Comment by dylan604
3 years ago
>Ostensibly arcade machines are skill based.
That's also a slippery slope of an argument. Poker players claim that they are not gambling. Early stage addicts claim they are not addicts and can stop any time. Gaming, whether the player is earning money or points, all keys in on the same addictive traits of their players. Some game devs go all in on that because it is fish in a barrel stakes for making money.
Sure. Modern arcades even survive by selling alcohol as a 1-2 punch. But now we are talking about addiction in general, not gambling specifically.
Not sure why that matters to be honest. Gambling is a form of addiction. GaveDevs are tapping into that rush. That's how it breaks down for me. It may not be an illegal/scheduled substance that they are pushing, but they are pushing a product specifically made to trigger addictive behavior. It's no different than social media algorithms in my book either. They all are designing their product to be consumed by an addict to ensure they continue using their product as much as possible. We've just been dealing with drugs/alcohol/etc for much longer and society is much more aware of the addict problem in these cases. Social media/gaming addiction is a much less understood and/or acknowledged.
It matters because gambling specifically is regulated differently than general behaviors that might be addictive. There are more bars in the world than casinos. As I already outlined arcades specifically exist in their current form because they were re-classified as containing games of skill, not chance.
The difference matters a lot to someone who owns a bar or arcade or frequents one.
Further, conflating the meaning of words in general is just not a useful approach to learning or building consensus. Words have meaning. By respecting the meaning of words we can convey complex ideas with simple language.
Saying alcoholics are basically gamblers because "what's the difference" is about as useful (read: not) as arguing that FAANG should be broken up because "monopoly". The words matter and when you use the wrong ones the merit of your argument can be easily dismissed on the semantics. It's just not persuasive.
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