It all starts with a name: Mapping the terms used by researchers to describe gambling-like elements in video games

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 realworld currencies, and favouring explicitness.