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FIFA - Could it 'kick' start a Gambling Addiction?
96 Plays28 days 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.
'The kids emptied our bank account playing Fifa'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48908766
Loot boxes: I blew my university savings gaming on Fifa
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53337020
How I Quit my FIFA Addiction
https://www.reddit.com/r/fut/comments/1finb5u/how_i_quit_my_fifa_addiction/
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Hosts and Topic
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 that your children are playing, how are they designed to get your kids hooked, 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.
00:00:30
Andrew Wilmot
My name is Andrew, I'm a dad of two and a lifelong gamer.
00:00:34
Bdizzle
And I'm Brandon, a consumer research psychologist and ex-professional video game coach.
FIFA Becomes EAFC: What Changed?
00:00:39
Andrew Wilmot
So we said we were going to cover FIFA. We're not actually going to cover FIFA this week. And let me tell you why. That's because FIFA no longer exists. So we are covering what's called EAFC or EA Electronic Arts Football Club.
00:00:56
Andrew Wilmot
And this is the game series formerly known as FIFA. So yeah, FIFA turned into EAFC a couple years ago, end of 2023, when the licensing agreement ran out.
00:01:09
Andrew Wilmot
But, you know, it's it's the same thing. And even yesterday at the school gates, picking up my daughter, I had one of her classmates referring to it as FIFA. So... We will continue to refer to it as FIFA for the rest of this episode.
00:01:24
Andrew Wilmot
I'm not going to start trying to unwind about 25 years of training and start calling it EAFC. That doesn't flow off the ton. It's FIFA.
00:01:34
Andrew Wilmot
Just so you know what we're talking about. We know what we're talking about. We are now...
The Business of FIFA/EAFC
00:01:39
Andrew Wilmot
you know The continuity of that series, FIFA into EAFC, it is effectively the same thing. God knows they basically release the same game every year, and you compare the before and after the name change, it is still the same thing.
00:01:51
Andrew Wilmot
So, FIFA, right? um FIFA was the best-selling game in the UK in 2024. It's one of the best-selling games in the world. It is rated E for everyone. We'll come back to that in just a second.
00:02:06
Andrew Wilmot
um But it's it's a football game, right? it's it's not too difficult to wrap your head around what it is and whilst there's various game modes involved in it fundamentally you play football matches and manage your team the multiplayer space is super popular as well for it um brandon and i when we played fifa as kids it was a real classic split screen game i'm sure we'll touch on our own experiences with that now the multiplayer is much more online focused It's a paid for game.
00:02:37
Andrew Wilmot
ah few times on this podcast, we've mentioned that if you're not paying for it, you're paying for it in another way. It's not free. Generally, a new release will be £60, right?
00:02:51
Andrew Wilmot
In America, it's what, $80? And that's looking at going up fairly soon. But yeah, um so... Brandon, you you had some thoughts about actually that E for Everyone rating and why that's a little bit strange.
00:03:08
Bdizzle
Yeah, correct, Andrew. well And admittedly, despise FIFA. i despise fifa ah um And it's very easy to, um when you think of its target market, so its target market is very, very young.
00:03:24
Bdizzle
and And as a byproduct of that, it's rated E for everyone, right? So if you're a parent in a store, you see E for everyone, what's the harm? You know, it's passed the necessary regulations to be marked for everyone.
00:03:38
Andrew Wilmot
it's it's It's funny, Anna is ah really, my my partner, she's really um keen on making sure that the content our kids consume, their age rating matches their age. And we frequently had the back and forth where yes, it's slightly older age rated than their age, but I haven't consumed that media myself, I think it's fine. And also the converse.
Monetization and Ethics in Gaming
00:04:01
Bdizzle
Yeah, definitely. And it's just ah a perfectly normal reaction because there's been a team of experts that's been set up, build out this regulatory framework in order to protect kids. And and as a by-proctor, this is just a fantastic example where we're just too slow moving. And in the case of FIFA...
