Addiction by Design Written by Natasha Dow Schüll Narrated by Kel...
Quote:
I have yet to listen to this book and this book is about physical real casino gambling which I don't do.
The only reason I picked this up is simply because the same methods used in real gambling are being used in today's digital media space and hopefully learning about it might make it pretty clear what the design is in these apps.
To be clear, the book isn't claiming to talk about all that, it's just about machine gambling but I think a smart person can bridge the connection.
P.S: Please give me compliments, I am starving for compliments.
- ni6hant[dot]com
Addiction by Design
Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
Written by
Natasha Dow Schüll
Narrated by
Kelly Burke
This audiobook narrated by Kelly Burke traces the intimate connections between gambling addiction and casino industry design tactics
Recent decades have seen a dramatic shift away from social forms of gambling played around roulette wheels and card tables to solitary gambling at electronic terminals. Slot machines, revamped by ever more compelling digital and video technology, have unseated traditional casino games as the gambling industry's revenue mainstay.
Addiction by Design takes listeners into the intriguing world of machine gambling, an increasingly popular and absorbing form of play that blurs the line between human and machine, compulsion and control, risk and reward.
Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the "machine zone," in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away. Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible—even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion.
In continuous machine play, gamblers seek to lose themselves while the gambling industry seeks profit. Schüll describes the strategic calculations behind game algorithms and machine ergonomics, casino architecture and "ambience management," player tracking and cash access systems—all designed to meet the market's desire for maximum "time on device."
Her account moves from casino floors into gamblers' everyday lives, from gambling industry conventions and Gamblers Anonymous meetings to regulatory debates over whether addiction to gambling machines stems from the consumer, the product, or the interplay between the two.
Addiction by Design is a compelling inquiry into the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance, offering clues to some of the broader anxieties and predicaments of contemporary life.
©2025 Natasha Dow Schüll (P)2025 Princeton University Press
Release Date
11-11-25
Language
English
Format
Unabridged Audiobook
Length
14 hrs and 32 mins
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Categories
Politics & Social Sciences
Anthropology
Mental Health
Psychology
Psychology & Mental Health
Sociology