To start off, this isn't about addicted gambling. This is about the stages before that, when gambling isn't yet a miserable money hole that destroys your life.
Syl is looking at the potential overlap between gambling and buying lockbox keys from cash shops, presumably since both involve throwing money into a random system and hoping to get something good. Oddly, she uses the term "random drops" yet talks about lockboxes rather than actual drops. I'll talk about both. And gambling.
Let's start with those lockboxes. They're stupid and annoying. They drop and say:
I might have something good
but you can't look
Drop a coin in the key slot
and I'll unlock
I hate when inanimate objects try to do poetry. I also hate handing over bits of money for nothing in return. I don't mind buying things, such as food and beer. I hand over bits of money and I get something in return, such as deliciousness and drunkenness. Maybe this means I hate gambling. Yet I play poker sometimes, not because I come out ahead very often, but because it's fun. I can find no fun in lockboxes.
Moving on to random drops: I like virtual violence. Real violence is bad and makes me angry, but virtual violence is, if anything, in too short of a supply. Travel time? Could be more violent. Loading screens? Violent cutscenes. Combat? Bigger guns, or guns if the game lacks them.
In keeping with this love of virtual violence, I don't mind random drops too much. To some extent they hit the same "I might or might not be useful" nerve that angers me with lockboxes, but to compensate, they're usually violent and take time rather than money. If I'm gaming, I have time, or I'd not be gaming.
Finally there is gambling in casinos. It's not simply a matter of putting in some money and most likely getting nothing back. It's an experience! There are TV ads making it look fun. Billboards and radio spots to hype it up. And of course everyone is either winning or about to win, while surrounded by smoking hot babes who will totally want to do you when you win. Or they're prostitutes that you bought with your winnings. Or if the ad is supposed to appeal to women, then the central person is a smoking hot babe on the verge of winning, but surrounded by hot women still. It's rather appealing since if women win they don't get only 78% of the winnings.
Anyway, the point to take away, beside the sexism inherent in most advertising, is that casinos are fun exciting experiences. In that regard they're not like the dull risk lockboxes, but like the thrilling violence of random drops. Except instead of violence it's cheering, dice, and sex. Win or lose, you're going to get lucky, is the message.
Syl is looking at the potential overlap between gambling and buying lockbox keys from cash shops, presumably since both involve throwing money into a random system and hoping to get something good. Oddly, she uses the term "random drops" yet talks about lockboxes rather than actual drops. I'll talk about both. And gambling.
Let's start with those lockboxes. They're stupid and annoying. They drop and say:
I might have something good
but you can't look
Drop a coin in the key slot
and I'll unlock
I hate when inanimate objects try to do poetry. I also hate handing over bits of money for nothing in return. I don't mind buying things, such as food and beer. I hand over bits of money and I get something in return, such as deliciousness and drunkenness. Maybe this means I hate gambling. Yet I play poker sometimes, not because I come out ahead very often, but because it's fun. I can find no fun in lockboxes.
Moving on to random drops: I like virtual violence. Real violence is bad and makes me angry, but virtual violence is, if anything, in too short of a supply. Travel time? Could be more violent. Loading screens? Violent cutscenes. Combat? Bigger guns, or guns if the game lacks them.
In keeping with this love of virtual violence, I don't mind random drops too much. To some extent they hit the same "I might or might not be useful" nerve that angers me with lockboxes, but to compensate, they're usually violent and take time rather than money. If I'm gaming, I have time, or I'd not be gaming.
Finally there is gambling in casinos. It's not simply a matter of putting in some money and most likely getting nothing back. It's an experience! There are TV ads making it look fun. Billboards and radio spots to hype it up. And of course everyone is either winning or about to win, while surrounded by smoking hot babes who will totally want to do you when you win. Or they're prostitutes that you bought with your winnings. Or if the ad is supposed to appeal to women, then the central person is a smoking hot babe on the verge of winning, but surrounded by hot women still. It's rather appealing since if women win they don't get only 78% of the winnings.
Anyway, the point to take away, beside the sexism inherent in most advertising, is that casinos are fun exciting experiences. In that regard they're not like the dull risk lockboxes, but like the thrilling violence of random drops. Except instead of violence it's cheering, dice, and sex. Win or lose, you're going to get lucky, is the message.
1 comments:
I agree it's an experience - or as I called it a complex game. Card games especially are also about the whole social mindgame.
And I call them random as in boxes with random rewards. Although the boxes too are random drops heh....whatever ;)
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