in ,

How Gambling Games Offer Clues to the Culture of an Area

how-gambling-games-offer-clues-to-the-culture-of-an-area

Roger Caillois says that playing games is “an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money.”

In his book, Man, Play, and Games, Caillois goes on to explain how these games are an important piece to consider when evaluation a culture’s social and spiritual growth.

In the United States, gambling games are more popular than any other games besides sports. And even sports are gambled on. Video games are big and popular, too, but they don’t generate the kind of money that gambling machines do.

In fact, most gambling machines are just video games now, too.

In this post, I’ll offer some observations about what gambling games in the United States say about the culture in general.

What’s the Point of Gambling for Most Americans?

Games – especially gambling games – work along a continuum of someone trying to assert his will versus surrendering his fate to the vagaries of random chance. A game like chess is a straight-up contest of skill, for example, while a slot machine is a straight-up contest of random chance.

Many gambling games offer both. Poker, for example, is a game that rewards skillful play in the long run, but in the short term, anyone can get lucky and win a big pot or even an entire session.

One reason Americans might enjoy gambling is that they provide an opportunity to demonstrate their resilience in the face of uncertainty. Engaging in a contest with Lady Luck provides a respite from the Kafkaesque experience of working in corporate America and dealing with bureaucracy on a constant basis.

Almost no one gets a chance to play the hero in real life in modern America, but you can go to Vegas, defy the odds, and come home the hero of your story.

You just have to be willing to take the risk to begin with.

Gambling Is an Act of Conspicuous Consumption

No matter where you live, gambling is an act of conspicuous consumption. It’s become available at such low stakes that anyone of any socioeconomic class can participate, too.

In the minds of the public, high rollers get all gussied up and play baccarat without worrying about their wins or losses – just like James Bond.

Rich cowboy types take big risks and get the better of their fellow gamblers at the poker tables and sneer at the possibility of losing hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Penny slots enable people who can barely afford their rent to gamble, too. I had a close relative living in a trailer park near Reno, Nevada who spent most of the later years of her life playing penny slots – even though she was scraping by on social security and welfare.

As she told me, “I used to be an alcoholic and a drug addict, but now I’m just a compulsive gambler.”

I have another buddy who scrapes by, living in a tiny apartment in the worst neighborhood in town. He’s borrowed money from me repeatedly for at least 30 years now. At least half the time, he never pays it back. When he does pay it back, he pays it back lately.

  • What does he do for fun?
  • He plays the lottery as often as possible.

When I ask him how well he does at the lottery, he claims that he’s “about even” through the years.

My relative and my buddy both take an inordinate amount of pride in their willingness to gamble away money that they could be using to improve their lives.

What do these examples say about our society in general?

What Value Do Slot Machines Offer Culturally?

Slot machines and other gambling machines might be the least culturally-enriching form of gambling in existence. Not only do you not interact with other people while playing, as you would at the blackjack or poker tables, but you stand no chance of winning in the long run.

Real money slot machines are silly and offer lousy odds. They appeal to the compulsive nature of the human mind, and they grow more appealing over time. What’s happening to the American culture that the biggest growth in gambling games’ popularities belongs to the least social of all possible games?

Instead of interacting with other gamblers, people who play slot machines are more comfortable interacting with machines.

Gambling machines lack the prestige of the table games, but they’re affordable enough that anyone in the United States has an opportunity to participate.

What Does Slot Machine Popularity Say About People in the United States?

In European casinos, table games are still more popular than gambling machines.

But in the United States, slot machines account for at least 85% of the average casino’s profits.

  • What are slot machines like?
  • What does slot machine gambling entail?

For one thing, slot machine gambling is a solitary activity. It’s you and the machine. When I visit my local casino and look at the players at the slot machines, none of them are interacting with the other nearby players. That’s how they seem to like it.

Contrast that with what goes on at a table game like blackjack or craps. People interact with each other calmly at the blackjack table even though they’re playing against the dealer and not the other players. After all, they’re dealing with a common enemy, so to speak.

Craps players interact even more enthusiastically with each other. Not only are most of the players at the craps table competing with a common enemy, they’re usually rooting for an individual to defeat the odds by rolling a point number before rolling a 7.

Most craps players bet with the shooter just to enjoy the camaraderie at the table. Everyone celebrates together when they all win. And they all commiserate with each other when they all lose.

But blackjack and craps are growing less popular over time, while gambling machines are growing more popular over time.

What does this say about American culture?

I don’t think it’s a big leap to say that people in the United States – at least in general – are becoming less interested in interacting with each other, preferring solitary pursuits like gambling machines.

This has probably been exacerbated by the rise in popularity of smart phones and apps. Even people who actively socialize often do so via social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as opposed to having in-person conversations and experiences.

Skill vs Chance in United States Gambling

It’s interesting to look at what role skill plays in gambling versus random chance. On one hand, a growing number of gamblers are playing games which offer nothing but random chance. Slot machines increase in popularity every year, even though nothing you can do as a player affects the outcome.

