Gaming and online gambling: are they the same?

Gaming and online gambling: are they the same?

Recently on BBC Radio, two researchers and experts in the online gaming world talked about how often the concepts of gaming and gambling overlap.

Slots, betting, poker, roulette are the concepts known to everyone. But not everyone knows what loot boxes and skin online gambling are.

Statistics say that over the past year, almost forty percent of children from eleven to sixteen years old have played at least one game of chance (thanks to loot boxes). Of these adolescents, about twenty-five percent are gambling: they make bets or play on one-armed bandits (pokies online into which you need to put money for a game) in virtual casino club. Even if we do not take into account that online gambling is prohibited in most countries, adolescents are not allowed to play even in its permitted forms until the age of majority. However, they often find gambling on the Internet, and take money from their parents or use their bank card details without permission. So how do they do it and in which online gambling games?

Play with real money in gambling games

Loot boxes

A loot box is a case or box with an “in-game treasure”. They can often be encountered in online games. To open such a virtual box, you need to pay real money. There may be a very useful thing inside it (for example, some kind of weapon that a character can use in the game and increase his attack level or visual style of the in-game hero model), or there may be trash item that no one cares about. Thus, opening loot boxes is always a risky business. However, statistics show that more than thirty percent of children under the age of sixteen have opened such boxes in video and PC games.

What parents can do?

Since opening loot boxes is the same gambling activity as playing roulette, children should be restricted from it. Parents can enable restrictions on the computer from which the teenager enters online games. These restrictions will not allow him to use their bank card details to pay for online gambling games services.

Loot boxes are not everywhere. Most of them are found in mobile games. Game creators make money on this since the most of the mobile games are “free to play”, users still spend money to buy additional items in the game. The most obvious example is the famous FIFA soccer simulator from EA Sports.

There, the developers offer to purchase a whole “set” of football players for an additional fee. But the composition of this set is unknown: it can contain both real soccer stars with high ratings and skills, as well as ordinary, unknown, soccer players.

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
Gaming and online gambling: are they the same?, 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating
Ibuki


Aspiring ninja.

1 Comment

  1. […] casino games are super fun, the same way that classical gambling is fun. Also, online casinos are even better when you’re winning often. […]

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.