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Gaming lounges in India afford socially productive gambling: The moral economy and foundations of play in Udaipur, Rajasthan

August 2024
Ethos 52(5)

DOI:10.1111/etho.12443

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CC BY 4.0

Authors:

Jeffrey G Snodgrass

Colorado State University

Michael G. Lacy

Colorado State University

Evan Polzer

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

Chakrapani Upadhyay

Government college pratapgarg

We use ethnographic observations, interviews, and surveys to illuminate video game‐related gambling in India, where players use as currency decorative in‐game weapon covers referred to as skins . We focus on gaming and gambling related to virtual items acquired in the popular shooter game Counter‐Strike: Global Offensive , and our study unfolds among young adults who play in face‐to‐face centers called gaming lounges or zones . We consider how networks of video game players, themselves influenced by familial and societal demands, form moral economies that regulate why video game items are exchanged and how they are evaluated. Further, we use moral foundations theory to clarify ethical plurality in these settings, with tensions between moral demands shaping how and whether skins exchanges are judged to be socially productive or harmful. We show how gaming lounge owners’ personal values, some religiously informed, render emerging adults who play in these settings less at risk of excessive gambling, which is not tolerated either within close‐knit gaming groups or broader society. Overall, our analysis points to the utility of bringing into dialogue moral economy and moral foundations perspectives to uncover the cultural meanings of linked gaming and gambling in this context.

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Received: 16 January 2024 Accepted: 26 July 2024

DOI: 10.1111/etho.12443

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Gaming lounges in India afford socially productive

gambling: The moral economy and foundations of

play in Udaipur, Rajasthan

Jeffrey G. Snodgrass1Michael G. Lacy2Evan Polzer3

Chakrapani Upadhyay4

1Department of Anthropology and Geography,

Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado,

USA

2Department of Sociology, Colorado State

University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

3Department of Veterans Affairs, Rocky Mountain

Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical

Center for Suicide Prevention, Aurora, Colorado,

USA

4Department of Sociology, S.M.B. Government P.G.

College, Nathdwara, Rajasthan, India

Correspondence

Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, Anthropology and Geography,

Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.

Email: jeffrey.snodgrass@colostate.edu

Funding information

U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of

Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Grant/Award

Number: 1600448

Abstract

We use ethnographic observations, interviews, and surveys

to illuminate video game-related gambling in India, where

players use as currency decorative in-game weapon covers

referred to as skins. We focus on gaming and gambling related

to virtual items acquired in the popular shooter game Counter-

Strike: Global Offensive, and our study unfolds among young

adults who play in face-to-face centers called gaming lounges

or zones. We consider how networks of video game play-

ers, themselves inﬂuenced by familial and societal demands,

form moral economies that regulate why video game items

are exchanged and how they are evaluated. Further, we use

moral foundations theory to clarify ethical plurality in these

settings, with tensions between moral demands shaping how

and whether skins exchanges are judged to be socially pro-

ductive or harmful. We show how gaming lounge owners’

personal values, some religiously informed, render emerging

adults who play in these settings less at risk of excessive gam-

bling, which is not tolerated either within close-knit gaming

groups or broader society. Overall, our analysis points to the

utility of bringing into dialogue moral economy and moral

foundations perspectives to uncover the cultural meanings of

linked gaming and gambling in this context.

KEYWORDS

gambling, India, morality, online computer games, play, social norms

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Ethos. 2024;1–20. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/etho 1

2ETHOS

INTRODUCTION

The rising popularity of competitive video game play (hereafter “esports”) has been accompanied by rapid

growth in gambling (Hardenstein, 2017). In popular video games such as the ﬁrst-person shooter Counter-

Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) (Valve, 2012), this has involved players pursuing decorative in-game weapon

covers referred to as skins (Ståhl & Rusk, 2020) (see Figure 1). Ownership of these digital objects can be

transferred temporarily or permanently, and so skins can be wagered on CS:GO matches and in games

of chance on third-party gambling sites not ofﬁcially afﬁliated with esports leagues nor sanctioned by

the developers of CS:GO (Macey & Hamari, 2018). Such activities have led researchers to investigate

conjoined gaming and gambling such as found in CS:GO as a possible public health concern, with some

framing it as a new behavioral addiction (González-Cabrera et al., 2022; King & Delfabbro, 2020).

In the current article, we engage such concerns by considering the role of sociocultural context in shap-

ing video game-related exchanges such as gambling among emerging adults (ages ∼18–25) in Udaipur,

Rajasthan, India. The young adults who feature in our study use as a gambling currency decorative weapon

skins from CS:GO, a popular game in these settings. We present ethnographic ﬁndings—observations,

interviews, and surveys—conducted in three face-to-face centers referred to as gaming lounges or zones

(Figure 2). We use the notion of moral economies (Palomera & Vetta, 2016) to explore how exchanges such as

these can be embedded within social relationships that lead such transactions to be ethically evaluated as

socially productive or harmful. We employ moral foundations theory (Graham et al., 2013) to help clarify the

more speciﬁc meanings of “moral” in particular moral economies, highlighting the ethically plural manner

that skins exchanges are framed and experienced in these settings.

Our analysis entails examining how friendships among players—and thus ethical concerns with fair-

ness and cheating and loyalty and betrayal, important domains within moral foundations theory (see

also Mains, 2013; Zuckerman, 2020)—might help to regulate gambling behavior in close-knit gaming

groups. Nonetheless, those gaming friendships do still encourage players to engage in some degree of

skins exchange and gambling, which in this Udaipur context are fraught with moral risk. This leads us to

further investigate whether relationships formed in gaming groups might be perceived to subvert broader

societal goals related to education, marriage, and work—with authority and subversion another ethical

FIGURE 1 Monetary value of CS:GO skins, based on “Factory New” rarity (the highest in-game rarity and most sought after),

reading from top-left to bottom-right: $1078, $1807, $1372, $1462. These skins represent some of the most expensive found in

game, due to their aesthetics, utilization in game, and use by professional players. Many of the more accessible “high tier” skins range

in price from $250 to $500 USD. Data gathered from CSGOStash.com, which aggregates market pricing from a number of sources.

15481352, 0, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/etho.12443, Wiley Online Library on [13/08/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License

THE MORAL ECONOMY AND FOUNDATIONS OF PLAY 3

FIGURE 2 An Udaipuri gaming zone or lounge.

domain within moral foundations theory—thus creating for young adult gamers difﬁcult to resolve social

and ethical conﬂicts. The details of our study context led us to consider how local networks of video game

players might form moral economies, that is, normatively regulated exchange relations. We expected those

networks of exchange in turn to exist within a greater Udaipuri moral economy, which could help regulate

the trade of CS:GO skins, as well as the extent that such activity was experienced as socially productive or

disruptive. We pay particular attention to how gaming zone owners’ personal values, shaped by ethical and

religious norms, can inﬂuence skins transactions in these settings. Overall, we aimed to develop an ana-

lytical framework that illuminates the social negotiations and moral ambiguities characteristic of certain

forms of play, with our analysis clarifying dynamics of linked gaming and gambling in Udaipur and having

broader utility as well.

We begin by introducing research on gaming, gambling, and morality that informs our approach. This

is followed by, ﬁrst, a presentation of our research questions and, second, a fuller description of the setting

and methods of our study. After presenting our ﬁndings, we discuss the moral economy and foundations

of play in this setting, with implications beyond the empirical case presented here.

GAMING, GAMBLING, AND MORALITY

The social and moral lives of gamers

Online games can be experienced as highly social places where players build friendships and relieve felt

isolation (Schiano et al., 2014). Many players ﬁnd in online games opportunities to build and develop

social relationships that bridge them to new ties that help them practically in their lives (Huvila et al., 2010;

Trepte et al., 2012). Others more deeply bond to fellow players who share their passions (Nardi & Harris,

2006;Taylor,2009). Players often join online gaming groups like guilds or clans—the latter term used in

CS:GO, the focus of the current article—whose explicit purpose is to coordinate joint gaming actions,

but that also provide meaningful social contact (Chen, 2012; Nardi, 2010; Snodgrass et al., 2016;Taylor,

2012). In certain parts of the world like Asia, players frequently game together in face-to-face internet

cafes (Chee, 2006; Nardi, 2010). These online and ofﬂine gaming groups and places can be experienced as

socially meaningful “third places” between the ﬁrst space of home and the second of work, like the pubs

4ETHOS

and coffeehouses that preceded them (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). And those gaming groups and

places can be important sources of belonging, meaning, and “gamer” identity that can positively impact

well-being, including that of minority-status gamers (Gray, 2018;Kaye,2019; Mandryk et al., 2020; Ruberg

& Phillips, 2018; Snodgrass et al., 2021).

