Maybe I'm young and didn't experience it, but in the 90s you would plan a trip to Vegas and lose a few hundred dollars.
Today I see people doing this from their phone on every random sports game. Further there are constant ads on TV, the Internet, and on billboards.
I'm fortunate for a teacher who says "gambling is a tax on people who can't do math". And having tried gambling, it was a labor intensive way to lose money.
I got introduced to a gacha game for the first time about 2 years ago, compared with classic mid 2000's Gamecube games. Gacha is a type of Japanese gambling game that is found on mobile phones, and can be tied to various media properties to link into pre-existing fondness for characters.
I don't consider myself as having an addictive personality (only got a smartphone about the same time, etc) but it has been an education in how much effort one has to put into not making it take over your life. If I didn't have a strict "only money you spend on this is the flat 5$ monthly subscription fee, no more" rule, I can easily see a bad night wrecking havoc on a pocketbook. The thought with the subscription for me, is that the gameplay's fun enough for me to spend a starbucks-a-month on it.
The wildest thing is, this specific gacha (Fire Emblem Heroes) is considered very tame compared to most gachas, when it's all said and done.
Given the popularity (an order of magnitude larger than FEH) of other gachas like Genshin Impact among Gen Z ... and the horror stories I've been hearing of former friends backstabbing each other and sabotaging fandom projects to steal money for gacha addictions ... this worries me.
It's DEFINITELY much worse that before, for the sufficient and simple reason you stated, it's just that much easier to gamble these days. I know a colleague at work with a problem, who comes into work after the weekend cussing out his wife for hiding his credit card after he loses a few hundred bucks on Friday night.
I know another guy who only ever talks about his wins, which has me guessing he must be badly in debt just based on the long odds. Both of these colleagues are Asian-American, and for them it seems just culturally OK to do these things.
Kids have been at it for way longer than that. What are packs of trading cards, if not loot boxes in the physical world? I knew plenty of kids who spent all their allowance money on packs of Pokémon cards, hoping to score that rare Charizard.
And removed all of the friction. They’re available 24 hours a day in unlimited quantities. You don’t have to wait until after school. You don’t have to wait for the local toy store to open. You don’t have to wait for the store to have them in stock. The next box is always just one push of a button away.
There are several reasons why it is more accessible than before. One is internet gambling. Another is that SCOTUS struck down a federal law banning sports betting in 2018. So gambling used to be a "big thing" involving a trip to Vegas (or Atlantic City or whatever). Now it's something comparable to scrolling Facebook.
Many of the laws around gambling are still quasi-religious morality rules from the Prohibition era, focusing on Games of Chance. Regulation has not caught up to the current understanding of gambling as an addiction.
Here in the Netherlands the government decided to legalize online gambling smack in the middle of the covid crisis. There were adverts for it everywhere, to the point that even many regular people (who in my experience normally aren't against advertising at all) expressed their annoyance and there is talk of curbing advertisements for online gambling (not sure if and to what extent this has actually happened). Completely nuts that they were giving weekly press conferences about how vulnerable and lonely people are and that we have to take care of each other, and then do this at the same time.
I don't think it's just gambling. Gambling is a subset of a larger problem, which is that it's easier than ever for smart but ruthless people to extract money out of the rest of the population.
It's probably the case that the majority of the smartest people in the most recent generations are involved in rent-seeking, Ponzi schemes, advertising, and/or skinner box creation in the form of FAANGs or other tech/fintech/crypto companies.
The only gambling I've done was a Sunday poker night with friends for relatively low stakes and that was over 4 years ago. Right now I see ads for sports betting all the time and its ridiculous. Not only do I really not care much for sports (except formula 1 --- maybe football during end of season) I have never gone to a casino, never so much as looked at a sports betting site and I see them all the time. I'm simply not interested.
I keep blocking them on twitter and sharing not interested on reddit but it doesn't seem to change much.
I wouldn't minimize the gambling problem as just "plan a trip to vegas and lose a few hundred dollars", even before the widespread internet gambling was a serious issue. I can't speak for the US but from where I'm from "analog" gambling has a much wider array of options than just casinos(including illegal casinos), and those tend to be available locally everywhere in some manner even today.
It probably is worse than ever I do agree, the internet age gives far too much visibility and access to it, to the point where the most popular sports games have progression pretty much tied to some form of lootboxes, and that's before even getting into the rabbit hole of gacha.
The acceptance of loot boxes because "it was just cosmetic" was a tragic slippery slope, all the problems with having cosmetics on said loot boxes aside, that turned into "you can also buy it with in-game currency", which then started offering in-game currency for purchase and making the prices to buy said things extraordinary, which generated a lot of money and allowed for a free release that would then feed the circle over again.
Gambling is kinda fun if you stay in your limits. I think it really pulls in people who are just bored in life.
Online sports betting is just not fun for me. I want to get a betting slip and walk away with dollars. Doing it on the phone feels very lame to me for some reason. Probably for the best. I also just don't have time to actually learn stuff about what could affect the game, so I mostly just make fun bets.
I will counterpoint this. I seem to have very high risk aversion, but I still tried blowing a couple hundred for my brother's bachelor party. It was the first time I had ever done real gambling, in a casino. I was excited to play slots, because I've had times in one videogame or another to play an example of slots and it was fun to make the numbers go up.
Gambling isn't fun. The slot machines are just bright lights, and the vast majority of their exterior is spent on explaining the rules so they can have extremely complicated games so they can legally boost payouts, without violating the law. The very first machine I touched was something involving ducks. I put in a twenty, pressed a button, and lost ten dollars a second later. I literally sat there wondering if I had missed something, or didn't understand how to play.
