How Non-Stop Gaming Gave Way to Non-Stop Gambling
March Madness has never
been madder from a wagering point of view. And whether it's sports or meme
stocks or crypto, there's a new generation now hooked on the rush of
phone-enabled risk taking, which won't benefit anyone.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD
TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH
INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1
APR 2, 2024
As the founder and CEO
of Imagination Pilots, a CD-ROM computer game
developer, I spent many years writing, designing, and building games in the
industry's infancy. I apologize.
We knew that games were
a gateway to many things, but we hoped that our game users would come to
understand the healthy message that failure was a totally accepted outcome in
the early stages of any game or other endeavor, that overcoming these bumps and
obstacles was a productive learning experience (unlike in school, where
"failure" was constantly stigmatized), and that there was a clear
path to continued improvement if you worked at it and kept trying to get
better. Imagination Pilots was all about iteration and perseverance --
important life skills -- and about dedicated practice and eventual mastery,
which are powerful builders of pride and self-esteem.
But, at the same time,
one of the most critical design objectives in creating these products - which
were intended to become immersive, entertaining, and addictive -- was to make
sure that the games delivered a recurring series of dopamine jolts and emotional
triggers, elevating levels and acknowledged accomplishments, growing rewards
and measurable incentives. In short, compelling reasons to continue playing. In
the same way that movies and TV shows are built on multiple storylines, beats,
and cliffhangers to heighten and extend attention and interest levels, games
were also designed to pull the players into new engaging and imaginary worlds
and prolong their participation. Games are all about manufacturing the need
for next.01:23
If this all sounds sadly
familiar in terms of today's world of mobile-enabled, social media addiction,
destructive and manipulative disinformation, and enragement driven by continued
exposure to lies and garbage, that's partly on me. Because we built some
of the earliest programs and algorithms that were foundational elements to this
debacle. An entire generation has grown up with the continued need for speed
and stimulation and there's very little we can do to slow the pace or the
momentum. Adrenaline and virality are everything. Worse yet, in our college
students and even more critically, in the waves of new employees joining our
businesses, we are seeing the effects and debilitating symptoms of a generation
raised and educated in a world where nearly every waking hour is spent glued to
and interacting with their phones. If you don't think this impacts the
effectiveness and productivity of your team members, you haven't walked around
your semi-empty offices lately.
Many years
later, as partial penance, I started a high-end vocational college devoted
to the digital arts including video, animation, and game design as an
alternative for creative kids who weren't interested in and unlikely to be
successful in the traditional, four-year, painfully expensive college
education. Part of the pedagogical foundation of the new Tribeca Flashpoint
school was the idea that we could reform and transform the typical education
methodology into a new energetic learning process that equipped students with
actual job skills and serious employment prospects. Our digital-centric course
offerings were team-based, engaging, informative, and educational all at the
same time. This idea was based in part on Marshall McLuhan's dictum that:
"anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and
entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either".
By making each day
activity-based, constructive, and exciting, we were able to reawaken an
interest in learning in students who had previously failed at or given up on
continuing their education. The thought was that, if the students loved school,
they'd stick around and learn sometimes in spite of themselves. Here again, the
operational mindset, the affirmative attitudes, and the various emotional
drivers we had drawn from our game development history were employed to create
educational environments of adventure, accomplishment, and achievement. Turning
what they had regarded as a drag and sheer drudgery into demonstrations of
desire, peer commitment, and delight. The same enthusiasm and energy that these
kids had spent for countless hours every day on their game play could be
rechanneled and redirected into productive learning and work skills. And, as
their parents would consistently attest, the strategy not only worked, but it
also literally transformed their kids, their work ethic, and their attitudes.