As social spaces, games provide players opportunities not only to enjoy themselves but also to act

in concert with others in ways that are judged to be desirable, right, worthy of pursuit, and thus moral

(Hornbeck, 2016). In some cases, gaming guild leaders aim to instill in their members explicit virtues such

as respect for others, tolerance for diversity, and doing good in the world (Snodgrass et al., 2017). In such

cases, guild leaders can be celebrated not only for their gaming skill but also for their personal values

and leadership, with some becoming akin to role models and even ethical guides who steer their group

members’ behaviors both inside and outside the game (Snodgrass, 2023). Such gaming groups can develop

informal and formal rules and governance systems for regulating members’ behaviors in accordance with

shared norms and values, with sometimes well-deﬁned sanctions for punishing inappropriate and even

unethical play (Lisk et al., 2012; Warmelink, 2014).

In contrast to the morally integrative aspects of gaming stands the often morally suspect status of video

game play within larger social contexts. The commitments of gamers to their play and to their groups can

conﬂict with conventional social and familial responsibilities and thus be categorized with other substances

and behaviors as dangerously “addictive” (Deleuze et al., 2018). An example is the way that video game

play in China has come to be associated by the public with moral vices like the consumption of opium

in earlier historical periods (Golub & Lingley, 2008; Szablewicz, 2010). These societal perceptions can be

magniﬁed by gamers’ long hours and passion for their play that implicitly—and sometimes explicitly—

subvert mainstream values associated with education, work, and the meaning of success (Snodgrass et al.,

2014; Stromberg, 2009). Scholars have remarked how such perceptions can take the form of moral panics,

with video game “addiction” becoming the target of campaigns aimed at regulating what appears to be a

health hazard and moral vice impacting young people (Bean et al., 2017). In such cases, video game players,

including those in India, can experience conﬂict between commitments to their play and to their gaming

groups, on the one hand, and to their families and larger society, on the other, which can create troubling

cognitive and emotional dissonance that is difﬁcult to resolve (Snodgrass et al., 2021).

Socially productive and morally suspect gambling

Like video game play, gambling can also be viewed as socially integrative, not just a source of conﬂict.

In Geertz’s well-known interpretation of Balinese ritualized gambling on cockﬁghts, anthropologists and

the Balinese themselves can read gambling as a text—that is, as a publicly viewable set of symbols and

practices, which, when performed, became an identity story the Balinese told themselves and others about

themselves (Geertz, 2005). The Balinese most fervently bet on roosters that represented their own vil-

lage or some other locally important social grouping such as lineage groups or irrigation societies. To do

otherwise, the Balinese would preface those bets, often small side wagers, with “I’m sorry.” For Geertz, rit-

ualized gambling in this context did not primarily concern only personal matters, nor was it typically about

winning money. Rather, betting on cockﬁghts provided the Balinese with opportunities to display their

social identities and ethical commitments, with the roosters being symbolic vehicles of those identities and

commitments. Geertz thus showed how local norms regulated how Balinese wagered on cockﬁghts, and

how potentially transgressive behavior (like gambling) could instead work to reproduce social relationships

and hierarchies.

This conjunction of social and moral concerns in the context of gambling is common around the world,

with gambling proﬁtably understood as an exchange system embedded in broader social reciprocal orders

(Binde, 2005). As socially embedded, gambling is ethically evaluated according to the dominant modes of

exchange and accompanying ethos (Binde, 2005): where sharing and altruism are widespread, gambling

can be judged as antisocial theft, even when all parties enter freely into the wagers; where feuding and

appropriation of others’ resources are common, gambling can be valued as a symbolic contest congruent

THE MORAL ECONOMY AND FOUNDATIONS OF PLAY 5

with broader social aims and themes; and in market and consumer societies, gambling is regulated as a

commodity in ways that minimize its moral stigma and despite the potential for harm make it broadly

acceptable (in regard to the ﬁnal example, see also Schüll, 2012).

In India, gambling receives various moral evaluations, either as potentially socially productive (and thus

ethically good) or as threatening to erode social commitments and responsibilities (and thus a vice) (Bene-

gal, 2013). On the socially productive side, Indians can view betting as helping to reafﬁrm conventional

familial and other relationships, with games of chance featuring in Hindu religious texts like the Rig Veda

and Mahabharata (Benegal, 2013, 2063) and being common but not condemned during Hindu religious hol-

idays like Diwali, as long as it remains conﬁned to exchanges among close friends and family (Puri, 2013,

74−75). Likewise, ethnography has shown how informal loans of cash between gamblers at a New Delhi

racetrack, alongside other shared activities, can help produce meaningful friendships based on mutual

pleasure, trust, and interdependence (Puri, 2016). Such activities can even be the source of alternate

social identities beyond more conventional Indian ones based on family, religion, and social class (Puri,

2013). Nonetheless, youth gambling in India can be seen to erode more conventional social and familial

responsibilities and thus can get classiﬁed with other moral vices (Bhakta, 2017, 131). Religious norms and

references to religious purity can place important checks on gambling behavior, as for example, when a

Sikh individual in one study of gambling responds to a question about Sikhism, drinking, and gambling at

the forementioned Delhi racetrack with, “I am sorry. I prefer not to talk about God when I drink. When I

talk about God I want to be pure” (Puri, 2013, 75).

RESEARCH APPROACH AND QUESTIONS: THE MORAL ECONOMY

AND FOUNDATIONS OF SKINS EXCHANGES

Our study of CS:GO skins exchanges is based on the prior research just described, and particularly on

earlier studies of the moral evaluation of gaming and gambling. We focus on how cultural values about

what is morally desirable, right, and worthy of pursuit might inﬂuence judgments of such activities in these

Udaipuri settings. We treat as potential moral economies (Palomera & Vetta, 2016) the gaming zones fea-

tured in our study, with us anticipating that each of those places would have a distinct ethical culture that

could inﬂuence how individuals evaluated skins exchanges in those settings (Zuckerman, 2020). We also

consider how gaming zones are in turn situated in Udaipur’s larger moral economy, with synergies and

conﬂicts between different exchange systems potentially shaping emerging adults’ gaming and gambling

experiences in these contexts. In employing the term moral economy, we highlight how economic exchanges

(like CS:GO skins transactions) can be embedded within mutual social obligations that emerge when peo-

ple transact with each other over time (Carrier, 2018). We anticipate it is the upholding or breaking of

social obligations—among friends who play together, but also among gamers and their families—that can

produce the distinctive pleasure and pain of gaming and gambling in this context.

We also examine how these exchange patterns might vary across the three gaming zones featured in our

study, due in part to differing normative standards and social relationships characteristic of each lounge.

To describe the ethically plural manner that skins exchanges can be evaluated in Udaipur, we turn to moral

foundations theory (Shweder & Haidt, 1993). This perspective has roots in classic psychological anthropo-

logical and cultural psychological research, speciﬁcally Shweder’s “three ethics” approach to moral thought

and behavior and Fiske’s “relational models” theory (Rai & Fiske, 2011; Shweder et al., 1997). We ground

our analysis on key moral domains identiﬁed within this tradition as prevailing widely across cultures,

including fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, care/harm, and sanctity/degradation

(Graham et al., 2013; Haidt & Joseph, 2007). Similar to Puri’s ethnography at the Delhi racetrack, we

anticipate that CS:GO skins exchanges might help our respondents create socially meaningful friendships

based on trust, with moral concerns with fairness/cheating and loyalty/betrayal featuring prominently in

those transactions. Nonetheless, those gaming friendships do encourage the morally fraught behavior of

gambling, which can conﬂict with other Udaipuri norms and values. Based on other themes revealed by

prior research on gaming and gambling, we thus also investigate in this context how authority/subversion

6ETHOS

might ﬁgure in the lives of young Indian males on the verge of adulthood, with excessive gaming and

gambling potentially subverting normative expectations related to gamers’ impending arranged marriages,

careers, and ability to meet family and community expectations. Further, we consider how gaming lounge

owners might provide moral care to their young adult customers, restraining them from harmful and exces-

sive gambling, which, as the earlier literature on gambling in India suggests, could include in this context

references to religious sanctity and bodily purity.

