Gambling and the desire machine | Pay to Win

Why HN readers recommended it

Recommended as an engaging, well-researched look at the history of gambling machines and how games borrow their psychology.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Jimmy McGee

Topic

gambling and game design

Format

commentary

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

3

HN mentions in dataset

3

Recommendation years in dataset

2022–2024

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• Though the video is fairly long, it's a genuinely interesting exploration on the murky history of video games and gambling. This is part two of a video series, I highly recommend watching both. Part 1: [VIDEO]

• I recently saw a good video[1] covering the history and appeal of gambling machines. My takeaway is that the primary reason people play these is not because they think they're going to win money. This especially true of pachinko where "cashing out" is a convoluted …

• This is tangential but I watched an interesting video essay about slot machines recently[1], based on the book Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll, and one of the surprising things Schüll's research turned up in interviews with slot machine gamblers was that for some …