Sublime

If Loss Aversion is such a big deal, how do casinos encourage people to play games in which they’re mathematically certain to lose money? Casinos win by abstracting the loss. Instead of having players gamble with currency, which is perceived as valuable, the casino converts currency into chips or debit cards, which don’t feel as valuable. As the pl

(Play itself Friedman describes as “open,” “undifferentiated,” “boundless,” “extensive,” and “never-ending”—precisely the phenomenological characteristics he strives to minimize within the gambling environment.

Inviting the player to voluntarily configure his own game and thereby giving him “complete control” would neutralize his fear of being controlled, Elsasser suggested. Instead of risking that the “rat people” become aware of the box, this logic goes, let the rats design their own Skinner box. Sylvie Linard, chief operating officer of Cyberview, reit

Sound, when properly configured, “can actually energize the player, keep him there longer,”

neurobiological traps, that the more he played Elfscape the more his brain was unable to compute any but the most short-term and proximate goals, which happened to be the goals of Elfscape itself—the

In their struggle for more and more doses of this drug, the users develop a virtual presence at the expense of their presence in the real world. Society has not yet developed a code of Internet hygiene to control such risks.