ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the role of cuteness in the design of what I call gambleplay media, a category that includes terrestrial and online slots. In gamble-play media the fun aspects of gambling are privileged over winning or losing, and cuteness is often a key element in enabling this enjoyment. This shift in focus establishes new dynamics of seduction and control for a media format in which gambling practices are staged to resemble other interactive technologies such as video games. In cute slots, imagery that we might ordinarily associate with children, along with the symbolic dichotomy of care/domination that the gambler establishes with animal characters featured on and in these devices is an essential part of the amusement, as is the sociality that may be released by cuteness. Hence, as I will argue, designers endeavor to make gambling look and feel harmless by incorporating elements of popular culture and imagery that infantilizes players of games of chance. In particular, this chapter argues childlike cuteness as delineated by Konrad Lorenz in his Kindchenschema is deployed as a rhetorical tool that foregrounds gambling’s playfulness and minimizes or masks its many dangers in terms of problematic consumption and the targeting of vulnerable populations, some members of which might be particularly drawn to images of cute, cuddly animals.