00:04:23
Bdizzle
It's rated E for everyone, um but just like every single major and company. And again, we're talking billions of pounds, right? Teens of people um trying to basically extract the maximum amount of money from their target market. And as a surprise to absolutely no one, it's aggressively monetized with really horrific loot box gambling mechanics.
00:04:52
Bdizzle
And I'm sure we'll dig into this later on in this podcast. and But the reason why that is still a rated e for everyone is because they can get away with it because, you know, that they they have parental controls.
00:05:04
Bdizzle
You know, they...
00:05:04
Andrew Wilmot
And just just to jump in as well, when we talk about it being rated E for everyone, and the the body behind this is not a government body. It's a voluntary system that games companies sign up for.
00:05:16
Andrew Wilmot
And, you know, it's Peggy in Europe ah it was developed by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe. um It's a set of rules to which every publisher that uses the Peggy system is contractually committed.
00:05:30
Andrew Wilmot
But it is ultimately just a bunch companies agreeing things together.
00:05:35
Bdizzle
Yeah, correct. you know and And I guess I've got two points in regards to this. The first is um one of the ah capabilities or like the one of the things that you can do and one of the reasons why it's been given this rating is that you do have parental controls.
00:05:52
Bdizzle
And what I'd like to ask the audience is who here is aware of the parental controls on FIFA and has actually implemented them ah inside that that environment? And my expectation is it'd be incredibly low.
00:06:04
Bdizzle
you know, my expectation, i know for me personally, is I'd never even presume that me as a parent, if it's rated E for everyone, I've got to engage with it in a certain way.
00:06:15
Bdizzle
You know, and I find that quite jarring. That's the first point. And then my my second point is at what point does it become parody? So is are we we're we're on this train and we're hurtling towards a strange situation where in terms of history, where it's the equivalent of a group of big tobacco companies coming together.
00:06:36
Bdizzle
right And being like, oh, cigarettes are actually good for you when you've got cough. You know, like like if it carries on with this trend, that's the point that we'll end up in. And I i really do think that...
00:06:51
Bdizzle
um And my only principle the trend is that it's getting worse and being, I guess, more normalized. my I genuinely believe that it could escalate to the point where we do have that moment where we look back on these types of practices. And you talk about, well, a regulatory body. Well, they they were paid off.
00:07:08
Bdizzle
But they're they're that they're there to serve these big corporations, not for the public good. And I really do feel that FIFA as a video game fits inside that category.
00:07:21
Bdizzle
Because, ah again, it's it's so popular. So you're looking at ah being at the age of, let's say, seven or eight, and you can potentially play this game for a decade. And a decade's worth of time and being on slot machines is probably not a good thing.
00:07:36
Bdizzle
you know the difference between, let's say, smoking for a month, two months,
Rating Systems and Parental Controls
00:07:41
Bdizzle
ten years, ah versus having a cigarette on a night out. you know And it what scares me about this is that it's...
00:07:51
Bdizzle
It's almost like ah this this submarine ah factor that we're exposing children to that's regulated, or i put in quotation marks, by organizations that clearly are no longer fit for purpose because otherwise this game wouldn't be rated E for everyone or it would be very, very widely known.
00:08:10
Bdizzle
Well, well the I'm not sure if you have a viewpoint, Andrew, but you'd expect it for E to everyone. That means that you have to turn the parental controls off, not on maybe, yeah like common sense, kind of really easy accessible implementations, but none of them exist.
00:08:24
Bdizzle
And the byproduct is, is you get these really, really negative outcomes from from a huge swathe of the population.
00:08:24
Andrew Wilmot
yeah
00:08:31
Andrew Wilmot
Yeah, absolutely. And firstly, just to clarify one quick thing as well. um Our government, as well as most European governments, officially supports PEGI, so the the rating systems in this country, but isn't itself feeding that much into it.
00:08:50
Andrew Wilmot
So it's even worse than it just being, you know, companies checking their own homework. It's companies checking their own homework with our political backing. um I actually did take a take a brief look into the what what goes into the parental controls here.
