For my critical play, I decided to play poker. The origins of the game are unclear, but the Texas Hold’em version consists of being dealt two cards and then five cards are dealt in a staged succession onto the table. Different card combinations are worth more, and you try to use chance, statistics, and psychology to beat the other players in betting on yourself having the best hand. The target audience is anyone who likes card games and likes to gamble money, although the poker field is definitely skewed very much towards the male audience.
Poker is addictive for a few reasons:
- It’s very fast-paced with rapid wins and losses.
- It’s a game played with money, which always ups the stakes
- There’s a mix of randomness/chance with actual skill and statistics, and trying to “play” the other players gives a sense of being in control, even when most people probably aren’t
- There is room to get better at the game, which makes people feel like they have an opportunity to make money if they just keep playing.
Specifically talking about the randomness, I think it contributes to addiction for a couple reasons. The first is that you’re given your random hand at the start of every game, and this gives players a sense of “Am I dealt a good hand or a bad hand?” which even though it’s random makes you feel a thrill even before you win or lose. Secondly, the randomness contributes to a sense that you can beat anyone, even someone who is really good at poker. If I’m playing basketball against LeBron, I’m never going to have a feeling that I can win but poker is different. This randomness is also different from other games that have chance/randomness because even though the cards dealt are random, there is still an aspect of skill to it, unlike a game of Chutes and Ladders. This is actually more addicting than if it was completely random because most people, or at least most adults, realize pretty quickly that there’s no way to get better at Chutes and Ladders.
Personally, I can’t think of any scenario where it’s morally impermissible to use chance or randomness in a game. However, I do think that it’s important for people to be aware of what the odds are. I wish people playing poker had better understandings of statistics and knew just how much chance goes into the game. That being said, I do think people have the right to play these games and can make the decision on their own whether they want to play. Additionally, I don’t think that having an understanding of statistics necessarily will make you less addicted. I think plenty of very smart people or very well educated people are addicted to these games, and even though addiction isn’t necessarily a choice, I also don’t know if that means that the game shouldn’t exist.
I think the one exception to my take on this is that if a game is pure chance, it’s morally reprehensible to market it in any other way. I think people have a warped understanding of games like slots or other games of chance and this is really problematic.
Lastly, when I was playing poker on the online interface, I ended up spending way more time than I’d initially planned to, and was completely enraptured by the game until I realized how much time had passed.
