Gambling and the desire machine | Pay to Win
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as an engaging, well-researched look at the history of gambling machines and how games borrow their psychology.
What it is
A 70-minute video essay by Jimmy McGee on gambling, addiction and game design, tracing horse racing, slot machines and collectible card markets. It is the first in a series on making money from games.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2022 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec jterrys · 2022-12 · on “A real history of video games – Pay to Win”
Though the video is fairly long, it's a genuinely interesting exploration on the murky history of video games and gambling. This is part two of a video series, I highly recommend watching both. Part 1: [this video]
Recommends AlexandrB · 2023-11 · on “Casino-like apps have drained people of millions”
I recently saw a good video[1] covering the history and appeal of gambling machines. My takeaway is that the primary reason people play these is not because they think they're going to win money. This especially true of pachinko where "cashing out" is a convoluted process of trading balls for prizes for cash. > If they never paid out, people would never go and the casinos would not exist This is self evidently false based on the linked article. Random chance games that have no possibility of ever having a net payout attract tons of players and make a lot of money. I think the problem is analyzing this with the economic "rational consumer" model of human behavior. Gambling is not rational but
Recommends maxbond · 2024-08 · on “A New Theory of Distraction (2015)”
This is tangential but I watched an interesting video essay about slot machines recently[1], based on the book Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll, and one of the surprising things Schüll's research turned up in interviews with slot machine gamblers was that for some winning was jarring and not really satisfying. It took them out of the trance-like "machine state," and their goal was not to win but to linger in the machine state. [1] [this video]