00:09:09
Andrew Wilmot
And so there's three types of accounts, and this is why they get away with that everyone rating. And so they've got child accounts, which has the parental verification required,
00:09:20
Andrew Wilmot
No access to online play or social features. No spending involved whatsoever. Look, I can tell you for a fact from the conversations that I've had with other parents that this is just not being used because their kids are asking for the, i can't remember the name of the the FIFA currency, the EA Sports FC 25 points.
00:09:44
Andrew Wilmot
um I think it would i might even be separate points for the separate iterations of the game. So ah you get ah a new version of the game, you effectively start at square one with all the microtransactions that you've got. um Look, it's not being used.
00:09:57
Andrew Wilmot
These parental controls, they might exist in theory, but in practice, they're just not being used.
Exploitation Stories: Real-Life Impacts
00:10:02
Bdizzle
Correct. I just get this impression of like, let's all hold hands and walk off the cliff together. thank You know, um it's it it really is. It's a really strange time in history, I think, ah that that, you know, this is government sanctioned propaganda, really, you know.
00:10:21
Bdizzle
um And it's, it does personally really concern me, you know, so if
00:10:29
Andrew Wilmot
So in preparation of this episode, we we i mean, we we for every game that we talk about, we go away and play it, we make some notes, et cetera, et cetera.
00:10:40
Andrew Wilmot
But there's actually a wealth of posts online, a wealth of news stories about, well, FIFA addiction and the the consequences of it.
00:10:51
Andrew Wilmot
And I've got three posts here, two news articles, both of them on the BBC. We'll include these in the podcast description. And one really powerful, quite personal Reddit post explaining how this person quit their FIFA addiction, which is wild to talk about it in that sense as well.
00:11:10
Andrew Wilmot
um I'm go to start off first. So I've got, the kids emptied our bank account playing FIFA. Four children spent nearly 550 pounds in three weeks buying player packs to play the FIFA football video game online on the family's Nintendo Switch.
00:11:26
Andrew Wilmot
console. Just from that top thing, there's a few things you can instantly tell from One, player packs. They are talking about random packs where you don't know the players inside it.
00:11:37
Andrew Wilmot
um It is gambling, right? It's gambling, I suppose, in a similar sense as to buying perhaps Pokemon cards at the shop, well, booster packs.
00:11:49
Andrew Wilmot
The difference is it being digital, it being on a device that's linked to a card, a child who doesn't really understand. And also, you know, as we speak about a few times, the level of A-B b testing that goes into this and driving kids towards that outcome is infinitely more powerful than you'd ever get in a shop with a set of trading cards. Right. Anyway.
00:12:12
Andrew Wilmot
So just to be clear, they're talking about random packs that are being bought by children. This family, they've spent £550 in three weeks before the players noticed. So the children's father had bought them a single pack for around £8 and had not realised they had seen how he made the purchase.
00:12:31
Andrew Wilmot
I've said a couple of times, um I think Brandon, you agree with me on here, that if you are going to have these games available to your children, the red line is that in-game purchases. There's perhaps a few examples with older children where it's a little little better, but when they're that key age where they can sort of figure out how to do it without understanding the value of money, then it's just a dangerous.
00:12:57
Andrew Wilmot
right And the parent admits that he didn't take full precautions to limit access to his Nintendo account. He didn't use a un unique PIN number. The emailed receipts were sent to an old email address with a full inbox.
00:13:09
Andrew Wilmot
I think that's going to be so much more typical than you'd think. And they only realised what had happened when their card was declined elsewhere. um the The article makes a point of saying that ah the game is certified as suitable for players from the age of three.
00:13:26
Andrew Wilmot
All of his children were under the age of 10. They obviously feel very remorseful. They didn't understand the impact of what they're doing. And this is interesting here. So, and I touched on this earlier, that this is a paid game.
00:13:38
Andrew Wilmot
To quote this poor father, you pay £40 for the game, which is a lot of money in itself, but then the only way to get a great team is essentially by gambling. They spent £550 and they still never got their favourite player, Lionel Messi.
00:13:54
Bdizzle
Yeah, it's a quintessential story, Andrew.
00:13:54
Andrew Wilmot
So, yeah.
