Non-mathematical dimensions of randomness: Implications for problem gambling
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As the demarcating lines between video gaming and gambling are increasingly blurred due to the embedding of so called "gambling-like" elements as loot boxes and prize wheels in video games, scholarly attention for this phenomenon is on the rise. Yet this strong attention comes with a downside: terminological dispersion. Indeed, the number of terms used to describe the emerging video game features that resemble gambling rapidly grows, and frameworks for naming diversify. This hinders a clear conceptualisation and solid scientific research findings, hampering the drafting of societally relevant recommendations for self-regulation of the industry and policy-making. Our study therefore maps the terminology used by experts from different disciplines studying the convergence between video gaming and gambling in the videogame ecology. It does so through a) an in-depth literature review searching for labels and b) a survey conducted among researchers to gauge for their used and preferred terms to describe the phenomena under study. Our findings point towards an effective circulation of the terms among academic experts, but without inter-expert consensus on their use, nor intra-expert terminological consistency. Some trends are identifiable: the use of terms placing phenomena on a continuum between gaming and gambling; the salient use of the term loot box, albeit not in a catch-all sense, and the attention for the presence of real money transactions. The terminological choices of experts seem to be oriented by distinguishable features: the visual outlook of the games, visual and textual references to gambling, the presence of opaque reward containers, and the visibility of in-game currencies and marketplaces. Finally, we sketch some recommendations for a terminology suited to interdisciplinary research and communication with non-academic stakeholders: treating the concept of simulation with caution, using loot box in its restrictive sense, being aware of the false feeling of understanding related to the gaming-gambling continuum, recurring to paraphrases to discuss the involvement of real-world currencies, and favouring explicitness.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.027 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".