This focus and perspective led us to pose the following research questions:

RQ1. Are CS:GO skins exchanges framed and experienced as moral, given what studies of gaming and

gambling in India and elsewhere suggest?

RQ2. How and to what extent do skins transactions show moral economic features, that is, the embedding

of exchange within normative social obligations?

RQ3. How do speciﬁc concerns identiﬁed in moral foundations theory—fairness, loyalty, authority,

care, and sanctity—shape behaviors and experiences associated with CS:GO exchanges such as

gambling?

RQ4. To what extent do conﬂicts between friendship as opposed to respect for parental and societal

authority shape whether transactions in these contexts are experienced as pleasurable and even

virtuous as opposed to socially problematic?

Setting: Gambling for CS:GO skins in Udaipur

Located in the southern part of the Indian state of Rajasthan, the city of Udaipur is the administrative head-

quarters of the district. Udaipur’s population was just over 450,000 people at the time of the 2011 census, 5

years before the beginning of our study (Chandramouli & General, 2011). Many of Udaipur’s young adult

gamers were university students and thus in their early 20s. At this age, our respondents lived with their

families. Most of these Udaipuri young adults would soon have their marriages arranged by their parents,

and as such demonstrating the ability to earn a living and thus land a suitable spouse, partially premised on

their school performance, was a pressure keenly felt. Of note, women and girls did not frequent Udaipur’s

gaming zones. Within this patriarchal setting, this would have been perceived as shameful behavior—given

the opportunities to interact closely with members of the opposite sex—that risked compromising their

marriage prospects. It was of course possible for players to interact with members of the opposite sex in

networked play, or to not even know the gender of players one interacted with. Nonetheless, we did not

witness such cross-gender interactions, and players’ inevitable default assumption (surely wrong in many

cases when opponents were online unknown others) was that other players in the game were men.

Young people in Udaipur play casual games on cellphones and other mobile devices. However, striving

to be “true” or “real” gamers, the individuals featuring in our study also played more “serious” and “hard-

core” games (their words), such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). CS:GO is a multiplayer

ﬁrst-person shooter where teams of players compete against each other as either terrorists or counter-

terrorists, each team striving to accomplish a set objective, such as planting a bomb at a target site or

rescuing hostages. The popularity of this game in these lounges was unsurprising given that CS:GO has

long been a premier esport (alongside other popular games, like League of Legends and DOTA), with global

tournaments featuring the game’s best players oftentimes being broadcast globally to millions of viewers.

Playing CS:GO at a competitive level required a high level of commitment, and there were only about 50

such players of CS:GO in the entire city of Udaipur, most of whom we knew personally.

Playing CS:GO competitively required not only a stable broadband connection but also expensive com-

puter equipment. This meant that our respondents, though typically middle-class and up and often having

their own home computers, played CS:GO in gaming zones, where both the computers and the network

were superior. In this context, being middle-class meant that these players’ parents typically worked in

business, education, or for the government, and their families generally had high disposable income to

support leisure activities like gaming. Gaming zones typically charged between 20 and 30 rupees per hour

THE MORAL ECONOMY AND FOUNDATIONS OF PLAY 7

(less than half a US dollar), with reduced prices offered to regular customers. In the zones, players would

connect to others via Steam, a video game support service owned by Valve, the developer and distributor

of CS:GO.

The young men who feature in this study, like CS:GO players around the world, gamble on the internet

using rare virtual decorative covers for digital weapons that are colloquially called skins. Skins are valued

cosmetic items that change the appearance of CS:GO weapons from their typical ﬁnished gunmetal or

polished steel into more elaborate decorative designs, which feature dragons, ﬂames, calligraphy, and intri-

cately detailed scenery (again, see Figure 1). Certain rare CS:GO skins used by prominent esports athletes

fetched high prices in the marketplace in the 100s or even 1000s of US dollars and, as prestige mark-

ers, were highly sought after by local gamers, leading some into risky gambling to obtain them. At the

time of our research, CS:GO gambling was a billion-dollar global industry, with some players wagering

thousands of US dollars on outcomes, which could result in substantial ﬁnancial and psychosocial stress

(Assael, 2017; Macey & Hamari, 2018; Martinelli, 2017). (We generally reference US dollars in this article

as a benchmark familiar to readers, as often did our respondents when talking to members of our research

team or even among each other, though we sometimes defer to respondents’ explicit reference to round

ﬁgures involving Indian rupees.)

CS:GO skins are owned in the sense that players can place them on their weapons, sell them in var-

ious online marketplaces, and trade them. While conventional monetary markets for skins exist such as

the sanctioned Steam Marketplace organized and operated by Valve, these cosmetic items could also be

converted into betting chips on various unsanctioned, third-party internet sites. When a player earned or

unlocked a skin, it was linked to their Steam account and inventory. Third-party sites used Steam’s API

(application programing interface) to communicate between Steam servers (and thus players’ inventories)

and their own, enabling players to move or deposit skins from Steam onto their site. From there, based

on the current market value of the skin, these websites converted that skin into the appropriate amount

of their own site’s currency, which could be gambling chips, US dollars, or some other national or digital

medium of exchange. So, for example, a player might earn in-game a M4 Howl weapon skin (Figure 1)and

then go to a third-party site and link that skin with their Steam account using Steam’s API. The third-party

site would then ask for permission to move the skin to their server. Once moved in this way, the skin

was then held essentially as collateral, and players were given the value of the skin in that site’s preferred

currency or betting chips to use for wagers. Valve, the operator of Steam, has noted that such third-party

use of their API is illegal. Nevertheless, they have been slow pursuing legal action against these sites. Also,

players are aware that third-party sites might not be trustworthy, given that they often shut down unexpect-

edly and sometimes strategically to swindle gamblers of skins inventories and earnings. Thus, some players

avoided these websites altogether and instead exchanged skins personally with each other.

METHODS

From 2016 to 2019, we conducted ethnographic observations and interviews during the summers in

Udaipur. As Snodgrass had worked in this city for decades, and Upadhyay is from Udaipur, we relied

on prior contacts to quickly establish trust and intimacy with the persons and groups of interest to our

study. After visiting cybercafes offering general internet services, we learned that only three gaming cen-

ters catered speciﬁcally to CS:GO players. These three zones or lounges and their regular players—typically

12–15 regulars in each zone—became the focus of the study. Snodgrass usually visited one of them during

mornings between 1.5 and 3 h, and another one in the evenings for roughly the same amount of time.

For each visit, he observed gaming zone activities and conversed informally with small groups of zone

customers about what they were doing. These informal group interviews included gaming zone owners,

who, as we will see, developed close relationships with their customers, often framed in a familial idiom as

fraternal or avuncular. Toward the end of the ﬁrst summer of research, Snodgrass participated in CS:GO

gaming himself. All of this was recorded in shorthand ﬁeldnote jottings, which were expanded evenings

into fuller scenes (Emerson et al., 2011).

8ETHOS

Snodgrass often spoke with respondents about their lives outside of gaming, including about the pres-

sures they felt from family and broader society regarding their careers and impending arranged marriages.

He also spoke with others—gaming and internet center owners, parents, and other family members—

about video games and the internet. This broadened our understanding of Rajasthani social norms, as did

our prior research in the area and Upadhyay’s own experiences with arranged marriage.

We also distributed a ﬁeld questionnaire to collect more systematically demographic information includ-

ing student status, age, SES, and work status. In that survey, we asked players their preferred gaming

zone and about the time they spent each week gaming. Further, we asked respondents to rate from 5 =

Strongly Agree to 1 =Strongly Disagree the extent to which they agreed with the two statements that

they enjoyed gambling for skins and sometimes bet more in skins activity than they could afford and even went into debt

(the latter a proxy for socially problematic gambling, ethnographically derived from our observations and

conversations).

