Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Sid Meier, Slot Machines, and the Flow of Vice
Sid Meier, Slot Machines, and the Flow of Vice
Jul 18, 2025 7:59 PM

My wife despises Sid Meier. She’s never met him, nor would she even recognize his name. But she knows someone is responsible for creating the source of my addiction.

For over twenty years I’ve spent (or wasted, as my wife would say) countless hours playing Civilization, Meier’s award-winning strategy game. Every time I play the game I enter an almost trance-like state plete immersion. According to positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, what I’m experiencing in that moment is known as “flow.” Csíkszentmihályi describes the mental state of flow as,

pletely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.

According to Csíkszentmihályi, there are ten factors that pany the experience of flow:

1. Clear goals that, while challenging, are still attainable.

2. Strong concentration and focused attention.

3. The activity is intrinsically rewarding.

4. Feelings of serenity; a loss of feelings of self-consciousness.

5. Timelessness; a distorted sense of time; feeling so focused on the present that you lose track of time passing.

6. Immediate feedback.

7. Knowing that the task is doable; a balance between skill level and the challenge presented.

8. Feelings of personal control over the situation and the e.

9. Lack of awareness of physical needs.

10. Complete focus on the activity itself.

While it’s not necessary to experience all ten factors for flow to occur, I experienced all ten when I play strategy games like Civilization, Age of Kings, or Axis and Allies. I’ve been in a state of flow other times, of course. Sometimes it occurs when I’m writing, building electronic devices, or working on a carpentry project. But the state of flow is never plete as when I’m playing a game.

I have to take ultimate responsibility for my own actions, including the time I spend playing games. But could the game designers be somewhat accountable for pulsion? Should they bear any responsibility for creating the experience?

Unlike my wife, I don’t blame Sid Meier. He’s created a wonderful game that, if experienced in moderation, can increase human flourishing by satisfying our need for play. But there is one group that I believe bears a large share of the blame for creating an experience of flow that can destroy lives and immiserate our fellow citizens: designers of slot machines.

As economist Robert H. Frank writes in the New York Times:

“Addiction by Design” (Princeton University Press, 2012), Natasha Dow Schüll’s gripping account of slot machine gambling in Las Vegas, looks into the technical wizardry underlying modern slots and their effects on players. According to slot designers and casino managers surveyed in the book, the mission of these machines is simple: to separate patrons from their money in the most ruthlessly efficient — yet psychologically agreeable — ways possible.

The machines create an experience pelling that some people stop playing only when they’ve exhausted every available resource. Ms. Schüll, a cultural anthropologist on the M.I.T. faculty, interviews a slots player who sees the machines as so immersive that winning es a distraction, something that matters only because it lets her play a little longer. “It’s like being in the eye of a storm,” the woman says, later adding, “You aren’t really there — you’re with the machine and that’s all you’re with.”

Psychologists describe this state as flow, a feeling of being so absorbed in what you’re doing that you pletely unaware of the passage of time. Artists, writers and others who achieve flow in their work call it one of the most pleasurable psychological states, one that greatly enhances productivity. But in hindsight, at least, flow as experienced by some slots players is a state that leads to ruin.

Slot machines, in other words, are designed for a nefarious purpose. They don’t exist for the casual player, the type of person who can resist ing enslaved to the machines. They are created specifically to prey upon the psychological weakness of fallen humans.

Slot machines exist primarily to take the money of what the gaming industry calls “problem gamblers.” Problem gamblers account for 40 to 60 percent of slot machine revenues, according to studies conducted over the past decade or so. A large-scale study in 2004 found that people who live within 10 miles of a casino have twice the rate of pathological and problem gambling as those who do not.

In an ideal world, such predatory gaming would be prohibited by society. But our culture opposes almost any restrictions on vice, no matter how soul-destroying, if the harm to others is not direct and immediate. The best we can hope for is to gain broader acceptance for a more indirect solution. We could limit the harms of gambling by simply convincing Americans that the government at all levels – local, state, and federal – should not give legal, administrative, regulatory, and promotional advantages to businesses that host slot machines.