00:13:57
Bdizzle
It's so almost like they designed it to produce these types of reactions from people or something, you know.
00:14:03
Andrew Wilmot
This article was in 2019.
00:14:03
Bdizzle
Cri.
00:14:05
Andrew Wilmot
Everything has accelerated since. Everything.
00:14:08
Bdizzle
Yeah. um ah So I've got another article here, if you'd like me to run through this, Andrew.
00:14:14
Andrew Wilmot
Yeah, absolutely.
00:14:15
Bdizzle
um And I'm just going to read, like a a I guess, a selection of the inserts. ah But this is a relatively young man, ah but like an adult. So it's not just young kids. and It's it basically anyone. you It's like rolling a dice in terms of genetic perceptibility and your life situation.
00:14:33
Bdizzle
um And while you were speaking, Andrew, I had a quick glance and I just felt my heart basically sink say to my shoes because it's, you can almost, even through this one person's experience of FIFA, you can very clearly see how it was designed to elicit these types of behaviors, right?
00:14:51
Bdizzle
ah So the article goes, I distinctly remember back in 2012 when I first asked my parents if I could use my money to buy packs and my frustration when my dad said the packs were gambling before finally agreeing, which is ah switched on dad. At least, you know, he's aware.
00:15:08
Bdizzle
and But I think that's a good idea.
00:15:09
Andrew Wilmot
But but then then he gave in. He gave in to that pressure from his children, which is something I think a lot of our listeners can empathize with.
00:15:16
Bdizzle
Exactly, and that's what makes this story just so harrowing. The idea that it was gambling seemed ridiculous to me at the time. I understood that the chances of packing my favourite players were low.
00:15:27
Bdizzle
I spent the money, opened the packs, and got lucky a couple of times, and I tried to be positive despite being left feeling slightly underwhelmed. If I could just spend another 15 pounds, I thought.
00:15:39
Bdizzle
And that's a really important sentence because the probabilities in these packs are designed to almost give you, they call it like a near miss effect where you did okay, but not as well as you want. And then as a by-product of that,
00:15:53
Bdizzle
you want to buy more, right? So they're not designing it so that you feel ah like ah that that you you got your money's worth. They're designing it so you you you nearly got your money's worth. And maybe if you did it again, you'd get luckier.
00:16:07
Bdizzle
This is something that's like very, very well known in gambling, very, very well known in literature.
00:16:12
Andrew Wilmot
I don't um make a habit of buying scratch cards, but on the handful of occasions that I've received one as a gift, I've noticed exactly that, right? Where you're like, oh, you're just one close number combination away from winning a big prize.
00:16:24
Bdizzle
ah
00:16:27
Bdizzle
it Exactly. And what it does is it cognitively softens the loss. And as a byproduct of that, you're more inclined to go again. um and And it is, I can't stress this enough, teams of people, people that are very, very good at running the numbers have designed these systems to do exactly that.
00:16:46
Bdizzle
Four years followed of spending more and more money on player packs, each time seeking that buzz that would only occasionally come. As time went on, I was becoming increasingly secretive about it.
00:16:58
Bdizzle
I would buy a voucher from a high street shop and hide it in my room so my parents wouldn't find out how much I was spending. And this is another kind of scary thing about how addiction works.
00:17:09
Bdizzle
So unfortunately, I live with ah um my grandmother was an alcoholic. and um i'm i' She lived with us for a stage and one of the things that she would do is like hide liquor bottles. right and So it's like something that's universal to addictive behaviors that are spiraling out of control.
00:17:27
Bdizzle
And it's really sad that this young 17-year-old gentleman I'm a bit favorable, but arguably in a lot of ways, through no fault of his own. Who's going to win? Like a 17-year-old kid who's learning about the world or large teams of psychologists, of data scientists, basically trying to enlist this response from people.
00:17:50
Bdizzle
At the time, I had nothing else I'd rather spend my money on. I thought each time that this would be the one where I got lucky. When I was 17, I got my first debit card and i said and suddenly the decision to spend money on the game became instant, just a click of a button away.
