An essential part of development and learning, play can be very easily captured. This is a key reason why adults become so easily addicted to pokies, blackjack, greyhounds and sports betting. For the same reason, children adore video games. Just as puppies chase each other around the backyard, kids need to play in order to learn.

In the last decade, chance mechanics have been increasingly exploited by the video game industry to attract players, including very young ones. And while the federal government is clearly aware of the risks, it really isn’t clear what the right step forward is.

“Loot box” is the blanket term used for the wide array of game features that employ chance mechanics to entice players. The idea was borne during the crisis of the gaming industry of the early 2010s, at a time when development costs often exceeded final profits. In the offices of Electronic Arts and Valve, the first loot boxes devised were FIFA soccer cards and character skins, which operated almost identically to trading card games, and by extension, slot machines. FIFA players could use in-game achievements or real-world money to buy a digital pack of cards, and the cards drawn from the randomly generated pack could then be used in game. The more packs you bought, the higher your chances of “packing” a valuable and powerful player to use in matches. Thus, the first instance of pay-to-win video games was unearthed, meaning the more money you spent in-game, the more advantage you gain during actual play.

This shift instantiated a quake so lucrative even the most icebath-zenned techbro would splooge in his NFTrousers. For the following decade, almost all major video games transitioned from the previous model (downloadable add-on content, like extra maps, storylines, or characters) to adapt to the pay-to-win revolution. During those ten years, EA’s reported profits doubled, reaching almost $8 billion at the close of the 2010s.

Attempts to emulate this success are what led to the proliferation of free-to-play video games in the 2010s. Think the unfathomably popular Counterstrike, Roblox or Fortnite, which are free to download but make their money through pay-to-win loot boxes or other varieties of in-game microtransactions. Broadly, loot boxes can be purchased with in-game money. And of course in-game money can be purchased with in-life money. That’s where the unbridled profits lie. Across platforms and media, loot boxes always function in similar ways. A single input, usually with real money, followed by a randomised prize.

Loot boxes use a technology known as random number generation (RNG). This is exactly what it sounds like. When players buy a pack, or open a loot box, a random number is generated, and if that number matches a predetermined set of “winning” numbers, the lucky player wins a favourable prize. If a losing number is generated, a lesser prize is bequeathed. Regularly, on-screen results are engineered to appear very close to winning major prizes, in what’s known as a “near miss”. These are proven, in other industries, to inspire addiction among players. Naturally based on the dangling carrot that a big win is always simply a click away.

RNG technology is nothing novel. In fact, it’s exactly what controls other types of gambling, like pokies and slot machines. Both loot boxes and pokie machines use RNGs, engineered near misses, bright lights, jingly songs, and suspenseful build-ups to entice players, along with what is perhaps their most predatory and morally-questionable weapon, which is being explicitly designed to give the impression that the decisions players make have a tangible impact on the likelihood of positive outcomes. But this is another lie.

In Paul Pethick’s Power of Play: How Play and its Games Shape Life, founder of the US National Institute of Play, Dr Stuart Brown, describes play as “the stick that stirs the drink”. However in both loot-box video games and RNG gaming machines, the promised carrot barely exists, and the stick does not stir. It whacks.

Pokies have a plethora of buttons, game types, and seemingly-discursive machines to choose from, but the RNG is always random, and the odds are always the same — no matter how you massage, dance, belly-rub, or kiss the golden glimmering screens. At every turn, pokie players are encouraged to believe that the decisions they make actually matter. In reality, the only decision that matters is whether or not to play at all, and after that, how many times you decide to smash the accursed button. The last key difference is that, unlike pokie winnings, prizes won through loot boxes are almost never transferable or fungible — they can only be used and traded in-game. Meaning that the money you gamble with in a video game is effectively lost forever, never to be regained. Sometimes, third-party websites exist where accounts that have received valuable lootbox prizes can be traded for cryptocurrency. In those cases, it can be understood that kids are just straight up online gambling.

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Australians lose more to gambling per capita than any other country. Pokies are the fulcrum of the Australian hospitality industry. Without the bloated profits of our beloved reverse ATMs, the vast majority of our pubs, clubs and motels would be forced to shut shop.

That said, there is nothing expressly evil about RNGs. In certain circumstances, they are good, old-fashioned fun. Not all play requires skill or craft. A huge part of engaging in play behaviours is the surprise and randomness of chance. Games have incorporated this for millennia, from cards, to dice, to rock-paper-scissors. It is when money becomes involved that problems arise. That’s when the thrill becomes heightened, and the instinct to chase losses can occupy our overly-optimistic hunter-gatherer minds. Players in the throes of gambling addiction describe it as a rush of blood to the head, as if they’re tracking and chasing prey in the jungle.

