High end restaurants don't use casino-style tricks (random rewards or non-rewards) to get you hooked.
Put another way, I'm reasonably sure that gambling addiction support groups outnumber fine dining addiction support groups by a few orders of magnitude.
My theory is Dominos has figured out that online orders are much more efficient to take than phone orders. As such they are doing everything they can to nudge people to order online. So no I don't think it's to get people hooked on Domino's pizza because of a roulette you can play when you order, I think it's a "nudge" to get you to order online.
Regular Joe wants to order a pizza and goes to call Dominos, when he looks up the number he sees the promotion but only if he orders online. Even though Regular Joe usually orders over the phone, he orders online this time, even winning some breadsticks for his trouble. Regular Joe now orders online whenever he gets Dominos.
Not much different than the Phone then. I can assure you there are at least a few dozen people who buy Domino's once a day thanks to this promotion.
You can enter simply by mailing a self-addressed stamped envelope to Kalamazoo and waiting two weeks, it's just as easy as ordering a pizza online.
Certainly if everyone became tee total the restaurants could not afford to stay open at the prices they charge for food alone.
Source: my brother spent 20 years in fine dining up to executive chef levels.
* pharmaceuticals
* alcohol
* soft drinks
* tobacco
* fashion
* media (film, tv, publishers like Buzzfeed, People, etc.)
* half the useless shit I buy on Amazon
Regardless, people spending this much money are likely old enough to choose to gamble (or stealing their money, which is a different issue altogether). So I'm as concerned for them as any other gambler/alcoholic. Wish them the best but I don't care to bring the government in and regulate everyone's behaviors (My country historically tried and failed with alcohol. And is slowly losing similar efforts with drugs).
Microtransactions give the brain the same chemicals but without the possibility of a cash payout and are engineered to take as much money from the user using techniques casinos don’t have access to because they exist in a physical space and not digitally inside a mobile phone without having to offer cash payouts for winners.
well, it wouldn't be very undergrounds if you saw it, no? I have little doubt that they exist, even if I cannot prove it. Underground betting rings is almost a cliche in modern media.
>Microtransactions give the brain the same chemicals but without the possibility of a cash payout
no, games do that (outside of like, Steam Marketplace where you can apparently sell digital items yourself. So the money traded IS the rush). MTX are a monetization taking advantadge of that dopamine rush. And nowhere close to the first one.
nit - playing poker against other people isn't gambling, it's a game of skill. Much like chess, if you're better, you win and can earn a living. No one earns a living playing roulette.
Gamers spent huge amount of money on Steam and were even proud of it. There was whole.vulture of "Inpaid more for games I am better then you" as dumb as it sound.
And there are the people who hate mobile games the most.
It's an interesting quandary. one person paying thousands for games for "clout" despite never playing 90+% of them (almost exclusively digital, so of no resale value compared to collecting physical copies), vs. one person paying thousands for a few single games they likely play way too much.
"We live in a society"
And people's behaviour is a function of their environment: blaming "personal responsibility" and leaving it-at-that is a position taken out of either ignorance of how society and complex-systems operate, or out of callous disregard and suggests you lack empathy.
It is indeed lack of empathy. 2 years ago I didn't even HAVE $450. Let alone $450 to spend on any gaming whatsoever, regardless of ethical pricing. These are premium entertainment, not some base good nor even a (IMO unethical) attempt to promise riches like a lottery/high APR credit card/high interest loan/gambling. There is no premise that you'll be making your money back unless you're trying to flip a free mobile game account (which is against pretty much every services' TOS, if you want to get legal about it).
So again, best of luck improving themselves. Addiction is rough and it's not easy at all getting out of it. But people spend hundreds recklessly on so many items, legal and not. Or on items that are long term detrimental to our health (e.g. fast food, cigarettes, alcohol).
I don't think they should all be left to the governemt to decide. Because historically that hasn't stopped the actual addicts (given that I know/knew several friends on already illegal drugs). At some point you need intervention of self and close loved ones. Making all mobile game MTX illegal won't solve these people's problems
We all live in a society, but that doesn't mean we all have to agree about everything, or even that we're all on the same team. To me it just means we're willing to co-exist peacefully, and resolve disputes via due process. From there I really don't think I have the right to tell others how to spend their money, or whether or to whom to sell their kidneys.