Snodgrass, who is proﬁcient in Hindi, worked with Upadhyay, a native Hindi speaker, to translate the

English language questions into Hindi. Working together in this way as they had in other projects ensured

that survey items connected closely to respondents’ gaming experiences (based on Snodgrass’s extensive

and ongoing ﬁeldwork on this topic) while remaining scrupulously consistent with standard written Hindi

(Upadhyay was newer to gaming research). It was decided to present all survey items in both Hindi and

English, given that respondents’ ﬁrst language was Hindi (or Rajasthani), though they often preferred to

converse in English, especially about gaming-related matters. We distributed the survey to members of the

three gaming zones where we worked. Coordinating with the zone owners, whom we by then knew well,

we provided each respondent with several hours of free play time as an incentive to complete our survey.

We received 48 responses suitable for analysis, which was close to the entire population of serious CS:GO

players in Udaipur. As we knew each of the survey respondents by name, we were able to connect our

observations and interviews with the questionnaire data, which further enriched our analysis.

RESULTS

Friend networks, social/market value, and CS:GO skins exchanges

The gaming centers that featured in our study were located near high schools and universities, as the bulk

of the CS:GO players were students. During the week, gamer customers frequented zones between day

classes for 2–3 h, or after classes in the late afternoon and early evening, or both. Sundays were a “full rush”

day, with some individuals spending much of their day there. Groups of friends generally coordinated with

each other their visits to their preferred gaming zones. Computers were typically arranged in rows of ﬁve,

with rows facing each other.

In a typical CS:GO gameplay session, our respondents would visit the online CS:GO game lobby, where

they would chat and invite friends to play with them in their group, some from their same gaming zone,

others networked online. Players would communicate with others both via text-based and voice chat. A

quick CS:GO match might be over in under 30 min, though more engaging matches lasted between 45 and

60 min, with our respondents taking frequent breaks to smoke, sip chai (tea) and colas, snack, and simply

hang out with friends.

Table 1gives an overview of CS:GO players in our sample, the bulk of them students (83%), with most

in their 20s. The median hours of play was 10–19 h per week, with over a third of respondents reporting

they played 35 h a week or more. Almost 80% of respondents reported themselves as being of middle-

class status. The bulk of our respondents (67%) were currently not employed, and their ﬁnancial lives were

largely known to and controlled by their parents. However, their parents’ salaries and disposable income

were sufﬁcient to pay the gaming zone fees, which would have seemed exorbitant to members of Udaipur’s

working class.

Per the research questions established above, the moral dimension of game play is central to our interests

here, and trust and friendship are key aspects within that domain. Thus, in one gaming zone discussion,

THE MORAL ECONOMY AND FOUNDATIONS OF PLAY 9

TAB LE 1 Univariate distributions of variables.

Variable Response category and percent

Student status (N=48) Student

(83.3%)

Nonstudent

(16.7%)

Age (N=47) 16–19 (36.2%) 20–21 (31.9%) 22–33 (31.9%)

Hours played per week (N=46) 0–9 (21.7%) 10–19 (43.5%) 35–55 (34.8%)

SES (N=47) Middle class

(78.7%)

Wealthy

(21.3%)

Employment (N=48) Not working

(66.7%)

Part-time (12.5%) Full time (20.8%)

“Enjoy gambling on video games”

(N=48)

Strongly agree

(14.6%)

Agree (15.0%) Neutral (12.5%) Disagree

(16.7%)

Strongly disagree

(31.2%)

“Bet more than I can afford on

video games.” (N=48)

Strongly agree

(4.2%)

Agree (20.8%) Neutral (12.5%) Disagree

(29.2%)

Strongly disagree

(33.3%)

Preferred gaming

zone (N=48)

Chill Zone

(27.1%)

Gamers Forever!

(22.9%)

King’s Landing

(39.6%)

Unafﬁliated

(10.4%)

we asked gamers if their online and ofﬂine CS:GO friends were friends in the same way. One 18-year-old

gamer, Praveer,1told us he had three online friends “I can trust,” one from Sweden, one India, and one

Dubai. By trust and thus by extension friendship, he, and Kshana, who had joined the conversation, meant

something speciﬁc: “They will not cheat us.” Praveer had met these online friends ﬁrst as opponents. He

thought they played well, started chatting with them, found they had much in common, and so added them

to his Steam friends list. He told us he knew some about their lives outside the game and that “they feel

like real friends,” again emphasizing, “because I can trust them.”

Sharing of CS:GO’s decorative weapon skins formed one standard of value by which trust and friend-

ship could be assessed. Recall that these skins could be digitally transferred to other players, and so

Udaipur’s gamers often lent others their favorite weapon skins for matches. However, sometimes a “fake

friend” (their term) might cheat and keep the skin after the match, something a “real” friend (again,

our respondents’ phrasing) would not do. So, Udaipur’s players only loaned skins to “good” trustwor-

thy friends. Skin loans were used to test an unknown friendship, and the large monetary value of certain

skins made them particularly effective measures of “true” and not easily feigned friendship. Players with

good skin inventories might lend some to others, to see if they returned them. Praveer described how an

online friend once lent him a knife skin worth $400, one Praveer had coveted in the skins marketplace.

Praveer returned it because they were good friends. By contrast, he had cheated another Chinese player of

skins, pretending to be his friend, so that he could get his skin.

Skins were important to Udaipur’s players, though they were purely aesthetic and added no functional

advantage to game play. Our respondents sometimes posted screenshots on Steam of their favorite skins.

During gameplay, players could see and sometimes use other players’ weapons (say, after killing their

avatars in the game). This could instill desire for certain skins, with the desirability of many popular and

highly sought-after skins being driven by their use by prominent esports athletes and personalities. Like-

wise, when defeated by an opponent, messages with the player’s and skin’s names and images ﬂashed on

one’s screen: “Rampager7 killed you with AK47 Candy Apple,” for example, which might also instill desire

for a particularly attractive skin.

Udaipur’s gamers often spoke about expensive skins. One respondent, Prakash, spoke of a pistol skin

he wanted that was worth $600, with other skins worth up to $13,000. He showed us a pistol skin he had

worth $283, another knife skin valued at $1100, and numerous other personal “favorites” (his term) valued

at $20, $100, and so forth, substantial sums for these Indian students.

10 ETHOS

Most CS:GO players bought, sold, traded, and wagered skins, each of which had a monetary dollar

value provided by the Steam Marketplace system, which compiled data on all transactions posted on their

digital trading hub. Our respondents often tried to upgrade their collection. Praveer told us, for example,

“I don’t have so many skins now. I had some, but I lost them gambling. Now the gambling sites I knew

are closed [where CS:GO skins could be digitally stored and wagered], so I can’t win them back.” Another

respondent, Suresh, told us he once had $1000 worth of weapons skins, which he sold for half of that,

$500, cashing that out of the game via a PayPal wallet.

Udaipur’s CS:GO players pursued skins by numerous strategies. Most typically, players earned chests in

the game (referred to as crates), which they could open with the purchase of a key (roughly $2.50 at the

time of our research). This process functioned like a casino slot machine, with players shown a spinning

wheel displaying all possible skins to be received from opening this chest. The most common rewards were

at or below the cost of a key, but the opportunity to take home, for example, a $200 combat knife skin,

was always there. Players traded skins with each other through Steam, seeking an advantageous upgrade,

by reviewing Steam’s auction house (or “Marketplace”) and tracking prices attentively. While the skins

themselves could be digitally exchanged within Steam, the monetary transactions happened in person, or

via PayPal and Airtel accounts. Aftab, the owner of one of the three gaming zones studied here, compared

these skins markets to a game of chicken: “Whoever goes ﬁrst [i.e., provides the skin or the cash based on

the agreed upon price] often loses.” That is, the other party often doesn’t deliver as promised, and instead

keeps the skin, and in fact one Udaipuri gamer bragged about cheating a Chinese player, who was quitting

CS:GO and wanted to sell his skins: “I said I’d pay him $100, and then didn’t.”2

Our respondents also wagered skins on matches, either their own or those they watched as spectators.

