along that continuum.

The scary thing is if you have a consumer product, trying to make someone
become addicted is pretty much the definition of what you do. Cigarettes are
good business; would you start a cigarette company? Soda is good business,
would you start a soda company? Brownies are good business, would you start a
brownie company?

It seems to me that our minds haven't yet adapted to the reality that now the
entire world of information is in our pockets, not to mention buzzing and
sending us notifications. It's certainly no mystery why people are always so
buried in their phones. It really concerns me personally, enough that I turn
off all notifications and don't even allow myself to download certain apps,
because I know I'd use them. My hosts file is full of sites that are
addictive.

I don't know what the answer is, but it's something I think about a lot as the
founder of a consumer product. I would love people to feel like they have to
come back and use my site every day. I'm trying to create that feeling. Is
that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know.

~~~
n72
Perhaps this is simplistic, but one question you might ask yourself is whether
you're offering something of value or exploiting a psychological weaknesses
inherent to humans.

------
Animats
Quotes:

 _" The "zone" is flow through a lens darkly: hyperfocused, neurotransmitters
abuzz, but directed toward a numbness with no goal in particular."_

 _" I don’t have to think. And I know I can’t win."_

 _" You know how you get people younger to gamble? Hand them a fucking
telephone."_

 _" A more exact replica of a slot may be Tinder. The mechanics of the dating
app mirror the experience of playing slots."_

 _" It’s okay to addict people as long as your business model doesn’t depend
on it."_

------
waterlesscloud
Is wikipedia all that different? Youtube? Even Google itself?

Different manifestations of the same sort of thing, if you shift your
perspective just a bit and look at how people use them.

~~~
eropple
Wikipedia isn't taking your money. Neither is Google. So, yeah. Difference in
kind, not merely degree.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Google/YouTube is making money from your addiction, so...no, not difference in
kind.

~~~
eropple
You have a very long row to hoe to establish that incidental advertising
revenue is the same as literally taking money out of the pockets of the fixed-
income elderly. Feel free to start, but 'till then I'm going to have a
powerfully hard time taking your argument seriously.

And Wikipedia doesn't _have_ advertising at all, so don't throw out your back
lugging them goalposts.

~~~
waterlesscloud
LOL at "incidental"

You know, it's just Google's main revenue stream. By several orders of
magnitude.

~~~
eropple
_incidental, adj.: accompanying but not a major part of something._ Which is
why I picked the phrasing I did; advertising is completely and inarguably
incidental to the consumption of the content that somebody is on YouTube to
actually see. Is it Google's main revenue stream? Sure. Is it significantly
impactful to the consumer? No, not really.

But let's take a step back. Do you actually intend to defend your assertion
that advertising is the same in kind as literally taking money out of
somebody's pocket? Or is this just the tacit admission that, no, you can't, so
let's play definitional games?

~~~
waterlesscloud
There's no question whatsoever that Google/Youtube would not exist if they
didn't have advertising revenue. This is not in any way a debatable point.
It's not even a little bit "incidental".

My point, no matter how you attempt to recast it, is that Google/Youtube
depend on an addictive dynamic. They do. You keep coming back. You keep
watching the next video. _they make money when you do that_. You can try to
recast that all you want, but if people didn't keep clicking on the next
result or next video, Google/YouTube wouldn't make money.

Why do you think there's a related videos sidebar on YouTube? Why do YouTube
videos end with more links to other videos?

~~~
reinhardt
Google et al. make money from advertisers, not from "addicted" people clicking
on cat videos on Youtube. If you can't see the difference from the slot
machines business model, I don't know what to tell you.

------
jkincaid
If you're concerned about the way the tech industry engineers addiction by
exploiting bugs in our brains, check out Time Well Spent -
[http://TimeWellSpent.io](http://TimeWellSpent.io)

It's an (early-on) movement exploring ways to build products that respect our
time and focus. (Watch the video for a good overview).

------
modeless
I wouldn't be surprised if free-to-play gaming ends up regulated like gambling
in the future.

~~~
n72
It absolutely should be. Also, it would be quite easy to help people self-
regulate by creating a blacklist of credit card numbers which one could sign
oneself up on and which all online casinos would have to use.

~~~
nerfhammer
This is called self-exclusion or voluntary exclusion where you can elect to
have yourself banned from casinos

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Exclusion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Exclusion)

some states have a state-wide list and some casinos in other states have their
own self-exclusion lists

~~~
nmrm2
A little bit like the anti-procrastination feature on hn.

