This is the blog of a historian named Charlotte (she/it/they), known across the Internet as PhD, DSc, MD, PT Discworld. Officially a PhD! (also received a Professor of Thaumology from Unseen University, Ankh Morpork). She has interests in goth music, science, academia, Doctor Who, Discworld, and various other topics. Trans as fuck. GNU Terry Pratchett
sorry kids daddy lost all his money betting on rhinoceros beetle fights again there won’t be a christmas this year
good news babies, momma just cleared some chump of everything. Two christmases this year. God i love beetles fighting
(via boneseses)
“gambling addiction” is kind of like if people regularly opened pits with spikes at the bottom in public areas and made lots of money from people falling into the pit and so they started greasing the edges and putting these pits in every public space and lobbying to be allowed to install them in people’s homes and when someone fell into the greased spike pit in their house they said “oh thats so tragic, they had an addiction to deadly spikes, we obviously support everyone having a safe and healthy responsible relationship with the greased spike pits we’re building”
(via boneseses)
Your friendly reminder to not spend money on gacha.
if your response to this post is “too late for me” i want you to sit down and think very, very hard about your life. Because maybe you said it jokingly, and it IS a joke, then good for you, but if you actually do spend significant amounts of money for a jpeg you’re not even sure you’re going to get, you might have a gambling addiction and that is a serious problem not a joke or a meme.
and on a similar note, keep in mind that people who do spend money this way need support, not ridicule. these types of games are specifically designed to engage existing addictive tendencies and to create them in vulnerable people. addicts aren’t stupid or irresponsible, and the root causes of addiction are often genetic and traumatic, so please be compassionate, not dismissive
(via squishbones)
Everytime I make a post like “don’t spend money on gacha” I get a bunch of angry replies to tell me “actually it’s POSSIBLE to gamble responsibly” and “mh how AM i a bad person for deciding to spend MY own money that I earned MYSELF?”
and man… I really wish that people understood that when I say “Don’t spend money on gacha, it might kickstart a gambling addiction” or “if you regularly spend money on gacha you might already have one” I don’t mean it as a moral judgement. Addiction isn’t something that solely affects “bad” or “stupid” people. Addiction isn’t some punishment that is deserved. If you suffer from any kind of addiction, you deserve help. But the first step of getting that help is acknowledging there is a problem in the first place.
also: while this applies to all addictions, gacha addictions especially suck because people keep trivializing it. There are so many memes and so much enabling like “lol just spent all my savings on gacha :p” “3000$ for my waifu, a pretty cheap price!” “lol it’s too late for me I already spend so much on it but you guys stay safe!” “Don’t spend on gacha? No, spend MORE on gacha!” which I believe only adds fuel to the virulent hostility against any post that goes “hey, this isn’t normal, please be careful.”
So yeah all this talk to say: the best way to not get a gambling addiction is to not start gambling at all, so don’t spend money on gacha. If you do spend money on gacha, be careful and watch out that “I’m just spending ten bucks and nothing else” doesn’t morph into “I just spent 140 bucks and got nothing out of it, might as well add ten more at this point.” If you have a gacha addiction and are aware of it, I wish you safety and recovery.
(via sophie-baybey)
Remember what I was saying before about how microtransactions are geared specifically to exploit addicts and “If you don’t like it don’t buy it” isn’t an argument?
Thank you for @-ing me.
For those of you who don’t know, I’m a specialist problem gambling financial counsellor. This means that I’m specially trained, qualified and experienced in aiding the rehabilitation of people struggling with problem gambling, and working with people who are affected by others’ problem gambling protect themselves and rebuild their lives. I spend 30% of the hours of my day job working with these people.
I’m going to make a very bold statement: micro-transactions with a ‘chance’ element are gambling. They are what is called an ‘embedded gambling element’ in a game. They may be a ‘softer’ form of gambling than sitting at a poker machine, but they are gambling. They normalise gambling to children (which has been shown to lead to problem gambling). They groom future problem gamblers, and they exploit people who have neurochemical imbalances (ie, depression). There is a very, very strong link between gambling and mental illness. People who gamble in games are more likely to susceptible to current and future gambling problems.
I’m going to focus on lootboxes in Overwatch, because it’s the game I know the most about. I also know a lot about how poker machines are psychologically designed to be highly addictive, specifically exploiting known psychological triggers to reel people in and keep them spending.
Overwatch lootboxes do the same - you know that feel of seeing a purple/gold coin flipping in the air??? OMG! Is it going to be THAT THING YOU REALLY!!!!-oh.
Bright colours, exciting lights, the visceral feel of pushing the button/spinning the wheel is important to addiction. Blizzard has does the same with lootboxes - by vibrating your controller. By shaking the camera. By having the lootbox rATTLE AND EXPLODE!!!! with your reward. The sounds and specially engineered to build excitement and tensions and remind you of wealth. The ‘coin’ system of the lootbox reminds you of wealth. This is all super deliberate - it’s not a mistake. Using subconscious cues like exploding money boxes!!! the sound of money, the shape of money - that’s likening the process to a lottery.
While it’s quite unlikely someone could actually spend ENORMOUS amounts of money chasing that ‘jackpot’ (the skin they really want for their character, for example), it is possible. HOWEVER, it’s much more likely that the person will have this sort of reward system normalised, will find the element of chance ‘exciting’ (because, dude, we’re psychologically engineered to be more interested in ‘chance’ events than certain/impossible events), and seek out and enjoy other similar passtimes. Like actual gambling with real money.
Every time you gamble, you change the structure of your brain. I’m not exaggerating. Every time you take a chance on that lootbox, you flood your brain with adrenaline and dopamine. The presence of those two neurochemicals changes the density of the receptors of them minutely. After a few boxes, it’s unlikely you’ll become addicted. However, if you keep doing it, your receptors change density so that you need more adrenaline and more dopamine to get the same excitement and pleasure from the hit.
Worse, this rush of adrenaline and dopamine is much, much more addictive to people with mental illness (or a susceptibility to mental illness), as the presence of these chemicals is a very unhealthy (but unfortunately effective, at least in the extremely short term) way of medicating mental illness. Unfortunately, because of the escalating changes in receptor density, it eventually makes mental illness much worse in the long run. There is a strong link between gambling and suicide.
Compare your first lootbox with the lootboxes you get now. Are you getting the same enjoyment? Nope.
Think how many times you bought 11 lootboxes…. only to buy another 11 and another 11 and another 11. It becomes mechanical, pressing that button, opening another lootbox. Kind of like sitting at a poker machine.
Think about how normal the lootbox system seems now.
Chance-based gambling reward systems in games are dangerous, and should be replaced either by work-and-reward systems (you get 10 credits per level, and you can spend these on rewards of your choice), combined with micro-transaction-based currency for people who do not have the time to commit to leveling 300 times for that epic Christmas skin.
Remove chance. Just remove it.
(via mioxenoblade)