In these cases, bettors ﬁrst deposited skins or money in third party internet accounts, with winnings dis-

tributed according to matches’ outcomes and odds. Suresh told us at one point he won $500 in skins this

way, which he later sold another player for $350. Good players often bet on themselves during matches,

and some players threw matches, so that they could get better odds on a match wager. Gambling also

occurred through third-party sites, where Udaipuri gamers we knew gambled against others in more com-

plicated ways with skins used as currency. After accruing a valued inventory of skins through gambling,

players might decide to cash out their winnings in the form of skins or digital currency, but players might

return to ﬁnd these venues closed, preventing them from obtaining their stored winnings.

Some of our respondents had substantial skins inventories, some worth hundreds of dollars, though

typical players we knew had only a few moderately rare skins worth perhaps $20. The parents of one gamer

we knew seized his computer because they caught him gambling again after they told him to stop. We heard

of another gamer who amassed a debt of 40,000 rupees (∼$570) through problem gambling, for example,

taking out monetary and skin loans from others, which were never paid back or returned. But we did not

hear ﬁrst-hand of any other similar problems within the Udaipur CS:GO gaming community. Though

skins were admired and coveted, gambling beyond one’s means was deprecated by our respondents. And

gambling for large sums was not generally tolerated in the zones we frequented. Gamers and zone owners

alike knew that problem gambling put them at odds with their families and society more broadly, potentially

jeopardizing their future careers and marriages and, in lounge owners’ cases, their businesses. The latter

was the case because illicit gambling, if it came to the attention of the community and the authorities,

might result in a gaming establishment being shut down. However, the three zones varied in the salience

and enforcement of these generally shared norms, a topic to which we now turn in the next section.

Before turning to variation in relation to gambling across the three gaming zones featured in our study,

note ﬁrst in Table 1how, considering our sample as a whole, our respondents’ reports of enjoying gam-

bling showed substantial variation: almost half reported “Disagree” or “Strongly Disagree” to that survey

item about enjoying skins gambling. Responses of betting more than one could afford (and thus socially

problematic gambling) showed somewhat less variation, with over 60% responding in the disagree cate-

gories. This was consistent with our expectations based on observations and interviews that pleasurable

gambling experiences were more common than problem gambling ones in these contexts, though, at least

based on these survey responses, not by as much as we had anticipated.

THE MORAL ECONOMY AND FOUNDATIONS OF PLAY 11

Pleasurable and socially problematic gambling in Udaipur’s three gaming zones

The ﬁrst gaming center that we studied, The Chill Zone (a pseudonym), was located a few kilometers

from a local university. This zone was started around 2014 by a wealthy merchant in his 60s, Alok, though

now managed by his enterprising son, Navneet, whom we more commonly saw there. The gaming center

was on the second ﬂoor, just above a basement dance parlor and main level restaurant, both also owned

by Alok. Originally in the mobile phone business, Alok, who managed the books but told us he didn’t

understand games, was talked into opening the gaming lounge by Navneet, who casually and occasionally

gamed on his phone and his shop’s gaming consoles but was more a businessman than a gamer. Other

family members and servants staffed the lounge’s front desk, registering CS:GO playtimes and selling

refreshments.

Chill Zone provided large-screen televisions for more casual console play of ﬁghting and sports games,

although much of the space focused on a series of 10 networked computers used for more serious games

like CS:GO (Figure 2features this gaming lounge). Chill Zone was open and spacious, and included a large

snooker table at the center of the main room and well-used sofas and chairs for simply “chilling out.” Black

paint dominated the decor, which attempted a cool, youthful, countercultural vibe. The store’s mascot was

a little pug dog named Whiskey.

Like all three lounges, Chill Zone catered to university and college students. Most of the lounge’s

clientele preferred console games like wrestling or soccer, snooker, or just hanging out and smoking and

snacking, rather than serious CS:GO play. Chill Zone thus catered to Udaipur’s more casual gaming crowd,

and the owners, from a merchant caste and not typically present in the shop, conceptualized it as a busi-

ness opportunity rather than a passion project. Chill Zone was one among the family’s various ventures,

which went well beyond this cluster of three establishments. As Alok the owner once stated to us, grinning,

“Their parents have lots of money. They play all day, then take a break, then play some more. It is nothing

for their parents to pay for this. They’re all rich.”

Given the casual nature of CS:GO play at Chill Zone, it wasn’t surprising that we never witnessed nor

heard there about gambling for skins. CS:GO skins were not generally coveted by this lounge’s clientele,

and so gambling for them did not seem to be associated with either their gaming-related pleasure or with

perceived socially problematic play.

For additional perspective on these ethnographic ﬁndings, our survey revealed that 27% of our sample

favored gaming in Chill Zone, compared to 23% and 40% for Gamers Forever! and King’s Landing,

respectively, the two other gaming zones to be discussed shortly (as shown at the bottom of Table 1).

And unafﬁliated players (who gamed across the various zones) were quite small at only 10% of the sample

(Table 1).

Further, Table 2shows basic associations of the relationship of preferred gaming zone to gambling

enjoyment and socially problematic gambling. There, responses revealed that Chill Zone players typically

strongly disagreed that they enjoyed gambling for skins (69%) and likewise disagreed or strongly disagreed

that they experienced problem gambling of this kind (77% total). Each of these aggregated response

percentages were consistent with our ethnographic observations and interviews that showed little skins

gambling of any kind in this lounge.

The second gaming zone was Gamers Forever! located on the second ﬂoor of a concrete building in a

small market on a main E-W trafﬁc artery, heading toward the same university. The owner and founder

of this gaming center was Aftab, a secular Muslim in his early 30s. He says he opened shop around 2013

because he didn’t want a regular job, and games, which hooked him while he was in the city of Pune as a

student, were his passion. “You need to go to big cities like Pune to see real gaming,” he advised us.

Aftab designed the shop with his wife, an architect. He spoke proudly about how Udaipur’s gamers

preferred his zone’s setup, including extra arm-space that reduced gamers bumping each other when play-

ing. Aftab personally assembled all the computers, using parts he bought in Mumbai, substantially cutting

costs. Despite his earlier efforts to jumpstart games like World of Warcraft and League of Legends, his clients

almost exclusively played CS:GO in his shop.

12 ETHOS

TAB LE 2 “Enjoy” and “Problems” with gambling, by gambling zone.

“Enjoy gambling on video games”

Strongly

agree Agree Neutral Disagree

Strongly

disagree

Chill Zone

(N=13)

0.0% 23.1% 7.7% 0.0% 69.2%

Gamers Forever!

(N=11)

27.3% 27.3% 18.2% 27.3% 0.0%

King’s Landing

(N=19)

21.0% 21.0% 15.8% 21.0% 21.0%

Unafﬁliated

(N=5)

0.0% 40.0% 0.0% 20.0% 40.0%

“Bet more than I can afford on video games.”

Strongly

agree Agree Neutral Disagree

Strongly

disagree

Chill Zone

(N=13)

0.0% 7.7% 15.4% 38.5% 38.5%

Gamers Forever

(N=11)

9.1% 9.1% 18.2% 36.4% 27.7%

King’s Landing

(N=19)

5.3% 26.3% 10.5% 15.8% 42.1%

Unafﬁliated

(N=5)

0.0% 60.0% 0.0% 40.0% 0.0%

On ﬁrst entering Gamers Forever! customers met Aftab at his desk in a small room, where they might

brieﬂy chat, sip tea, power drinks, or colas, and smoke. Aftab sold cold drinks from a small refrigerator

located next to his desk, but more commonly he and his clients ordered tea together, splitting the costs.

Other customers instead directly registered the time in Aftab’s log before heading into a second darkened

room containing 10 computers, which, as in Chill Zone, faced each other in two rows of ﬁve. Though dark-

ened to enhance game play, some partially covered windows let in light. The two rooms were connected

by a wall, with a large glass window, so that Aftab (and others) could keep an eye on the gaming action.

Aftab was typically in his shop, though friends often staffed the desk in exchange for play-credit. Some-

times Aftab would have friends over at night to play, but this was informal and limited to close friends and

serious gamers, as the city restricted night businesses. Aftab lived nearby, telling us he wanted to keep this

game center separate from his home, where he and his family resided jointly with his parents.

