Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by riscy 514 days ago
That’s why replica guns are _required_ to have bright orange tips on the barrel: so other people (like police) know it’s not real.

If this game is centered around a Vegas-style slot machine aesthetic & animation, people will think it’s gambling.

1 comments

Calling Luck Be a Landlord "Vegas-style" is detached from the reality of the situation, frankly.

There are Vegas Style slot simulators for sale!

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Monopoly-Casino-Vegas-Edition-PC/...

Walmart is selling one right now that is rated "E for Everyone"! This is a game that simulates gambling, complete with wagers / bets and winnings and everything.

Luck Be a Landlord doesn't have a function to bet before spinning. It doesn't feature gambling at all.

> Walmart is selling one right now

The ESRB and Walmart are OK with kids playing a casino gambling simulator, but that doesn’t mean Google or Apple should be too.

For a parent who looks at their kid playing on their phone with a Vegas-style video slot machine on the screen, complete with a "Spin" button, it appears to be gambling. At a minimum, it’s normalizing real-life casino gambling motifs for their child. Some may find that objectionable for children, and it appears the tech companies agree.

If you can't see that this is 99% of a video slot machine game, just without any cost per spin and 8-bit graphics, then maybe you should visit a casino: https://youtu.be/Vaw2g0tQo58?feature=shared&t=102

>If you can't see that this is 99% of a video slot machine game, just without any cost per spin

The cost per spin is the thing that makes it gambling. Without a wager, it is not gambling.

Watching a horse race is not gambling. Placing a wager on a horse race is gambling.

In Luck Be a Landlord, players do not place wagers. There is no gambling mechanic. Not even a virtual wager for play money.

>The cost per spin is the thing that makes it gambling.

The "landlord" aka casino is constantly requiring that you pay `X credits within N spins` or else it's game over. That is just moving when the subtraction of player's credits happens from every spin to every few spins. It's effectively X/N credits per spin, per "rent" notice. That's a core game mechanic.

You realize you're trying to argue that this is appropriate for children, where the whole game is they pretend to be a gambling addict trying to make their ever-increasing rent payments (which children don't have) by taking spins at a video slot machine.

[flagged]
> I'm not trying to be mean here, but it feels like you have no idea how a slot machine works...

It has every aspect of the slot machines I was playing just 2 weekends ago at casinos in Reno, but without credits being deducted from my balance per spin. Instead, in this game, you must pay lump sums from your credit balance to the Landlord after N spins. It's thinly disguised gambling with fake credits, but with a "Gamble now, pay later" twist.

EDIT: my mistake, it appears from the video you also pay one credit per spin, in addition to the rent.