I was actually just in Las Vegas working for American Ninja Warrior and witnessed the capital of gambling. I talked to one ninja who hit the casino every day before going to set: he loved playing slots and described himself as a “lucky guy”. I read about a study in the book “Authentic Happiness” that found people tend to attribute success to their personal attributes and failure to their circumstances, even when they are in situations where they have no real control over the outcome. People with depression were the exception; these participants reported feeling like they had no control when in either the success or failure condition. Even still, people with depression are more likely to develop a gambling addiction, likely due to the suspension of belief described in the article. Players will intentionally “turn off” any knowledge of the internal mechanism, and let themselves be drawn into the experience, caught in the excitement of chance.
For this week, I revisited a few games of chance from Webkinz that I remember loving as a kid. The wheel of wow, gem hunting, and going to the wishing well all deliver prizes similar to the mechanics of a typical slot machine, with the wishing well being the most similar. The wishing well even uses pictures of fruit, similar to the slot machines of the depression era that tried to disguise themselves as gum dispensers.
While webkinz world does have players with their own stock of “kinz-cash” which could be used to allow players to gamble away their money, they opted to limit the number of wishes to 5- per day, likely to discourage children from developing gambling addictions. I would certainly log onto webkinz for the chance to play these games daily, but appreicate the kid-friendly set up and limitations. If we didn’t have to contend with a capitalist system seeking to prey on people’s weaknesses and take their money, I could imagine similar attempts to create daily gambling limits for people, so they wouldn’t have the oppotunity to be consumed.
I did notice many “near-misses” that seemed to be disproportionately common in this game, as seen with the oranges that just barely didn’t line up, adding to the excitement that you may one day get a huge pay-out and should return daily for another 5 wishes!