00:18:04
Bdizzle
And this is another technique where the reason why Amazon so successful is like two main things. One, next day delivery and two, buy now. but That button. Something that's very, very well known in terms of user experience is the amount of ah clicks required to do a task reduces your likelihood to do something.
00:18:22
Bdizzle
So they design it in the most streamlined way possible in order to increase purchase retention. um And if you want a real life example of that, try to refund a ah a train ticket and you've got a click like 15, 16 times on different parts of the website and you can feel your motivation going down.
00:18:41
Bdizzle
2017 was the year that changed everything in my life. Back to the story. ah was completing my last year of A-levels with vague plans to go to university. In September, my mum was diagnosed with cancer.
00:18:53
Bdizzle
And this is what's so cruel about these systems is that they they can take people that are vulnerable um and basically almost abuse that. Everything became about waiting until it would all just be a memory, waiting until the day that my mum's treatment would be over, when I'd have finished my exams and we could all appreciate the normal life again.
00:19:14
Bdizzle
I searched for any way to cope. The buzz of opening packs offered me an escape.
00:19:20
Bdizzle
Any rational sense of moderation and the value of money that my parents and grandparents had saved for my future began to subside. You become, you're in this moment of stress, you become short-term orientated.
00:19:32
Bdizzle
I felt like I needed the money now to cope and that in years to come my future self would somehow understand. was spending 30 pounds at a time, then 40 pounds and then 50 pounds.
00:19:43
Bdizzle
By the time my card began to block my transactions, I was throwing £80 into the game four or five times a night. And that just goes, the monetary spend goes to show how deep the claws of this system has this young gentleman.
00:20:01
Bdizzle
But also, it's designed to do that to people.
00:20:04
Andrew Wilmot
Yeah, the the fact that it's gradually escalating as well.
00:20:04
Bdizzle
And it's everywhere. Exactly. Well, the the the monetary system within these games is designed to enlist that exact response to people. And if to the listeners at home that maybe have their doubts, think about an iPad that you buy.
00:20:20
Bdizzle
So you you buy, like let's say, the basic iPad and it has a certain amount of RAM, certain amount of memory, certain amount of features, and you'll get up-selled. Well, maybe you need a little bit more space. You wanna take photos and you go, okay, I'm gonna i'm going to purchase these elements.
00:20:35
Bdizzle
um And what you find is is, once you've purchased those elements, you go, well, I'm only 50 pounds away from the better iPad, the more the more recent iPad. So then you can potentially buy the most recent iPad because you might as well because you're spending, you've committed to that amount of money anyway.
00:20:53
Bdizzle
But also it would be really nice to have that extra memory memory on the the slightly better iPad and it escalates that way. these systems are designed in the exact same way for this escalating pattern of use.
00:21:06
Bdizzle
um I'll quickly finish this story because ah like ah my heart goes out for for this young man. And you know it seems to be incredibly bright in terms of the way he's written this.
00:21:17
Bdizzle
A few weeks before my exams, after days of watching people open packs on YouTube while my parents thought I was upstairs revising. Great, like, because this is not just a monetary problem. It can reach into your life and stop you from doing tasks that you should be doing.
00:21:33
Andrew Wilmot
I mean, he's he's he's watching, and not just that, he's watching videos of people doing that same activity. I've seen a few times um like kids being drawn to watching videos of people playing with toys on YouTube.
00:21:48
Andrew Wilmot
I've always found that strange. But I suppose it's you know somehow tickling the same bits of their brain.
00:21:54
Bdizzle
ah Well, exactly. Well, it reflects that kind of immediate gratification cycle. You can kind of have that enjoyment by proxy. And again, it kind of really does put this increasing pressure around just time exposure, you know, because not only are you finding money to to do this yourself, but in your spare time, once it's got its claws into you, you you've basically ah digs into a larger and larger portion of your life.
00:22:19
Bdizzle
um A few weeks before my exams, after days watching opening packs, as we discussed, ah the money ran out. Money that my parents and grandparents had worked for, that had been given to me as savings for my future.
00:22:31
Bdizzle
I had blown almost £3,000.
