In 2016, gaming and gambling have both become as accessible as they’ll ever be, unless we somehow evolve to the point where we get born with smart devices embedded in our eyeballs. While only 10-15 years ago the only way to play videogames was to purchase a piece of hardware that cost north of $300, and then a bunch of games for it each priced at $60, which made this hobby rather inaccessible. Similarly, if you wanted to gamble, you had to do so at a physical casino, most of which require a fancy suit and a good group of friends, not to mention a solid investment. After all, you can’t just barge into a casino with a few coins and want to spend a good time now, can you? However, with the advent of online casino, you can now literally just spend 10 minutes gambling and leave it at that. And when it comes to gaming, the “free to play” market has never been more successful, with free games such as “League of Legends”, “SMITE” and “Dota 2” utterly dominating the market. Most laptops now can support a good chunk of the games on the market, and if you’re not a fan of gaming on a laptop, no worries – you can play a ton of games right in your smartphone! Bottom line is that gaming and gambling have never been more accessible, and while that’s a wonderful thing for the most part, it has also raised a lot of concerns.
As of a few years ago, addiction to videogames has been officially recognized as a real mental disorder that deserves proper treatment. Gambling addiction is at an all-time high across the globe, and as of last year the UK government has allowed doctors to prescribe heavy medication to people diagnosed with gambling addiction. These problems, while undoubtedly existing for many years, have been made even worse by the accessibility of gaming and gambling. Performing these two activities is now easier than ever, to the point where even someone who has never, ever gambled or played a videogame before in their life can get started literally within minutes. It’s a growing epidemic, and the obligatory “If you feel you may be addicted click here” banners that grace the footers of every gambling website have proven to be extremely ineffective. But what can we possibly do to counter this problem? Aside from raising awareness about it, I’m not sure what can be done. The power to make some change lies with the game developers and online casinos who can implement some restrictions on how often someone can play, but unless these restrictions were mandated by law I don’t think they would be kept, mostly because if one casino or game did them, players would simply migrate to a non-restricted one. Who knows, maybe there exists some kind of way to curb addiction while making both the businesses and the players happy, but if it exists I have no idea what it is. Talk about a depressing way to end the article, huh?