Beyond gambling: the dangers of analogistic reasoning in addiction science, and how loot box psychology should create its own unique theory

Abstract

As in other areas of science, understanding in the addictions can progress by analogy, by taking concepts from a relatively well-understood area and applying them to another domain. This process helped increase our understanding of gambling, by using prior insights from substance-based addictions, and gambling has, in turn, served as an analogy for loot boxes: gambling-liked elements in video games. Although this could be a good way to make rapid initial advances, it could also limit our ability in the long-run to produce a complete understanding of the new area of inquiry. In this think piece I argue that these conceptual links did in fact limit our understanding of gambling in several ways, and that the same pattern is now becoming apparent with loot boxes. Although loot box expenditure correlates robustly with disordered gambling severity, it does not appear to correlate strongly with impulsivity, a key driver of disordered gambling symptomology. People also often gamble to try to win money, but this motivation is rarely observed with loot boxes. Instead, I argue that the enjoyment and meaning that gamers derive from games is a core motivator for loot box expenditure. Video games can bring enjoyment both directly and via the social connections they can help create, and these are motivations seen less frequently in gambling. This example can act as a warning to addiction science on the risks of proceeding via analogy too strictly, and of the need to consider the unique context of each potentially addictive behavior of interest.

Keywords:

• Video games
• loot boxes
• addiction psychology
• video gaming

Disclosure statement

Philip Newall is a member of the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling – an advisory group of the Gambling Commission in Great Britain, and in 2020 was a special advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee Enquiry on the Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry. In the last three years, Philip Newall has contributed to research projects funded by the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling, Clean Up Gambling, Gambling Research Australia, NSW Responsible Gambling Fund, and the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation. Philip Newall has received travel and accommodation funding from Alberta Gambling Research Institute, and received open access fee funding from Gambling Research Exchange Ontario.

Ethical approval

This paper did not require ethics board approval.

Notes

1 The cited paper and most other literature in this field uses the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI); in line with common present usage, I will use the term “disordered gambling” instead of “problem gambling”.