00:22:35
Bdizzle
I accept full responsibility for what happened. The decisions I made to spend that money were made by me.
Addiction's Long-Term Effects
00:22:41
Bdizzle
My parents were heartbroken when they found out and read through the bank statements. I'll stop there, and but I've got so much empathy for this young man because I'd like to reiterate, um you know, ah who who will win?
00:22:55
Bdizzle
A young man going through an incredibly troubled time without the the the normal, ah I guess, cultural norms around the dangers of these types of platforms.
00:23:07
Bdizzle
He would probably be wise enough, as especially with the way he's written this, to be like, I'm going through a tough time. I should probably not be drinking alone, and I shouldn't walk into the local bookies or gambling shop.
00:23:20
Bdizzle
But...
00:23:20
Andrew Wilmot
It's wild you talk about that because he he mentions that they had family rules with restrictions on gaming time. They had that parental regulation. they he He was telling his concerned parents that he wasn't addicted to video games themselves, which was, I suppose, true, right?
00:23:38
Andrew Wilmot
So we we've got this very one-dimensional view of problematic gaming as somebody sat in a room for 12 hours a day, ah seven days a week. And I, yeah, it can look like that, but clearly there are games out there which are targeted, aimed at, you know, include very young children that are effectively just funnels for gambling.
00:24:05
Bdizzle
Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Andrew. um The longer we do this podcast, it becomes so apparent to me. This is
00:24:14
Bdizzle
um this is a um turns out, ah you know, calling back to my my previous example, this will be as ah is as violent as realizing that cigarette cigarettes are carcinogenic.
00:24:28
Bdizzle
Because the cruel thing about these mechanisms is and cancers and illnesses rob you later in life. And these mechanisms have the potential to rob you throughout the entirety of your life.
00:24:44
Bdizzle
And the fact that they're not thought about critically, they've been allowed to get away and market themselves to ah the users in the way that they do. I really think that history will show that this is a very, very strange time when it comes to, um I guess, regulation in this space.
00:25:05
Andrew Wilmot
So on that note, I've got one final story that we thought we'd go through, and that is the how I quit my FIFA addiction. So this is on the 25-year-old on Reddit, and as mentioned before, all of these links will be included in the podcast episode description.
00:25:22
Andrew Wilmot
So he's 25, he's played FIFA since 2007, so, you know, quick maths there, that's what... He's played FIFA since he was about...
00:25:36
Andrew Wilmot
Eight, nine? Younger? um Anyway, so he says he spent thousands of hours on this rubbish. It used to have a real hold on me. I skipped parties to trade, spent birthday money on points long after many of my friends had moved on.
00:25:51
Andrew Wilmot
ah was good enough at school that na never raised any flags, was able to play unbothered for years.
00:25:59
Andrew Wilmot
Somewhere along the line, that, which he's referring to the enjoyment he had in the game, changed, though. They realized the most profitable route was a power curve that made your team from four weeks ago completely redundant.
00:26:12
Andrew Wilmot
ah For listeners who might be a little bit confused by what that means, ah he's effectively saying you have to keep buying new players. And of course, you don't directly buy new players. You buy packs to get those players. So there's that gambling element to it ah to be able to stay competitive in the game.
00:26:28
Andrew Wilmot
ah Further, to get the best new players you had to either already be at the top of the curve or spend time and money to grind your way there.
00:26:36
Andrew Wilmot
Stopping playing for even a month essentially guarantees all the time you spent on the game thus far was wasted. So the converted to comma's logical decision is to keep up with the curve. However, the truly logical decision at every step is to quit.
00:26:50
Andrew Wilmot
But this game has spent a better part of a decade refining itself to perfectly harness and exploit every dopamine mechanism we have. Gambling, visual progress, a love of football, the thrill of victory and the determination in defeat.
00:27:04
Andrew Wilmot
So, yeah, ah what he's talking about here is an acknowledgement that this isn't just... a normal game with normal side effects and playing it too much.