Aftab identiﬁed as a true gamer geek, and his business expressed his love of computers and gaming. He

had attended the same high school (St. Paul’s) as many of his clients and was a good student. The gamers

looked up to Aftab, and he inﬂuenced their lives, like a mentor or even big brother, as many told us. What

Aftab most liked about his shop was that “everybody knows everybody,” which he often repeated to us. He

said that his ∼15 regular customers, young men typically around 18–21 years old, were like “family” to him,

which ﬁtted our perception. When customers paid him for play, they often pooled their money and handed

it to him as a big wad, with Aftab typically not really counting it and rounding down good-naturedly, the

whole thing not feeling like a business transaction.

Further, we learned that in Aftab’s shop gamers risked being banned from playing there if he heard of

them engaging in unscrupulous activity, including skins gambling. Conscious of local social and familial

norms, and attentive to his players’ well-being, he maintained close contact with his young adult clients’

families, helping them manage and control any gaming problems he learned about. In some cases, this

meant limiting their play in his zone, or preventing them from playing or even visiting there. Temporary

THE MORAL ECONOMY AND FOUNDATIONS OF PLAY 13

bans might occur during college exam time or until problematic gaming or gambling was addressed. How-

ever, as Aftab himself noted to us, it was difﬁcult for him to limit such gambling, as he was not able to

monitor constantly all his clients’ screens, and players were typically reluctant to report their fellow gamers’

activities of these kinds. Indeed, such close monitoring might have compromised the trust Aftab and other

zone owners had with their customers.

Nonetheless, following this zone’s gaming and gambling norms, established by Aftab and the players

themselves, Gamers Forever! clients typically only gifted or traded skins with each other, as gestures of

friendship. And players there generally wagered only skins they had won themselves in game, did not

purchase many keys to open CS:GO reward chests, and generally kept their wagers small and among

friends, say, to add excitement to a local match. It seemed that gamers who walked that line of gambling

just enough, but not too much, were the most admired in this lounge. Those players were seen as ready to

take risks, which could enhance CS:GO fun. But they also properly controlled their potentially too risky

problematic impulses, and, as such, protected their reputations and pocketbooks alike.

As shown in Table 2, Gamers Forever! respondents were substantially more likely to enjoy gambling for

skins compared to Chill Zone players (55% compared to 23.1%). Likewise, the Gamers Forever! players

reported somewhat more common experiences with socially problematic skins gambling compared to

Chill Zone individuals (18% vs. 8%), due in large part, we think, to the simple fact that Gamers Forever!

individuals engaged in such activity more frequently.

The third gaming lounge, King’s Landing: A Gamer’s Paradise, was also relatively close to the same

university mentioned earlier, but about 10–15 min due south of Chill Zone. The shop was located on a

quiet residential side-street in a neighborhood in an annex to the owner Arjun’s own home, rather than in

a business district. As Arjun noted, location out of sight on a side-street allowed him to proﬁtably open

the shop at night to meet customer demand, but with little risk of harassment from police or others about

transgression of normal business hours. Still, he rarely did this, as he aimed to run a “clean shop,” in his

words. More typically, he opened 9 a.m.–9 p.m.

In his mid to late 30s, Arjun was very much a businessman. He also ran a garment business, but around

2011 he looked to expand, and so he opened a “cybercafe” to provide internet services to his neighbor-

hood. After about a year, the rise of cellphones as the typical access to the internet “killed” this business.

After hearing about online gaming from a friend, he changed over to a gaming zone. Arjun had never

really played video games before opening his lounge, but he now dabbled in them, even getting carried

away and “addicted” in his words to the mobile phone game, Clash of Clans. He also sometimes played

CS:GO passionately and excessively, disregarding his more important familial and business obligations

(his assessment). We witnessed him on several occasions laughing crazily with joy with his customers at a

shared CS:GO match victory.

We often found Arjun, a devout Hindu and Brahmin (i.e., a member of that priestly caste), dressed

in upper-caste starched kurta and pajama garb (loose-ﬁtting traditional cotton garments), working in his

ofﬁce. His ofﬁce was fully separated from the gamers, who played in a darkened, windowless second room

with a usually closed and even locked door. In the gaming room, 10 computers in two rows of ﬁve faced

each other, but were separated by a space that served as a walkway. The room was almost pitch black, to

enhance play, with only the computer screen glows eerily lighting up players’ faces—“That’s how they like

it,” Arjun told us. As in other zones, gamers here wore headsets, and were unable to hear knocks outside,

only opening after being texted, or when someone left. Arjun had installed a video camera so that he could

see what was going on among the gamers, having needed once to intervene after a ﬁght had erupted over

a match.

Speaking of his clients, typically students and of similar age as players in the other zones, Arjun told us:

“They all know my shop. I never advertise. It’s all word of mouth.” As a forward-thinking businessman

and entrepreneur, Arjun had experimented with sponsoring competitive esports matches. He spoke of the

prizes his teams had won in these tournaments, of 3000 and 5000 rupees, which he divided among the

players, not taking a cut himself, instead viewing these events as publicity for his shop. When he organized

the events himself, he charged entry fees, such as 100 rupees per team or even per player, to recoup

expenses. In the same way he was ready to open his zone for after-hours play if there was demand, he

14 ETHOS

knew that his customers were “serious” and “true” gamers. He said 80% of them thought about their

CS:GO rankings, a motivating force for many players around the world, and that they were the “most

serious” gamers in all of Udaipur. “They get really upset about losing, and are hyper-competitive,” he told

us, noting how players from this zone typically won the “friendlies” (matches that did not impact ofﬁcial

CS:GO rankings) with the other lounges, including against Gamers Forever!

Though a businessman, Arjun was a Hindu businessman, and he told us he ran his shop in a “disciplined,

sober manner,” which respected his religion’s traditions. For example, he only offered cold drinks, Amul

and other brand name snacks, and chips in his “clean” or “pure” shop—no meat or alcohol, as might be

the case sometimes in a place like Chill Zone, he said. Gamers had to go outside and stand at a distance if

they wanted to smoke or chew tobacco. He seemed to genuinely care about his customers and thought of

himself in part as their guide. “They have the skills, they just need guidance to succeed,” “also resources,

support, ﬁnances, sponsorship,” he told us, all of which he was ready to provide.

Arjun, attentive to business and ﬁnancial matters, often animatedly discussed CS:GO skins gambling

with us. He didn’t tolerate gambling in his zone, and he described to us banning players from his shop

because of gambling and gaming-related ﬁnancial problems. (Arjun let his players game on some limited

credit, and some could not pay the bill.) Arjun was attuned to the intolerance for gambling in Udaipuri

culture and, as such, to the fact that allowing it could negatively impact his business—another reason

for him to curtail it. Gambling also went against Arjun’s personal Hindu ethic, which led him to limit

skins-related wagers, especially ﬁnancially risky ones. And Arjun prided himself on being a good men-

tor, who cared for his clients and wanted to guide them into adulthood, much as Aftab did. But not a

“true” gamer himself, as he told us, and a little older, he was more like an uncle. Arjun’s own momentary

struggles with passionate and even “addictive” play also brought him closer to his clients, as he under-

stood and sympathized with their compulsions, making him active in stemming problematic play and

gambling.

Overall, Arjun maintained an entrepreneurial eye to managing his business, while balancing proﬁt-

seeking with Hindu morality, personal reputation, and devotion to his clients’ development and well-being.

King’s Landing players did gamble (jua khelte) for and with skins, even sometimes excessively, for many of

the same reasons described in relation to Gamers Forever! But Arjun’s presence, along with this zone’s

informal social norms, helped limit that activity, as was the case for Aftab’s lounge.

For additional perspective on ethnographic ﬁndings in this third zone, Table 2shows how 42% of

King’s Landing players reported enjoying skins-related video game gambling, higher than that reported by

Chill Zone players (23%) but comparable to Gamers Forever! individuals (55%). Further, King’s Landing

gamers reported the highest rates across these three zones of socially problematic gambling, with 32%

strongly agreeing or agreeing that they sometime bet more than they could afford on video games.

