I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by stupid little treasure chests. Or at least that’s how it feels. Over the past decade, I’ve watched one of my favourite art forms, video games, be slowly colonised by the implacable force of gambling, which has turned their Arcadian theatre stage into a giant casino.
Casinos, of course, can be fun in moderation. But most casinos don’t admit children. That is why a committee of MPs is now calling for “loot boxes”, a key component of the modern gaming economy, to be classified as gambling and therefore banned for under-18s.
To be clear, gambling-like elements are nothing new in games. Game makers have long spiced up their work using variable rewards,…
