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What Regulators and Politicians Misunderstand about Video Games
54 Plays1 day ago
Andrew, a father of two and lifelong gamer, teams up with Brandon, a consumer psychologist and ex-pro video game coach, to cover video games, the way they are designed and how these design decisions impact the children that play them.
https://www.polygon.com/features/602800/gambling-video-games-balatro-luck-be-a-landlord
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Transcript
Introduction to Gaming and Gambling
00:00:11
Andrew Wilmot
Good morning, good day, good evening. Whenever you are, welcome to The Dopamine Slot Machine, the podcast that discusses what you need to know about the video games your children are playing. How are they designed to get your kids hooked?
00:00:22
Andrew Wilmot
How do they make money from your children? And what can you do to make sure that your child's relationship with video games is a positive one? My name is Andrew. I'm a dad of two and a lifelong gamer. And this is just a bit of a quick impromptu one today. So just me, as I read a really fantastic article titled Nobody Understands Gambling, Especially in Video Games, published yesterday.
Indie Games vs. Microtransactions
00:00:44
Andrew Wilmot
That's June the 2nd, 2025, if you're not listening to this, uh, on the day recording by Simone de Rochefort on polygon.com. I'll link to it in the description.
00:00:54
Andrew Wilmot
Uh, a lot of what I cover is effectively in the article, but also jumping off it as well. So this article describes two games, Belatro 2024 surprise breakout game of the year and luck be a landlord.
00:01:08
Andrew Wilmot
These are both indie games made by solo developers, you know, real build it in your garage type developers, They're both massive success stories, really. They they don't have microtransactions. They're just one-time purchases.
00:01:21
Andrew Wilmot
Luck Be a Landlord is straight up an artful critique of landlord capitalism, if I were to put a word, a phrase to it. and And it's a satire of the exact mechanics it's using. Whereas Bellatro, it's difficult to describe Bellatro. Bellatro.
00:01:38
Andrew Wilmot
Go play it. It's really good. um Maybe watch a video on it if you're not into playing games. But it's a deck-building, poker-like game. it's got a huge amount of strategic and tactical depth. It's won apparently every award.
00:01:52
Andrew Wilmot
To be clear, these games both play off of gambling, but they are not themselves gambling games.
Regulatory Challenges for Indie Games
00:02:00
Andrew Wilmot
Luck Be a Landlord got pulled from app stores globally because its rating, and I quote here,
00:02:06
Andrew Wilmot
does not take into account references to gambling, including real or simulated gambling. For an indie developer, this is a death sentence. Alartro, meanwhile, just after winning Armsful Awards, had its PEGI rating changed from 3 plus to 18 plus.
00:02:22
Andrew Wilmot
To be clear, these aren't necessarily games I would give my kids, nor do I actually think the games my children would be interested in. But they are not gambling games. No money can change hands in this.
00:02:35
Andrew Wilmot
Nobody's bank account is going to get cleared out because a parent left a card linked on the device their kid has access to. Something that happens distressingly often. They aren't even designed to be addictive the same way the endless parade of free, in inverted commas, games you'll find in the app stores are.
00:02:55
Andrew Wilmot
These are quality games. They might ape the aesthetics of certain casino games as part of their gameplay, but there's no deception behind them, there's no ulterior motives.
00:03:07
Andrew Wilmot
They are just doing so part of their gameplay, trying, and in my view, succeeding in aiming to be a good game that's worth paying money for the one time.
00:03:18
Andrew Wilmot
There's a bit of a history of this as
Gambling in Classic Games: Then and Now
00:03:20
Andrew Wilmot
well. ah So the original Pokémon games pre-2007, so at the very least, Pokemon Red and Blue, Pokemon Gold and Silver, um late 90s, early 2000s Pokemon games. I, both of those, loved them.
00:03:35
Andrew Wilmot
They had an in-game casino called the Game Corner, where you can effectively play a slot machine to win coins, to spend on in-game items and Pokemon. You you would buy coins ah with the in-game currency as well.
00:03:51
Andrew Wilmot
Now, of course, these were just within the game itself that you couldn't um go and buy additional in-game currency with real money. That wasn't a thing that hadn't been really invented yet.
00:04:06
Andrew Wilmot
ah you couldn't You couldn't end up charging your parents' card off the back of it. These, in Pokemon, these have now been turned into arcade minigames, as a game is not allowed to include anything which encourages, promotes, or teaches gambling unless it has an 18 plus rating.