Finally, most of Udaipur’s CS:GO gamers we knew had a preferred lounge where they played, feeling

most comfortable there and rivalrous with other places, and we got to know well the core players in each

location. However, some players migrated to where the best gaming action was to be found in the form

of skilled players, gaming rigs, hourly rates, and competition. These players did not express strong social

allegiances to any given lounge, and thus were less bound by each zone’s social norms.

Table 2shows how such unafﬁliated players reported comparable rates of enjoyment of skins gambling

(40%) to the other two zones where that activity was common (55% and 42% in Gamers Forever! and

King’s Landing, respectively, as reported earlier). However, that small sample of ﬁve individuals showed

substantially higher rates of socially problematic gambling (60%) as compared to individuals who preferred

to game in speciﬁc lounges.

In this section, we’ve presented observational, interview, and survey data to highlight similarities and

differences in skins-related gambling across the three zones featured in this study and among unafﬁliated

gamers. Interested readers can consult supporting information (Supplement 1) for a more formal statis-

tical analysis of associations in our survey data between gaming zone afﬁliation, on the one hand, and

pleasurable and socially problematic video game gambling experiences, on the other.

THE MORAL ECONOMY AND FOUNDATIONS OF PLAY 15

DISCUSSION

In this study, we aimed to document if and how activity and experiences linked to skins exchanges were

shaped by morality. In relation to our ﬁrst research question, RQ1, we found that skins exchanges in

these contexts provided opportunities for young adults to act in ways that were judged to be virtuous and

moral among fellow players, a ﬁnding congruent with other studies of gaming and gambling (e.g., Binde,

2005; Hornbeck, 2016; Snodgrass et al., 2017). In skins exchanges, participants in our study felt compelled

to behave fairly and loyally, constrained as they were by friendship norms (Puri, 2016). By respecting

(or at least appearing to respect) societal condemnations of gambling as immoral, our respondents also

protected their reputations and thus their impending marriages and future careers, which was necessary

given Udaipur’s religious and ethical currents (Benegal, 2013;Bhakta,2017; Puri, 2013).

Much of what we observed also conﬁrmed how skins exchanges unfolded in moral economies (Car-

rier, 2018; Palomera & Vetta, 2016; Zuckerman, 2020). This is because CS:GO skins transactions were

grounded in mutual social obligations that emerged when people exchanged valuable objects with each

other over time, thus answering our second research question, RQ2. Exchanges between fellow gamers

were bound by trust built up over time and by emergent ethical codes of fairness and loyalty. It was those

social obligations, embedded within systems of desire and value, that in part produced the distinctive plea-

sures and pains related to skins exchanges. Acquiring a valuable CS:GO skin could increase one’s social

prestige among fellow gamers, but acquiring it in the wrong way might destroy a player’s reputation, or

at least within certain friend groups. But we could also construe as moral economic transactions between

zone owners and their customers, and indeed between owners and larger society and between gamers

and their families. All these relationships represented long histories and networks of exchange over time,

which, resilient in certain ways, fragile in others, could be bolstered or compromised by gaming zone

activities.

Further, moral foundations theory (Graham et al., 2013; Haidt & Joseph, 2007) provided us with a

framework for describing divergent ethical standards for evaluating gambling in these settings. Per our

third research question, RQ3, we learned that Udaipuri gamers mainly exchanged skins with close friends,

or they gambled with them in small stakes ways to enhance their excitement and gaming pleasure. And the

gamers we knew were acutely aware of the need to be both fair in their dealings with other gamers and loyal

especially to players they considered “close” or “real” friends, with fairness and loyalty constituting key

ethical domains in moral foundations theory. Failing to abide by this code, as we saw, could compromise

individuals’ reputations within gaming communities, which parallels ethnographic accounts of gambling

in other Indian contexts (Puri, 2016). In Udaipur at least, then, the pursuit and ownership of skins was

thus commonly integrated in a healthy and socially productive way into local gamers’ friendship networks:

informal loans of skins to other players, for example, were a way to test the strength of games-based

friendships and to further strengthen the “real” ones. And ethical concerns with fairness/cheating and

loyalty/betrayal, two key moral foundations in the literature we cite, helped to constrain unscrupulous—

and excessive—skins gambling (for similar arguments, see Strimling & Frey, 2020).

Central to Udaipuri gamers’ pleasures was also how video game activities ran counter to mainstream

Indian norms, thus involving authority/subversion, another key domain of moral foundations theory (RQ3).

Gamers could behave in lounges in ways not tolerated at home or elsewhere in polite society. As one

lounge owner put it, “Have you heard how they cuss? And celebrate when they win? All the galis [insults],

the shouting. They could never do that at home.” Outside the watchful purview of parents and other

moral guardians, in these boys’ treehouses (Williams et al., 2006), Udaipur’s CS:GO gamers knew they

could “shout abusive language,” we were told, and also scream, ﬁght, curse, be crude, eat and drink what-

ever they wanted, all permissible gaming zone activities. Udaipur’s gaming zones were thus subversive

spaces, where young adults could carve out alternate social identities (Gray, 2018;Kaye,2019; Ruberg

& Phillips, 2018) that in this case challenged mainstream Indian norms concerning proper thought and

behavior, an idea that has also been described elsewhere in India (Puri, 2013). And belonging to a subver-

sive global counterculture was integral to the pleasures experienced by Udaipur’s CS:GO players both in

16 ETHOS

their gambling and gaming more generally, illuminating the appeal of these lounges and why players spent

time there (Snodgrass et al., 2021).

Nonetheless, excessive gaming and risky gambling could also compromise young adults’ academic stud-

ies and familial reputations, and thus their marriage prospects and future careers. Both Aftab and Arjun,

the owners of Gamers Forever! and King’s Landing, respectively, were conscious of cultural and religious

norms, as well as the reputations of their establishments, and so monitored and limited activity adverse

to the well-being and growth of their young adult customers. This included curtailing high stakes skins

gambling—risky behavior sometimes engaged in by these two zones’ more “serious” clients—which was

not tolerated. On some level, both Aftab and Arjun served as moral proxies for their customers’ parents

and indeed for mainstream Indian society, in the way they managed what might be considered improper

behaviors. Aftab’s approach to gambling, and ultimately his success in helping his customers self-regulate,

emerged from his own status as a gamer insider. Sharing his younger customers’ aspirations and worldview

made him an effective role model and mentor. Arjun, while not a “true” gamer himself, acted more as a

moral guide, providing a ﬁrm and sure hand in helping gamers ﬁnd balance in life and play. Both Aftab

and Arjun clearly cared for their customers, and, out of a desire to protect both these young men and their

businesses from harm—again, a key moral foundation identiﬁed cross-culturally—cultivated an explicit

ethic of care that manifested in their zones’ prohibitions against gambling (RQ3).

We would add that Arjun’s personal commitments emerged from his Hinduism—recall that he belonged

to the Brahmin caste—which was sometimes in tension with both his business interests and indeed his own

“addictive” gaming tendencies. This was apparent in the way, for example, he insisted that his customers

smoke and chew tobacco down the street from his establishment that was also his home. He also did

not allow meat or alcohol at King’s Landing, both of which were tolerated (if in moderation and typically

only after hours) at the other two zones, though he did sell limited amounts of junk food (his phrase)

like chips and sodas. Arjun’s desire to avoid promoting anything that might degrade the sanctity of the

body—an important moral foundation according to the literature we address—helped to further constrain

morally dubious behaviors at King’s Landing. Such moral degradations included excessive gaming and

gambling, which Arjun did not allow, as they were seen as ethically suspect and could compromise both

his customers’ futures and his business (RQ3).

Indeed, it is the tension and ambiguity emerging from these socially and ethically embedded exchanges

that is integral to the pleasures and problems associated with gambling in these contexts. We say this

because transactions that might be seen as moral and virtuous among gamer friends—risky gambling that

nonetheless was constrained by ideas about fairness and loyalty—could be judged immoral in mainstream

society in the way they might compromise one’s future. Likewise, Aftab’s and Arjun’s care for a young

adult gamer by limiting skins activities—morally just action from a certain dominant societal point of

view—could hinder a player’s ability to develop trust with friends by exchanging skins with them. The

gaming friendships featured in this study, then, had their own moral economic logic, as did each lounge

itself and Udaipur as a whole. Nonetheless, diverse moral judgments about gambling in each of those

contexts could not be entirely reconciled with each other. And the pleasures and social risks associated

with gambling in these settings seemed to emerge precisely from that irreconcilability. That is, highly

committed CS:GO gaming and gambling fueled excitement through an ethically grounded alternate sense

of social belonging and friendship, but also risked pushing Udaipur’s gamers to cross moral boundaries that

might compromise their futures. And that moral tension and ambiguity were integral to the simultaneous

pleasures and risks associated with such play activities, thus providing us with an answer to our fourth

research question, RQ4.