Games like blackjack, which reward skill while still offering the casino an edge, are growing less popular over time in favor of their new corporate machinery offering random chance.

But There’s an Exception to This Trend of Chance Versus Skill: Poker.

Even though slot machines continue to grow in popularity, the game of poker has enjoyed a resurgence over the last couple of decades that’s remarkable. The poker boom has ended, so the game isn’t growing meteorically the way that it used to.

But plenty of people agree that poker is a uniquely American game.

And more people are stepping into cardrooms now than they were in the 80s and 90s, for sure. Many casinos didn’t even have poker rooms anymore during those decades.

That changed with the rise of the internet poker millionaire, as exemplified by Chris Moneymaker.

That’s as American a story as you’ll ever hear, too – a relative unknown makes himself rich by using a combination of luck, courage, and skill.

Gambling as a Meditative Experience

I read an interview with a slot machine gambler who contended that she wasn’t playing slots because she of the uncertain outcome. Instead, she was interested in the certainty of her outcome.

What was she certain about?

She wasn’t worried about whether she won or lost. She wasn’t worried about whether she input more coins than she took out or vice versa.

What she knew was that when she put more money in, she always got a result – a new set of symbols on the reels. In other words, she was certain that she’d always be able to continue to play.

In some kinds of Eastern spiritual traditions, the idea of being mindful and getting away from all your worries about the past or future in favor of a focus on the present is desirable. In my view, slot machines provide the same kind of meditative experience as actual meditation.

In fact, many kinds of gambling do just the same thing, but slot machines seem to produce this kind of hypnotic effect more easily than others.

You could compare this “serenity now” experience of slot machines with the effects of some illegal drugs.

And, like many illegal drugs, this instant serenity comes with a cost. In the case of drugs, you need a higher dosage to get the same effect until you’ve eventually worn out the serotonin receptors in your brain.

Gamblers experience the same thing. They need to gamble for higher stakes and longer periods to get the same kind of rush.

But in terms of getting comfortably numb, slot machine players seem to have all other gamblers beat.

What Is Everyone in America so Worried About Anyway?

If gambling is an escape from the worries of the world, what are these worries that require such drastic activities to escape from?

If you proceed from the premise that gambling provides you with a respite from space and time, why is that respite seeming to become more necessary and popular over time?

Why Is the Rate of Gambling – Especially Slot Machines – Becoming so Much More Popular?

Think about the future that you read about in the newspaper these days. Environmental concerns are a growing crisis that seems more likely to affect the quality of everyone’s lives sooner than most people are comfortable with.

Financial crises are in the headlines on a regular basis, too. More individuals are deeply in debt than every before. The rate at which people are saving money continues to decline. The shrinking middle class continues to shrink while the billionaire class continues to amass a greater amount of society’s wealth.

I know people who have just stopped reading the news altogether just to keep from being depressed all the time.

Is it really so surprising that gambling activities, which provide as effective a mental escape from all this as you can imagine, have become increasingly popular?

An Increasingly Addicted Culture

The nature of gambling has changed dramatically just in my lifetime. When I was a young man, most of the attendees of Gamblers Anonymous were addicted to card games and sports betting. I have friends – senior citizens in recovery – who still talk about those days.

By the 1990s, though, a majority of attendees at Gamblers Anonymous were addicted to playing slot machines and video poker games. I’ve seen reports from rehabs that a huge percentage of the people being treated for gambling addiction were slot machine players.

Gambling addiction might seem harmless enough, but it’s an official American Psychiatric Association diagnosis. People addicted to gambling lose their jobs, commit suicide more often, and wind up in jail more often. They’re more likely to be in poor health, too, and the divorce rate is higher among this growing segment of the American population.

You’ll see barstool pundits contend that gambling isn’t really addictive because it’s not a substance that changes your physiology.

But when it comes to your brain, process addictions clearly change your physiology in the form of shifts in your brain chemistry.

In fact, the exact same serotonin transmitters that are affected by alcohol and drug use are activated by gambling machines.

Conclusion

Gambling is an excellent servant but a poor master, but a large percentage of the American population are gambling dangerously.

I’m not an opponent of gambling at all.

In fact, I’m a proponent of responsible gambling. I find a lot of value in gambling activities with a social aspect, like craps and poker.

I encourage readers with a potential problem to get help with that problem.

And other recreational gamblers would do well to focus on the more social gambling games available for mental health and societal health reasons.

Michael Stevens

Michael Stevens has been researching and writing topics involving the gambling industry for well over a decade now and is considered an expert on all things casino and sports betting. Michael has been writing for GamblingSites.org since early 2016. …

View all posts by Michael Stevens

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

forze-vs.-extra-salt-funspark-ulti-2020-pick

ForZe vs. Extra Salt Funspark ULTI 2020 Pick

top-20-contenders-for-the-2021-kentucky-derby

Top 20 Contenders for the 2021 Kentucky Derby