Okay, whatever that's a higher stakes game than I should be playing. So I moved onto the "penny" slots, which are contrived bullshit machines. They "run" fifty "bets" simultaneously so that one actual play is 50 cents but can claim that each "game" is only a penny. So I got to actually playing, pressing the bet button, getting the reels spinning, and winning and losing.
There's nothing there. There are beeps and boops and things moving, but like, so what? It isn't the 50s anymore, we shouldn't really be entertained by the most basic beeps and boops that were possible before transistors were invented. We are well past pong in this day an age, shouldn't there be something more? It's also VERY obvious from right the first second that you WILL lose more than you win. After just ten plays you will have a pretty good idea of the downward trend you face, even if you somehow get big wins here and there.
So I move from machine to machine. I eventually find a machine made by konami, you know, the guys behind huge popular video game franchises, like castlevania and metal gear and DDR. Turns out they make a lot of gambling machines nowadays, and pretty much only those. This machine had a large high resolution display, and bright lights and loud sounds. But, it was exactly the same. It's just a few digital reels that pretend to spin and lock into whatever set up the RNG already decided you will get.
Okay, fine, I've always wanted to play blackjack and I have $100 here I've decided to play until gone. So I go look at the card tables. Turns out, every game has bespoke rules on how you are allowed to bet, how you can play, and the game runs at an absurd pace. Not only can you not use simple and classic blackjack strategy because of the limited betting system, but it nakedly shows how stupid gambling is at all, because the rules unilaterally limit any possible upside for the player, while leaving their downside wide open. A simple house edge was not enough for this rule set, instead you are required to set a personal max bet before each round, and it doesn't matter how good you do that round you can't bet more than that ante. The quick pace also makes it impossible to actually think on your cards, decided how good you think that is, and bet accordingly. Meanwhile, all the other players at the table have obviously been here every day this month, are losing hundreds every few hands, and keep telling you about their "system" that totally works and definitely beats the super stacked rules in this game.
That was it. That's when I realized that gambling isn't fun. Gambling games simply are not designed to be fun, because nobody plays them for fun. A more fun game does not bring in more money for the casino. Instead, they make more money by simply running more "games" per second, because most regulation is around the odds you are allowed to set up "per game" essentially. Look back at that konami slot. They make ACTUAL games, for ACTUAL fun, at least at one point. Compare the konami slot machine to an arcade cabinet of Gradius; It's literally designed to kill you and take your coin once every minute or so. And that is still less greedy, over-engineered, optimized, and hollowed out than even the simplest slot machine I could find. Castlevania is fun. Metal gear is fun, even though I think the story is dumb. DDR is incredible fun. Slot machines and gambling are not fun unless you get that magic hit of dopamine every time you press that button, and if you do, you are directly susceptible to being physically addicted to gambling, and every single light, sound, smell, touch in that building has been expressly optimized to give you that hit of dopamine and get you addicted.
I feel like I shouldn't be selling you on gambling, but I actually have very similar thoughts about some of the games you mentioned.
Slots: are a waste of time imo. I don't know why people like these.
Blackjack: is kinda fun but you really gotta print out a card that tells you how to play with which hands. You can kinda try to guess when you'll get a run of luck but I am also not super into this game. Feels very formulaic.
Poker: Ah yes, poker is FUN, texas hold em with friends is a great way to spend an evening. But I think it would be a lot less fun at a casino tournament because enough of those people are very serious about it and they will roll me.
Roulette: Good for a quick bet or two, but lingering at the table too long is a road to despair.
What does that leave me with? Craps!
Yes, craps. it is very easy to understand the basic bets and it is a communal game. Generally speaking, the people playing at a craps table are winning or losing together. As long as you avoid any of the exotic bets on the board, the payouts are actually fairly even for a casino game. I usually enjoy craps, but there's a catch of course. You can win a lot or lose a lot very quickly. It's important to stop when you lose your limit, and it's important to walk away once you've been playing a certain amount of time imo.
That's my take on casino games anyway. I go maybe every few years.
I was born in Miami and I would say its become far more accessible, specifically fantasy sports betting.
Maybe Miami isn't a great example, but you had every form available, cock fighting, dog fighting, grey hound racing, horse racing, dice, cards, illegal street racing...
Any event that brought people together had its gambling, it just wasn't available in an app.
My guess is the apps have actually reduced the amount of gambling in these other areas (both illegal and legal).
Everything from kids arcades to sports has turned into a grand casino. The sports thing is a particular bummer as it will change sports in what imo a bad thing.
Not sure if I want to advance brain science, maybe these companies can be legally held accountable... Or maybe gambling companies will get to the research first and manipulate us.
The comment you replied to above, expressed that organizations and people involved in exploiting gambling addicts should be punished for doing so.
Sure, they said “legally held accountable” and you replied that these organizations are already operating legally.
So then the matter is: should these companies be allowed to continue operating as they currently do because it’s legal? Or should we push for laws/regulations to be changed so they stop exploiting people?
This is not a matter of fact issue. It’s a moral, political, and yes subjective, issue.
So your question, even if you didn’t intend it to, very much has to do with morality.
Maybe I'm young and didn't experience it, but in the 90s you would plan a trip to Vegas and lose a few hundred dollars.
Today I see people doing this from their phone on every random sports game. Further there are constant ads on TV, the Internet, and on billboards.
I'm fortunate for a teacher who says "gambling is a tax on people who can't do math". And having tried gambling, it was a labor intensive way to lose money.