That’s really all it would take. Prevent the cronyism and casinos would wither away. Casinos can’t survive without the life-support provided by politicians. They thrive because monopolistic regulations and taxpayer dollars keep them from bankruptcy. Take that away and slot machines would die the ignoble death they so truly deserve.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Rev. Sirico on Life, Work, and Human Flourishing
J.Q. Tomanek of Ignitum Today interviewed Rev. Sirico about life, work, human flourishing, and his new book, Defending the Free Market: JQ Tomanek: Back in the day, holiness was misinterpreted as a cleric or religious life thing. How can a lay Catholic practice their faith? What are some ways to sanctify our work as lay Catholics? Is “ora et labora” just a monk thing? Reverend Sirico: Yes, religious people are often tempted to e so “heavenly minded they are no...
Did 2,362 Millionaires Get Unemployment Checks in 2009? (Answer: Yes they did.)
The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a group that works exclusively for the U.S. Congress, issued a report with one of the greatest titles I’ve ever seen on a government document: Receipt of Unemployment Insurance by e Unemployed Workers (“Millionaires”) Now the first nine words are nothing special, typical policy-wonk speak. But whoever added in the word “millionaires” with scare quotes and parentheses is a genius. Most people would have been nodding off around the word “Insurance” but seeing millionaires (that’s...
Markets and culture: A time to play, a time to pray
Faced with the prospect of a professional athletic career, a nearly-half million dollar salary, and a perfect lady, what’s not to like? Apparently, for Grant Desme, it was the noise and unrest of the world. Can a culture of life and the noise and tumult of the marketplace co-exist? Rev. Robert Sirico, reflecting on this, says they can, so long as it is not a place where: [C]apitalism…places the human person at the mercy of blind economic forces…What we propose,...
On Call with Dr. Pamela Casson
Dr. Pamela Casson, a pediatrician in Colorado Springs, knows what it means literally to be “On Call.” This week she shares with us in this video interview with Jon Hirst how she sees God working through her in her work with families, children and the world around her. Thank you Pamela for giving us an inside look at how you see your work as blessing the world. ...
Is it really ‘aid’ if it goes to relatively wealthy nations?
Alan Duncan, an aid minister in the UK, says his government is “forced” to hand over large amounts of money to the EU’s foreign aid budget, but has no say in how the money is spent. The problem is that much of the $2 billion+ “aid” money (one-sixth of the British budget) goes to projects such as making a Moroccan water park more eco-friendly, an art project in St. Petersburg, and building a hotel and plex in Barbados. Britain’s International...
Want to Help the Poor? Promote a Free Market in Health Care
Want to help the poor? Promote a free market in health care. That’s the argument made by John C. Goodman, author of the new book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. Timothy Dalrymple recently talked with Goodman about the best approach for restoring free-market pricing mechanisms into the market for medical care and health insurance: Aren’t there some people, however, who have little of money and lots of time, and would prefer to wait in order to receive cheaper care? There...
Stop Apologizing for Our Liberties
You cannot apologize to a fanatic, says Lee Harris. It only serves to convince him that he was right all along: The last few weeks have witnessed a peculiar and disturbing spectacle: An American administration that has spent a great deal of time and energy apologizing for our liberties—in particular, for what many would regard as the foundation of all our other liberties, namely, the freedom to express our minds as we see fit. This signature freedom, of which Americans...
Dodd-Frank: The Other Serious Threat
At least es at us head on. The greater legislative threat may be the one that most Americans have never heard of. Economist Scott Powell and Acton friend Jay Richards explain in a new piece in Barron’s: While Obamacare received more attention, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also known as Dodd-Frank after its Senate and House sponsors, … unleashed a new regulatory body, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to operate with unprecedented power. Dodd-Frank became law in...
How were people On Call in Culture 165 years ago?
What is so special about 1837? That was the year Abraham Kuyper was born. September 29th is his 165th birthday. So we thought we would go back to 1837 and see how people were being On Call in Culture back then. We don’t know if they were all believers on a mission to bless the world, but by seeing what was going on 165 years ago, we hope you are encouraged to engage your world in 2012! How did people...
Counting the Profit of a Third Party Choice
Joe Carter recently highlighted the discussion at Ethika Politika, the journal of the Center for Morality in Public Life, about the value of (not) voting, particularly the suggestion by Andrew Haines that in some cases there is a moral duty not to vote. This morning I respond with an analysis of the consequences of not voting, ultimately arguing that one must not neglect to count the cost of abstaining to vote for any particular office. One issue, however, that I...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved