Game Critique: Crossword Lottery Ticket

This week's entry doesn't really qualify as a game critique. It's hardly necessary to apply Costikyan or Avedon's analysis of the elements of a game to figure out that, no matter how it is disguised, a scratch-off lottery ticket is simply not a game. It barely qualifies as an activity. Why then am I wasting this space? Well, first I thought it would be interesting to think about the lottery tickets in terms of the "magic circle" (discussed in a previous post). Secondly, I thought if I invested $3 in this assignment, I might be $20,000 richer.

Sadly, I was wrong on both accounts.

I bought the ticket from a vending machine in Safeway. Because I like word games, I chose one called Crossword. The ticket is about three times as large as a standard ticket and features a crossword puzzle-like grid and an area labeled "your letters." The instructions on the ticket are fairly long, indicating that you will get to do something. This is important. I do not think I would pay $3 if I didn't get to do something. The potential payoff appears in a table at the top right of the ticket. The smallest prize is another ticket; the largest prize is $20,000. The odds of winning a cash prize, according to the small print on the back of the ticket, is 1:4.55 -- not too bad until you realize that the most frequently award prizes probably are the smallest: $4 and $5. And you will likely have to buy 4 or more tickets to get that. I'm not exactly a genius at math, but the return on investment does not seem very favorable.

So, I found a penny and began scratching. First, I removed all the silvery junk off the area marked "your letters." For each letter I revealed, I found all the matching letters in the crossword grid below and scratched those to mark them, much like in Bingo. (Unlike a real crossword puzzle, the grid is already filled in when you buy the ticket.) I repeated the scratch-and-search process 18 times to discover at the end that only one word was completely scratched off in the grid. You must scratch off at least two to win a prize. Hmpf.

Why make lottery players jump through hoops just to find out if their tickets are worth something? Couldn't a ticket consist of one scratch-off spot that underneath says "You've won $20,000" or "You lose"? The obvious reason why not is that the visual trappings of a game signify fun, and the promoters of the lottery want players to think of scratchers as a fun activity. And, yes, it is fun to find out if you are a winner. It is not fun, however, to find out you are not a winner. The problem that designers of games of chance face is how to get players to come back after they have experienced a loss. In real games -- board games or video games -- one of the motivations for trying again is to improve one's performance. Players can learn from their experience and adjust their strategies. But in games of pure chance, such as the lottery, experience and strategy are worthless commodities. Experience may help you stay away from slot machines with the worst payouts, but it won't help you win more once you sit down at a machine. The only way to improve your chances of winning is to play again.

Designers of lottery tickets, slot machines and ticket-dispensing arcade games rely on two strategies to get repeat customers, the lure of the big win and distraction (or misdirection). Both of these approaches, I would argue, create something of a magic circle. Winning big is no less a fantasy than, say, slaying a dragon or an assassin. The difference is that there is real potential for a lottery player's fantasy to become reality. However, as long as the big win remains a fantasy (which is forever for most lottery players), it creates its own world governed by irrational rules and codes of behavior. The persistent lottery player must believe against the laws of probability that the big win could happen. When they willingly surrender to this belief, they are in a magic circle, a place where real-world mathematical laws and common sense do not apply. Casinos, with their carefully orchestrated sounds of falling coins and images of money, are carefully designed to foster and maintain the illusion.

In general, casino games are disguises for mechanisms and processes that earn the casino money. In the same way, lottery tickets are an income-generating system dressed up as games. The various tickets, attractively displayed in a brightly colored vending machine, come in various flavors designed to appeal to people predisposed to playing games. In addition to Crossword, which as I mentioned targets people who like word games, there are tickets based on casino games, treasure hunting, sports, board games, etc. None are actual games. That is, ticket buyers cannot affect their chances of winning by how they scratch their tickets. You must, however, follow the directions to find out if you have won, but that does not constitute playing a game.

Because lottery tickets convey the idea that its purchaser is playing, losing does not seem like such as serious matter. The activity demanded by the ticket gives the impression that the buyer has had some kind of a game-like experience, slightly mitigating the feeling that one has squandered hard-earned money. This is a magic circle used in its worst possible way: to distract, misdirect or even deceive those within it. For all its protective charms, the circle does not always protect its inhabitants from the dangers of the realm beyond its borders.