00:04:24
Andrew Wilmot
And yeah, I get that. um In hindsight, it is kind of weird ah for a game that, yeah I think I was five when I got Pokemon Red and my Game Boy Color.
00:04:37
Andrew Wilmot
ah for Christmas, maybe even four, I'm not sure. um Kind of strange to expose them to that. I didn't really take to it at that age because I didn't have the patience, didn't really understand it.
00:04:50
Andrew Wilmot
ah And I don't necessarily disagree with requiring games that encourage, promote or teach gambling to have an 18 plus rating.
00:05:04
Andrew Wilmot
That said, I don't think Luckbe and Landlord and Bellatro fit under that definition.
Critique of Game Rating Systems
00:05:10
Andrew Wilmot
As mentioned, they... Bellatro in particular. It is perhaps inspired by poker.
00:05:19
Andrew Wilmot
And obviously managing risk, reward and trust is certainly part of it. But it is not all of it. What I don't get is In what world are games with loot boxes not covered by this?
00:05:37
Andrew Wilmot
So Peggy, the same regulator that gave Bellacho its 18 plus rating, gives Roblox a parental guidance rating. So as long as you know the parents are aware, then it's suitable for everybody, apparently.
00:05:50
Andrew Wilmot
No idea how they came to that conclusion. ah They give Fortnite a 12 because of the violent content, saying nothing about the literal gambling that users are constantly being funneled towards, and says that FIFA is suitable for all ages.
00:06:07
Andrew Wilmot
Again, not including the gambling that's built in as a core part of the game. These games all have real gambling that player is directed towards, and they're given age ratings that do not account for that.
00:06:22
Andrew Wilmot
I'm not even talking about the thousands of games on app stores that listed as free, but they're also trying to do the exact same thing. just just these big games, right? The sort of things that you'd think that a regulator would at least have the resources to go have a look at. I mean, if if they're going after breakout hit indie hits like Bilarcho, why can't they look at Roblox properly?
00:06:44
Andrew Wilmot
It only takes 20 minutes of playing some Roblox games to see just how embedded into the core gameplay of so many experiences on Roblox gambling is.
00:06:57
Andrew Wilmot
Millions of children in this country are being regularly exposed to real gambling on devices their parents have given them in games that their parents assume are safe. A huge number of those children are actively engaging in gambling using money that their parents are giving them.
00:07:12
Andrew Wilmot
I'm not even talking about the issues with addictive design, the sort of dopamine slot machine to to name the phenomenon after which we're named that we talk about, but literal gambling with real money.
Impact of Skin Gambling in CS:GO
00:07:24
Andrew Wilmot
There's a game called Counter-Strike, and I'm specifically talking about the iteration of it called Counter-Strike Global Offensive, or otherwise known as Counter-Strike Go. Counter-Strike itself has been around in some form or another for decades. It was kind of an old series when I first became aware of it as a kid, but it was also one of the first games to introduce skins, cosmetics.
00:07:49
Andrew Wilmot
In it, you can earn, buy and sell weapon skins. Alongside this, a shadow market of skin gambling sites, often promoted by YouTubers with huge audiences of children, has emerged.
00:08:06
Andrew Wilmot
One of those YouTubers, whose whose name is very difficult for me to pronounce, but will include a link to his channel, in the description, actually conducted an investigation into Counter-Strike Go after basically saying that he was going to take sponsorship from from them and using that insight, sponsorship not from Counter-Strike Go, but the third party shadow market of skin gambling sites, and use the insight he got from that to basically produce his own study on it.
00:08:35
Andrew Wilmot
he found that 70% of people who have, at some point, gambled with Counter-Strike Global Offensive skins started when they were children, so under 18.
00:08:47
Andrew Wilmot
Now, Counter-Strike Global Offensive has been rated between a mature game or 12+, depending on which body is doing the ratings. But that's been entirely based off of the violent content, the the shooting, the you are...
00:09:02
Andrew Wilmot
and either saving hostages or fighting off counter-terrorist units. And completely ignoring the multi-billion, and to be clear, it is a multi-billion dollar industry that's built up around skin gambling. It's it's a way for children to access unregulated gambling sites without it being gambling, as far as the regulators concerned.