------
thewhizkid
If you haven't seen the Southpark episode "Freemium isn't Free" you really
should...hits the nail on the head on the addictive nature of free to play
mobile games.

------
carsongross
If you want a picture of the future, imagine casino lights blinking in front
of a blank human face, forever.

~~~
joezydeco
It's probably not the future you expect.

The casinos are not raking in the money from slots and table games like they
were in decades prior. What used to be free or loss leaders for the casinos
(rooms, buffets, shows, nightclubs, even the _pools_ ) are now massive revenue
generators for the resorts.

Aside from that, casinos are also experimenting with games of _skill_ (aside
from poker) as possible ways to attract players now.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/04/24/402010841/the-f...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/04/24/402010841/the-
free-throw-experiment)

~~~
mikeyouse
> The casinos are not raking in the money from slots and table games like they
> were in decades prior.

You're pretty far off base here. Just looking at the Las Vegas Sands Corp's
10K, their annual revenue by source:

Casino - $12.0B

Rooms - $1.54B

Food/Bev - $0.78B

Mall - $0.55B

Convention, retail, other - $0.55B

So well over 80% of their revenue still comes from gaming -- and this is all
extremely high margin revenue. The Casino PR industry is making a lot of noise
about how diverse their income streams are but it doesn't follow in reality.

------
lips
I hope Ellen Degeneres & Duck Dynasty sleep tight with their images being used
to brand these things. Seems one of the more dubious licensing agreements you
could make.

------
interesting_att
A lot of people in this thread have moral qualms with slot machines. I know I
did. However, I have since been heavily involved in the industry (not of my
choosing), and have been able to better understand it. The slot industry is
not the epitome of evil.

1) Slots can be fun- Most people think slots are bad because they are
"addicting". They conclude that these machines are addicting in large part
because they themselves can't wrap their heads why ANYONE would spend so much
money on a game without some serious mental disorder. But that completely
ignores the actual voices of the users (who slot designers actually talk to).
Players actually enjoy the thrills of winning AND losing. We have to come to
grips that what others consider fun is sometimes beyond our realm of
imagination. And just because we don't understand the thrill of their
experience, doesn't mean the machine is tricking them. I don't see most people
confused when their 75 year old grandmother doesn't like Call of Duty.

2) Spending lots of money on slots isn't necessarily a symptom of addiction- I
have met so many people (Completely normal, wealthy people) who have a limit
of spending $30/day on slots in their spare time. That is, they spend around
10k/year on slots. Anyone seeing 10k/year would think that this person was
addicted, but they don't measure his/her background. Slot players tend to be
older, they tend to spend on little else (they don't go out to bars!), tend to
have a good amount of free time, and tend to have a good bit of savings. They
- of all people- should be allowed to play slots if they so choose to.
Obviously the money society spends on slots would be better used to feed some
starving child or build some fancy new lifesaving technology. But that's more
of a critique of capitalism, not just slots.

3) Casinos don't target gambling addicts- Of course slot makers do basic A/B
testing of their games. But it's not like casinos put ads outside of Gambling
Addicts Anonymous meetings. They target people in general, and gambling
addicts will always find a way too them. When do we start placing the
responsibility on the end user?

4) Is the rate of problem gamblers (gamblers who spend a lot of money and
can't) who use slot machines higher than the rate of alcoholics? Shopping
addicts? Drug addicts? Do you suggest banning alcohol because some people
can't handle it?

5) Casinos and slots are _heavily_ regulated by what they can and cannot do.
Moreover, taxes on casinos do go to fund problem gambling help, schools, and a
lot of great other things.

In the end, unless you actually take an effort to learn how to enjoy slots,
you won't understand why people like it. And because of that, you will just
vilify the industry. Eerily similar to the war on drugs.

~~~
savanaly
Thanks for the perspective. I read Addiction by Design a year ago or so and
had formed quite a negative opinion of all slot machines. You make some good
points though, and caused me to lean back towards neutral on the question of
whether the world would be better off with or without slots. If I ever visit
Vegas some time I'll have the opportunity to form a stronger judgement I
think, but I'll hold off until then.

------
Plough_Jogger
Which iOS game development companies are the most effective in driving this
kind of behavior?

