Alexander Ross

Presentation

Play to win: Playtika and the political economy of social casino apps

Abstract

Free-to-play games continue to blur the boundaries between games and gambling. Social casino apps, which bring together the wagering of casino play, with the aesthetics and progression mechanics of casual games, are one of the more visible examples of this trend. Social casino apps are free-to-play gambling games that let you wager digital credits in games of slots, poker, and blackjack, but without a payout. This allows social casino casino apps to avoid the legal restrictions of real-money gambling.

In this talk it will be argued that the industry behind social casino apps deserves closer scrutiny. Playtika, a leading developer of social casino apps, is used as a case study to illustrate how the social casino industry has expanded itself through the casualization of risk. Playtika started as a small developer of Facebook games in Herzliya, Israel before a strategic investment by the casino chain Caesars helped Playtika expand into a formidable force in social casino games.

Now, Playtika is in the middle of an initial public offering where it hopes to raise billions of dollars. In its S-1 disclosure form filed with the SEC, Playtika lists as significant risk factors its reliance on third-party app stores, where technical and regulatory changes could threaten its entire business model. The future of Playtika is in the hand of digital platforms just as much as it is in the hands of prospective investors. Playtika illustrates the ways in which digital platforms have converged games and gambling to create a more volatile and unpredictable app economy.

Biography

Alexander Ross is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. He was a graduate fellow at the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology from 2018 to 2020. His research interests include the political economy of communication, critical platform studies, and the gamblification of games. His dissertation project focuses on how platformization and app economies are transforming digital gambling and creating new forms of cultural production.