00:09:33
Andrew Wilmot
And as I said, none of this is touching on the way games are rewiring children's brains to be wired towards risk and uncertainty, even without money changing hands, that the addictive design.
Regulators' Understanding of Gaming
00:09:45
Andrew Wilmot
My worry, which is why we started this podcast, is very few parents, and certainly basically no regulators or politicians, have the gaming knowledge and experience to truly break down the mechanics that are being used on children.
00:10:00
Andrew Wilmot
It is easy to look at Bellarcher and say, ah, that looks like poker. We can't be having that whilst ignoring Roblox because it looks like a kid's game. Those of you who joined my webinar last week on Roblox, and I do apologize, I have yet at time of recording to edit that down as something that we can put online.
00:10:20
Andrew Wilmot
I've had a lot of requests to do just that. Those of you who came to that webinar will have seen us covering ah particularly rivals which is super popular Roblox game, and just the amount of addictive design and gambling that is just straight up promoted to the player as soon as you log in.
00:10:38
Andrew Wilmot
Yet Roblox, as far as Peggy is concerned, is fine as long as the parents are away. It's got parental guidance.
Normalization of Gambling in Games
00:10:47
Andrew Wilmot
We've seen a massive rise in gambling over the last few years, particularly as it pertains to sports betting.
00:10:54
Andrew Wilmot
I'm not going to pretend that I'm an expert on this phenomenon. I don't watch any sports. I actually only went to my first football game a couple of weeks ago, the ah the women's FA final with my daughter. We had a fantastic time.
00:11:11
Andrew Wilmot
But even I can see that it's pretty intense, the level of sponsorship, the level of promotion, sports betting. in and football and presumably other sports as well right probably the same in the super bowl over in the us basketball um Oh, we watch the Six Nations sometimes. I haven't seen anything around that. Don't know if that's a decision made by the sporting bodies involved or it's just culturally not as big a thing.
00:11:37
Andrew Wilmot
There's going to many reasons driving this, but I wouldn't be surprised if the normalisation of gambling in video games, both the the literal loot box type gambling and the more subtle addictive design where you're gambling in terms of ah non-financial rewards, wouldn't be surprised if that's one of those things that's feeding into them.
00:12:04
Andrew Wilmot
And it is very clear from the way our regulators behave and the way these... And actually, also, to be clear, Peggy is an industry body. It's not a state-run regulator.
00:12:16
Andrew Wilmot
It is something that the industry has come up with itself and Effectively to try and avoid governments being the one to crack down on it, so to keep that regulation within their control, governments do sign up with it, so it's not purely just an industry play. it's It's more complicated than I can get into at the end of a one-man episode.
00:12:40
Andrew Wilmot
The regulators aren't equipped to handle this. Either they are being willfully ignorant, or they don't understand the industry that they're trying to regulate. Honestly, probably both.
00:12:55
Andrew Wilmot
So that leaves it to us parents to make sure that we are making informed choices about the games our children play. And again, I am quite gaming positive.
Parental Responsibility in Gaming Choices
00:13:04
Andrew Wilmot
I think that gaming in the same way films, books, it can be an art form and it can be certainly a positive thing in your child's life.
00:13:16
Andrew Wilmot
um But we've got to make more informed choices on this. Roblox and Fortnite are probably the two most popular games for kids, with Minecraft being third. Maybe the exact positioning of those three is up for debate, but the fact that those are the three most popular games amongst children, frankly, isn't up for debate.
00:13:36
Andrew Wilmot
And two out of the three of them have gambling embedded from top to bottom. As parents, we need to make better choices here. We can't be relying on our politicians who don't want to know and regulators who also don't seem to be able to figure this out themselves to make these things safe for our children to use.
00:13:58
Andrew Wilmot
It's not going to happen.
Next Episode Tease: Snapchat and Gamification
00:14:01
Andrew Wilmot
So that's all we have time for today. Thank you so much for joining me. Next week, we are still going to be covering Snapchat. I'm looking forward to that. It should be quite a heavy, quite a long episode as well. It's to you know combining the gamification of social media with, frankly, so just some of the horror stories you hear about Snapchat. It's been quite heavy to research, um but I'm looking forward to going live with that.
00:14:30
Andrew Wilmot
This has been the Dopamine Slot Machine. Thank you and see you soon.