Having invested a great
deal of time and money developing education and entertainment businesses at the
intersection of gaming, new technologies and training, I never imagined that
the engagement tools and strategies we built would lead to anything as disturbing
and harmful as we see today. And I fear that we're about to see things become
even worse -- especially for Gen Z guys continuing to enter the workforce - as
the desires, addictions, and dopamine-driven emotional demands embedded over
years of Xbox, Nintendo and PlayStation-based gaming are now beginning to
quickly morph into mobile device-enabled gambling. At least the early computers
and the video-game consoles were place-based; today, the 24/7 smartphone
connectivity means that the problems are growing exponentially and will quickly
spread across the workplace.
While there's plenty of blame
to go around, there is no question in my mind that the entire adrenaline-driven
gaming world was irrevocably changed around 2007 when the smart cellphone and
high-speed internet brought ubiquitous access and instantaneous responses to
half the country. The guardrails began to disappear: anyone who thinks that age
limitations and other alleged restrictions had the slightest impact on the
inventiveness and activities of millions of under-aged kids is a moron.
With the same
obliviousness that we applied to the risks and painful ills of indiscriminate
and unregulated social media, we're now casually inviting several immature and
uninformed generations into the two biggest virtual casinos in history - the
stock market and sports betting - and, once again, kidding ourselves in
thinking that everything will work out well.
The craziness started in
earnest a couple of years before the pandemic, courtesy of firms such as Robinhood,
which added millions of untrained and unsophisticated players to the markets
and precipitated the rise and insane gyrations of meme stocks like GameStop.
The recent IPO of Reddit (another prime player in the
meme stock mess and related rumormongering) can't be good news for anyone
looking for the markets to ever return to some level of rational behavior. And,
of course, the cult-like trading insanity surrounding the Trump Media &
Technology Group Corp., with revenues for 2023 of around $4 million and losses
approaching $60 million, has simply turned everything into a nihilistic game
where the MAGAts think they're teaching a lesson to "the man" and
rooting for their guy at the same time.
Encouraging young men
who can't afford and don't remotely appreciate the complexity and risks of the
stocks they trade on their phone - rewarded by confetti, sound effects, and
other dopamine drivers similar to games - - isn't likely to move the needle
forward on financial literacy any time soon. Not when trading activity is based
on Trumpist politics, made-up rumors, fake posts, TikTok screeds,
and other careful "research." But it is entirely likely to
drive a few more people to financial ruin and suicide. We're already seeing the
workplace results in our younger employees - lost focus, indifference and a
world of "whatever," less interest in
connection and peers, and a basic angry belief that life's not fair and there's
no longer any prospect that they will have a chance to get theirs.
The returning crypto
frenzy with new Bitcoin highs and the FOMO effect in an expanding tech-driven
stock market with equities reaching new heights are making things even worse.
Investing has become a game - with high pleasure and reward levels - and little
or no effort, study or analysis required. Crypto is so crazy that when some
anonymous idiot developer recently told his followers that he accidentally
wiped out $10 million of their early investments in his Slerf memecoin, the
news was met with a mere shrug and then a big bump in the coin's price when it
was next issued. There's been no regulatory response or any recourse for the
people who lost their money.
I'm reluctant to call
these crypto, NFT and meme idiots "investors" or their actions
"investments" for obvious reasons. The few high-visibility lawsuits
and lockups that have happened are mixed blessings based on the media treatment
because for kids of a certain age the main mistake these folks seem to have
made was not being smart enough to avoid getting caught rather than defrauding
thousands of suckers out of millions of dollars. When the Trump meme scam
finally does collapse, all those victims will also be blaming everyone but
themselves.
If the stock and crypto
issues aren't bad enough, we've now upped the frantic ante by adding digital
sports betting to the mix. Just try to pry your folks away from their phones
and screens during March Madness when
the office betting pools represent a mere pittance compared with the bucks
they've bet with their online bookies on the big games. Or take a gander at the
Cubs opening day in Chicago where a gigantic new DraftKings Sportsbook (which
looks like some ugly cancerous growth attached to the glorious Wrigley Field
ivy) is also opening the same day.
There's a storm coming,
there are no easy answers, the success of your business and the futures of your
kids could hang in the balance, and you've been warned.