In recent years, video game companies have come to terms with this moral blindspot, albeit begrudgingly. Not only are loot-box games regularly linked with problematic gambling behaviors later in life, but several countries around the world have moved to ban them already. Countries like Belgium and the Netherlands banned loot boxes in 2018, Japan did so as early as 2012, and Australia tightened its regulations in 2024. Since then, the big players like Roblox have apparently instigated effective bans, but recent research into the mobile gaming world has revealed that these new rules are being openly flaunted. And even when they are policed, the fines pale in comparison to the profits garnered by monetising loot boxes.

Gambling companies are even investing in video game makers, and why wouldn’t they? Borrowing staff and strategies from Silicon Valley, “habit-forming” features are a surefire way to make your game (whether in the back of a pub or not) addictive and successful. Take Aristocrat Gaming, an Australian company and one of the largest gaming machine providers in the entire world, which recently acquired the US based Big Fish Games — a maker of mobile games of all varieties, as well as console games. In 2016, Big Fish Games was accused of hoodwinking customers into monthly purchases without informed consent, resulting in a lawsuit worth $155 million.

Video games don’t have to be evil, or overly addictive. It’s coercive practices like this which muddy the water and tarnish the reputation of those trying to tell stories and create immersive worlds. Playing is human, and there is no reason to believe that it cannot be productive, even in a digital sense. The problem is agency. If the decisions you make impact the outcome, then you can be an involved and strategic player. Even gambling games could be considered a healthy alternative, were it demonetised. An accurate and immersive racetrack simulator could serve as a far ethical alternative to the obviously exploitative and cruelty-laden racing industry. It’s hard to imagine them as anywhere near as popular without the potential winnings, but still. Games of chance are fun because chance is a massive part of life. There are some things we simply cannot control, therefore, our fortune is connected to the outcomes of random, unpredictable events.

Kids are easily addicted to gaming, so why should it be legal to allow companies operating amid clear capitalist incentives to take advantage of them? The government appears happy to target and ban social media. But aren’t loot boxes unambiguously worse? A crackdown seems unlikely, however, given Albo’s two-faced stance on gambling regulation across the board. His refusal to crackdown on sportsbetting advertisements, overt lack of impartial regulation (take the NT as one example — where a recent Four Corners investigation revealed that several board members of the only online gambling regulator in the country own and operate racing animals, and regularly attend industry galas), and refusal to honour his promise to the late MP Peta Murphy, whose 2023 parliamentary inquiry recommended massive changes.

Even so, what exactly is the government to do? Banning loot boxes is one thing, but research confirms it has so far been ineffective. Besides, it’s likely not even completely possible. The internet is still, in many ways, a wild west. National governments can’t completely govern an international space. Loot boxes and RNGs are used worldwide in all manner of obscure third-party offshore gambling apps, some connected to video games like Counterstrike, others to simple stripped back wheel-of-fortune style games. Investigative journalist and youtuber CoffeeZilla detailed how these companies sponsor eSports, pay millions for content featuring streamers and influencers, and pop up faster than they can ever be shut down.

Pessimistically, there’s no hope for the future. Prohibition doesn’t work and doesn’t take. Ask Nick Xenophon, or Peta Murphy. At any level, very few people involved with gambling have any incentive to disrupt the current system. Take the pokies example: the majority of people who play the pokies love the game and consider it something like a hobby. The workers who tend them get paid a higher-than-minimum decent-ish wage with flexible hours. Pubs themselves live off the revenue. Football clubs own pokie rooms. Gaming design companies make millions. Governments make millions from taxes. Lobbyists feast. Only those living with addiction and their friends/family seem inclined to criticise the industry, and those cries go unheard. How will history look back on this moment? Much like social media, if you ban one, another will simply arise. Geoblocking and age verification will be VPNed around, and addictive gambling, the slippery soulsucking serpent that it is, will surely beat on and on and continue to funnel the money from people’s pockets right out into the foreseeable.

To cap off this bleak image, there really seems to be no end to exploitative gamification. In 2026 you can gamble on almost anything. Polymarket, an online “prediction market”, is a place where gamblers can wager on everything, including the exact position of the front in Ukraine, how long the Iranian regime would withstand US airstrikes, or when exactly Jesus Christ will rise again. In recent weeks, it came to light that US Special Forces agent Gannon Ken Van Dyke pocketed USD400,000 when Venezuelan president Maduro was unseated.

That said, a more regulated internet is not an unimaginable future. Authoritarian governments cultivate tightly moderated online spaces through state-owned ISPs and various technical measures, and it seems few individuals manage to circumvent these restrictions. In liberal Australia, this level of regulation is probably unrealistic. But surely app stores and videogame distributors like Steam can be held accountable for their current lackadaisical regard for loot box laws. Even if online gambling cannot be completely wiped off the internet, more can undoubtedly be done. Age verification would be a welcome starting point, in conjunction with education about how RNGs actually work, and fines that actually represent meaningful amounts for cash-laden tech companies. After all, play really need not be weaponised, our natural penchant for games need not be exploited for profits, and gambling habits need not be underhandedly thrust upon generation after generation of teens just ready to spread their wings in the competitive and soul-crushing landscape of work, weekly paychecks, and freemarket capitalism.