
Addiction by Design

The value of money reasserts itself precisely because money in its conventional, real-world state remains the underlying means of access to the zone.
Natasha Dow Schüll • Addiction by Design
Although the elements of choice making and skill might seem at odds with the dissociative flow of the zone, in fact they heighten players’ absorption by turning the passive expectancy of the traditional slot experience into a compelling, interactive involvement
Natasha Dow Schüll • Addiction by Design
With the introduction and development of a game whose mode of reinforcement—and thus profit—relied on minor but continuous rewards rather than on significant but sporadic rewards, a new gambler profile was taking center stage in the experience of gambling addiction. This profile embodied, in extreme form, the broader market’s gravitation from actio
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Multiline video slots’ subtle yet radical innovation is precisely their capacity to make losses appear to gamblers as wins, such that players experience the reinforcement of winning even as they steadily lose. “Positive reinforcement hides loss,” a designer at Silicon Gaming explained to me. Compounding this reinforcement are the ambient and sensor
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Sound, when properly configured, “can actually energize the player, keep him there longer,”
Natasha Dow Schüll • Addiction by Design
Immediacy, exactness, consistency of response: the near perfect matching of player stimulus and game response in machine gambling might be understood as an instance of “perfect contingency,” a concept developed in the literature on child development to describe a situation of complete alignment between a given action and the external response to th
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It’s not about winning, it’s about continuing to play.”
Natasha Dow Schüll • Addiction by Design
spent, and money spent in retail spaces are all highly
Natasha Dow Schüll • Addiction by Design
(Play itself Friedman describes as “open,” “undifferentiated,” “boundless,” “extensive,” and “never-ending”—precisely the phenomenological characteristics he strives to minimize within the gambling environment.