00:27:18
Andrew Wilmot
He has been subject to, as he put it, a decade of it refining itself to perfectly harness and exploit every dopamine mechanism we have. He goes on to talk a little bit more about how he got out of it. um So he realised the best times play FIFA were at release.
00:27:35
Andrew Wilmot
um And though at 21, 22 and 23, he bought the game at release, played it for 16 straight hours, and practically throughout the week. um One year, he just missed that day as he was travelling.
00:27:47
Andrew Wilmot
So he waited until it was free on the PS Store in July. He'd get to play before the sweats had figured out the meta. Meta refers to ah you know what's viable in-game, what's the best strategies, what's the best team.
00:28:01
Andrew Wilmot
And he got to use all his favourite players in August. and Anyway, so he's basically saying he ended up with the same team at the end without having... wasted a year's worth of free time and all the money along with that.
00:28:14
Andrew Wilmot
And he he leaves with this. If you feel like this game negatively affects your life, please know that you're not alone. It should be regulated, but it won't be.
00:28:25
Andrew Wilmot
I hope this helps someone. Feel free to reach out. So we've got somebody who's spent, you know, decade and a half on this game.
00:28:29
Bdizzle
you
00:28:34
Andrew Wilmot
God knows how much money. writing a post about how we quit it the same way you might read posts about people quitting drugs or alcohol.
00:28:45
Bdizzle
Yeah, well, it says it we have our almost that this presumption that there's a blurred line between, let's say, ah taking substances and things that are behavioral, like gambling or these types of things. But ultimately, in terms of ah neurochemistry, it's the exact same thing. At the end of the day, all all boils down to reward networks and the strength of these circuits over a period of time.
00:29:10
Bdizzle
And strength of these circuits over a period of time when you're talking about 15 years, 10 years, you know, it's ah you know it's it it saddens me, Andrew. and mu I can feel my heart sink every time we read one of these articles because they're their real people.
00:29:31
Bdizzle
And they're ultimately let down. And they're so disenchanted in the case of this article that that he believes that they'll never be regulated. And that there's something so disheartening about that. And I think that society's full stop around the world can just do better to protect people.
00:29:49
Bdizzle
kids or at least create structures that and enable these systems to exist in safe ways so you know and and it's kind of sad seeing almost the lack like tenable
Future Implications of Gaming Addiction
00:30:00
Bdizzle
behavior to actually really impact that as a problem as it continually gets worse because if we don't act now we'll have ah another generation or um an increased likelihood of these stories being all over the news
00:30:18
Andrew Wilmot
To be really explicit with this, if you have a child and they are in school, a number of their peers, a number of their classmates will be playing FIFA.
00:30:29
Andrew Wilmot
And a subsection of those will be get be spending their pocket money on player packs. So every single listener who's who's got children, which is the vast majority of our audience,
00:30:45
Andrew Wilmot
has peers who are gambling from a very young age. Every single one of you.
00:30:51
Bdizzle
and and And just just a to build on that, Andrew, was something I will stake my career on, and I'm very conscientious of the internet it stuff exists on there for a long time, but ah in the next 10, 15 years, there will be a study, a longitudinal study that looks at ah FIFA or the engagement in these types of loot box environments and tracks average salary,
00:31:18
Bdizzle
educational achievement and the ability to stay in like a long-term sustained relationship and i guarantee you that all of these very very important aspects of people's lives will be negatively affected by the amount of time they spend in these environments and i really would uh stake my career on that that's a hill that i would die on in terms of an expectation
00:31:40
Andrew Wilmot
So that's actually a really convenient segue because we we've bit we spent ages talking about this. This is a big topic and it's a big game and it's it's a bad one. I'd love to go back to talking about some of the positives of video games because, God, this gets depressing.
00:31:55
Andrew Wilmot
ah But I've got a question for yourself, Brandon. It's coming from Angie. and that is So it is specifically directed at you and that is, what was it that first got you as a psychologist involved?
00:32:07
Andrew Wilmot
concerned about the way children play video games.
