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This is where these things actually start to scare me, as they're combining multiple pleasurable stimuli into a reward and using intermittent reinforcement to leverage whatever particular addictive tendency the user has to get them to keep playing and spending money. You like cute girls? You like huge breasts? You like emotional vulnerability? Or just like to see number go up? We guarantee there's a superstimulus tailored for YOU in here!
If they were able to occasionally dispense a sweet, tasty snack as a reward then they'd be about one step shy of just having a button that directly releases dopamine in the subject's brain.
Now...
Add in the capability to use AI to generate infinite lewd/sexualized images specified to the individual user's tastes.
Yep. That's why the only winning move is to not play, IMO. Willpower is a finite resource, while entire industries of highly-paid optimizers are working full-time to break it with their products. Limiting your vectors of exposure is the best way to live a life free of negative drains, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as more and more things become gamified services. This involves more than just Gacha, but that industry is where it's really easy to see the psychological tricks laid bare.
This is the solution I'm adopting, to be sure. There's a huge 'Camels Nose in the Tent' element, however.
This really slammed home for me approximately 1 year ago when I went and played Blackjack at a casino for the first time.
I was 'smart' in that I placed a hard limit on the amount of money I was willing to bet, total, and when I won that amount I immediately 'banked' it so I couldn't actually lose money anymore. Of course, they have ATMs INSIDE the Casino so you don't have to be limited to merely the cash on hand.
At one point I was up, I think, by like $5,000. I ended the session up by about $400.
And for weeks afterwards I couldn't completely shake the desire to go back and keep playing. Thankfully it would have been a couple hours drive and so it wasn't something I could just easily do on a whim.
But holy cow just a couple hours of play gave me such a rush that I was still thinking about it weeks after the fact. Something I had never actually done for the vast majority of my life. I don't even think losing my virginity had that kind of mental staying power.
Yeah, we live in a world where everything is attempting to exploit your psychology and the proliferation of convenient ways to spend money means there's virtually no friction to slow your descent into any particular hole of addiction.
I could wax/rant on the topic of how easy it is to put money INTO various systems but the said systems are very reluctant to send money back, but on the topic of gambling in particular I think we're going down a very, very dangerous path if we don't erect more serious barriers to entry. I don't know how to achieve that, however.
The phenomenon you're describing is basically just Beginner's Luck. As ridiculous as it sounds, Beginners Luck is real. Think about it—say you've never gambled before but go to the casino when one of your friends suggests it would make a fun night out. And say you spend the entire evening slowly losing $400. You're probably going to think that gambling is the stupidest thing on earth and the next time your friends want to hang out you'll probably suggest going bowling instead. This isn't to say you're never going to gamble again, but since your first experience with it was a hard slap in the face you're probably going to be more circumspect about the whole enterprise. Now suppose on the other hand that your first experience is similar to the one you described. Now gambling seems like an easy, thrilling way to make money. Sure, you eventually lost a ton, but you know what it's like to be up 5 grand and that it's possible, in a non-theoretical way, to earn a month's salary in a matter of hours. Now you've got a dragon to chase.
I think a good first step would be limiting gambling to actual casinos or other physical places. I know that for actual degenerate gamblers this probably won't make much of a difference, but there's something particularly scummy about being able to play slot machines any time, anywhere. The closest casino to me is 20–25 minutes away from my house, and if I wanted to gamble I'd at least have to find time to make the drive down there. It seems fundamentally different than being able to just lie in bed and play slots.
Bingo.
There was a point at which I realized that I was placing bets on individual hands that was larger than the whole amount I had budgeted for playing. And it was fun. Feeling like a relative high roller, fantasizing about winning enough to, well if not quit my job take a really long, fancy vacation. All while knowing on a fundamental level that I'm playing a game where the odds are deliberately stacked against me so that it isn't rational to expect it to happen. On the other hand, there's probably a few versions of me in different timeline branches who got extremely lucky and were quite happy with the outcome.
I should also point out that I took a brief break between sessions, and when I came back to the table, that's when I lost most of my position, just a string of "bad luck" that contrasted strongly to the winning streak I had been on. So yeah, 'beginners luck' would be the right way to categorize that. And everything about the process is designed to make you feel like you're special and the winning will never end.
I agree... but this sounds impossible to enforce without levels of draconian control of the internet that I am far less comfortable with.
The point I've alluded to is how easy/frictionless it is to transfer money into basically any entity these days.
Perhaps a comparable law could be that in order to play any kind of games that get categorized as 'gambling' you have to physically deposit money with the entity running the game. That is, you must withdraw the amount from your account as cash, physically hold it and carry it to a location, and physically hand it over, vs. simply entering an account number or swiping a card.
This would be almost as good as strictly limiting it to physical locations. And then enforcement can take place at the payment processor level, which STILL has concerns over draconian control, but doesn't require direct surveillance of all users.
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