Gambling has been a part of human history for as long as we have documented. From dice rolling to roulette tables, many people find the allure of putting money on the line in the hopes of increasing their own kitty to be utterly intoxicating. This intoxication can, and has, unfortunately led to countless stories of individuals losing large amounts of money to gambling, often changing these people’s lives forever.
Because of this, gambling has become one of the most highly regulated industries in some parts of the world. Here in Australia, gambling is one our oldest and most enjoyed past-times in our short history yet its regulation has become much stricter in reason years to try and combat serial gamblers, in particular pokies gamblers. Australian law has recently moved to including online gaming in its regulation, causing the removal of many mobile apps, both Android and iOS, from their respective app stores in Australia.
Don’t get me wrong: excessive gambling is an addiction and has ruined the lives of many individuals and their families for centuries. But the argument for responsible gambling in the 21st century is far stronger now that we have unprecedented control over what can possibly be regulated when we gamble. Mobile apps are software, and we can implement whatever we want into it, let’s say hypothetically a hard limit of daily spending on the app in question. It’s much harder to control a physical person who has to be kicked off the slot machine, but returns soon after, making it an absolute chore and waste of resources for the establishment staff to keep these obsessed individuals in check.
If you’re still thinking that gambling is a backward notion that simply causes money to go down the drain regardless of control measures, consider some of the games that you play on your Android or iOS device now. At this point in time, a large percentage of the games available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store are so called “freemium†apps; they offer a free app which requires real-life money to gain advantages and extra resources in the game. I’ve heard plenty of stories where people have sunk thousands of dollars into these games, but to what end? There is no possibility of gaining any tangible, real-world benefit from these games, so would it be fair to say that some mobile games are worse than gambling? The answer here is not so straightforward because we all like to maintain our liberty; we want to choose what games to play and to choose what we do with our lives. That is the right of every human.
The issue is at what point do we start needing to control the activity in question, in this case, gambling. The answer of course is not to ban all gaming and gambling apps, despite the fact the latter has already been banned on Android. What we need is control. Not of the people playing, however, but of the apps themselves. What is really required is more government or regulatory body involvement, be it Google or a some other body, in the creation and approval of these gambling and bettings apps. Set rules and limits that can’t be argued with, but still allow people to do what they want to up till the point when they should stop.
Mobile apps have this power because you can’t argue with an app, it just does what it’s programmed to. There’s no security guard or bar owner to argue with; hitting your limit is final. Freemium games have this kind of limit, so why can’t gambling apps on Android do the same?