00:32:11
Bdizzle
That's a great question. um So i'm happy i'm i wouldn't play video games. I didn't i grew up with them. um And as a byproduct of that, I used to look at some of the negative media coverage, like almost like ah The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
00:32:29
Bdizzle
I thought it was another version of Footloose, right? So you're not allowed to dance. Dancing is bad, but dancing is harmless. enables people to have a lot of fun. You know, we had similar concerns about every type of new media, radio, television, don't look at that TV for too long, it will affect your vision. You know, we all heard that growing up.
00:32:49
Bdizzle
So I kind of washed off a lot of the negative sentiment around video games because also me personally, and a although we are very negative on this podcast, Andrew, about video games, but I think video games can be and are in certain scenarios an incredible force for good.
00:33:08
Bdizzle
crazy amount of ah potential for personal development, creativity, ah communication, building these really lifelong, meaningful relationships. And video games can do that.
00:33:21
Bdizzle
And the ah moment I started to worry was when I started working in consumer research. I so i was part of the a cog in the machine that helps develop products. And what you realize there is that there are large teams of exceptionally talented, well-paid people, and their only function is to really break down key drivers of things like attention, product liking, lifetime customer value.
00:33:48
Bdizzle
And that's all fine when you're buying, let's say, shampoo. The moment that you have, let's say, a content creator on YouTube or a massive conglomerate company and their target market is eight-year-olds, and then you're like, okay, well, are they creating, let's say, the most fun toy and that they've ever engaged with? And the answer is, yes, they are.
00:34:11
Bdizzle
But the way that they're doing it is through aggressive monetization of immediate gratification, through gambling networks that we know are incredibly harmful.
00:34:24
Bdizzle
You can't use an argument in terms of, let's say, free will and power choice when you're your target audience is an eight-year-old. And i think seeing, being a cog in that kind of broader machine to produce those types of outcomes I really opened my eyes to how innately almost evil a lot of these mechanisms are. and The moment that you start applying it to young children, and that was the real eye opener to me. And, you know, why why I'm here with you, Andrew, is because it's an easy sell for me.
00:35:01
Bdizzle
and Because I think that we as a society need to have an increasing understanding that ah from the adverts that we see on television to the the video games we put in front of our children, they're designed to basically try to take either as much of your money as possible or most of the time in terms of the priority driver is just as much time as humanly possible because that opens the door to that money as well.
00:35:31
Bdizzle
It's an attention economy and we're up against large teams of exceptionally bright people. and And that that's really what produced that concern ah from me.
00:35:46
Andrew Wilmot
it's It's funny. I remember decade ago when the first sort of conversations around loot box regulation were happening, saying something to the effect of, well, if you don't like it, just don't start it then. Because, you know, I've been a gamer for years and I've never had an issue with loot boxes. It's easy peasy.
00:36:05
Andrew Wilmot
um But seeing that 10 years down the line, it's it's difficult to get away from the sheer amount of damage that's being caused.
Closing Thoughts and Next Episode Preview
00:36:16
Andrew Wilmot
But that is all we've got time for today.
00:36:20
Andrew Wilmot
was absolutely brilliant to, it's good to have your back, Brandon. It's actually been a couple of weeks.
00:36:26
Bdizzle
Oh, thank you. It's been great to be back.
00:36:27
Andrew Wilmot
It's,
00:36:28
Bdizzle
what if Hopefully we can have a more positive conversation next time.
00:36:34
Andrew Wilmot
Well, I certainly hope so. So don't forget that if you've got some kind questions for us or if you or your children have been impacted by the issues we've discussed today, that you can get in touch with us on our website, thedopamineslockmachine.co.uk or find us on the Dopamine Slot Machine Discussion Corner Facebook group.
00:36:50
Andrew Wilmot
All links can be found in artist profile and we'd love to hear from you. That's all we have time for today. Thank you so much for joining us and would love to have you join us in next week's episode where we're going to be covering Mario Kart.
00:37:03
Andrew Wilmot
I think that's going to be a very good time considering a new Mario Kart is expected with the Switch 2 in only about a month now, I believe. So let's get that out before the new version.
00:37:14
Andrew Wilmot
This has been the Dopamine Slot Machine. Thank you and see you soon.