Morality in these gaming and gambling contexts, then, was plural rather than singular (Graham et al.,

2013), and thus skins exchanges were fraught with tension and ambiguity. On some level, each of the

moral domains considered in this article helped to constrain gaming and gambling behavior that might

be judged to be socially problematic. Loyalty to fellow gamers prevented unscrupulous skins transactions,

as did respect for social and sacred authorities and local ethics of care. Nonetheless, CS:GO gamers did

encourage each other to acquire and gamble with skins, as ways to demonstrate not only gaming skill and

willingness to take risks but also to show players’ respect for and trust in each other. In this sense, skins

THE MORAL ECONOMY AND FOUNDATIONS OF PLAY 17

acquisition and gambling, though typically restrained within CS:GO friendship economies, did neverthe-

less create potential conﬂicts with other broader Udaipuri moral concerns. In this article, one goal has been

to show how those ethical conﬂicts played out in this setting, and in the process highlight the necessity for

illuminating such moral plurality to properly understand the behaviors and judgments characteristic of the

nested moral economies that have been the focus of analysis.

In highlighting how moral tension was inherent to skins transactions generally and gambling narrowly

in these contexts, our ﬁndings parallel other accounts of friendship and money (Mains, 2013; Zuckerman,

2020). For example, as we described, we encountered cases of Udaipuri gamers trying to cheat other players

in skins exchanges, as when Praveer pretended to be a Chinese gamer’s friend to take advantage of him.

Such a transaction revealed the inherent social and moral tension in such trades: in this case, it was not

yet clear whether the rules of friendship applied, and it was easy enough to shift the register to being an

interaction between strangers, where exchange norms were conﬁgured differently (Nardi & Harris, 2006).

Nonetheless, we also present gambling in ways that differ from other accounts focused on the relationship

between social exchange systems and morality, such as Binde (2005). In contrast to that other analysis, we

cannot say that moral economic judgments about transactions related to gambling are determined here by

dominant modes of exchange. Rather, gambling in these contexts involved a difﬁcult balancing of plural

moral concerns, with moral economy and moral foundations theories proving useful to us in identifying

how ethical exchange systems could exist in nested fashion and in tension with each other within a single

society.

CONCLUSION

Certain dimensions of CS:GO global culture—such as the drive to attain rare and exotic gaming items,

invest in lucrative game items marketplaces, and show off expensive and high status goods—encouraged

gamers to engage in skins acquisition and gambling. Nonetheless, socially disruptive behavior in relation

to skins was not generally tolerated in any of the three lounges featured in our study, constrained as such

behaviors were by ethical mandates to remain loyal to gamer friends and to treat them fairly, moralities of

parenting and care, local business practices and pressures, Aftab’s own geek identity, and Hindu religious

norms.

CS:GO skins, then, could be construed as potent public symbols—echoing Geertz’s classic analysis of

Balinese gambling (Geertz, 2005)—that encapsulated and rendered visible a local set of values or ethos.

In this Indian context, that ethos included: gaming skill and commitment, with some skins symbolizing

esports achievement; the thrill and beauty of battle and human contests of skill, accented by decorative

skins; luck and even fate, with some gamers blessed with rare skin drops, or with gambling wins, others

not; friendship and trust, in how expensive skins provided CS:GO players a means to render visible and

thus assess the truth and value of their personal relationships with other gamers; and also ultimately respect

for the broader familial and societal values within which play in CS:GO gaming zones was situated.

Employing moral economy theory directed our attention to the way that skins transactions in these

settings were shaped by ethical concern for the welfare of exchange partners rather than by purely self-

interested instrumental aims (Carrier, 2018; Palomera & Vetta, 2016). Moral foundations theory in turn

prompted us to attend to the way that moral commitments in these contexts might be plural rather than

singular, that is, guided by multiple and even conﬂicting principles like fairness, loyalty, respect for author-

ity, care, and religious sanctity (Graham et al., 2013). Combining the two theoretical perspectives in the

manner we have allowed us to better explain moral ambiguity and tension surrounding skins exchanges in

these settings, with such transactions being judged at once good and virtuous for some and socially corro-

sive for others. Overall, employing anthropological perspectives, and speciﬁcally bringing moral economy

and moral foundations theories together in conversation with each other, we have aimed to clarify how

social and ethical concerns could shape gaming and gambling behavior and experience, a topic of interest

not only to scholars but to the broader public as well.

18 ETHOS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We appreciate Colorado State University and its Department of Anthropology and Geography for ﬁnancial

and other support for this research. We thank the many gamers from India and around the world for their

thoughtful engagement with our research in its various phases. We thank the Dr. Y. S. Jhala family for their

hospitality and support for our research.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The authors declare no conﬂicts of interest.

ORCID

Jeffr ey G. Snodgrass https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2725-8063

ENDNOTES

1We use pseudonyms in all references to gaming zones, owners, and players.

2For example, Players A and B agree to a deal, with Player A trading a skin, and Player B offering, say, $100 for it via PayPal. Player

A can ﬁrst trade the item to Player B over Steam (with Player B not offering any Steam items in return, which would be the normal

case), with Player B then (hopefully) fulﬁlling their promise and following up by sending $100 to Player A’s PayPal account. Or,

Player B can start the exchange with the PayPal amount, and Player A can then follow with the Steam trade. What Aftab is referring

to here is the fact that either one of these players can renege on the deal. That is, Player A has sent the trade on Steam, but Player

B can just refuse to send the money via PayPal. The transaction has happened on Steam, Player B has the skin, and they are not

under any obligation to send the money to Player A via PayPal. Or, if Player A receives the money via PayPal ﬁrst, they can choose

to just not send the skin over Steam. They have the cash and can simply block the player on Steam and PayPal. Steam and PayPal

are two distinct digital systems. As such, players cannot simply go to PayPal and claim that someone scammed them because PayPal

does not control what players do on Steam. Similarly, players cannot go to Steam and raise an issue because trading skins for actual

currency (like US dollars) is against their terms of ser vice. From Steam’s point of view, the player who was cheated had willingly

engaged in a skins trade (though as noted they did not get a skin in return as they wanted cash), and so Steam will not force the

recipient to return the skin.

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SUPPORTING INFORMATION

Additional supporting information can be found online in the Supporting Information section at the end

of this article.

How to cite this article: Snodgrass, Jeffrey G., Michael G. Lacy, Evan Polzer, and Chakrapani

Upadhyay. 2024. “Gaming lounges in India afford socially productive gambling: The moral

economy and foundations of play in Udaipur, Rajasthan.” Ethos 1–20.

https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12443

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Jan 2023

Jeffrey G Snodgrass

Player customization, competence and team discourse: exploring player identity (co)construction in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Article

Dec 2020

The growing esports scene brings a level of professionalism to gaming. Games that, previously, used to be a spare time activity have now become professional and educational contexts, as exemplified in this study. In these contexts, player identities in online games are actively, and contextually, (co)constructed in and through the in-game interaction with both the game itself, as well as with co-players. In this ethno-case study (a qualitative case study informed by ethnographic methods), a player centred approach offered a participant’s perspective on local player identity (co)construction in the multiplayer first person shooter (FPS) Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (henceforth, “CS:GO”). This paper sought to answer two research questions: What tools for (co)constructing player identity in CS:GO did participants employ? and: What player identities are (co)constructed using these tools? The data was collected in collaboration with a vocational school with an esports programme in Finland in 2017-2018. Seven students (aged 17-18, all white and identifying as male) playing CS:GO took part in the study by sharing screen recordings of their in-game matches (ten matches and almost six hours in total) and by taking part in interviews (seven in total). The participants were part of two teams and the in-game data was analyzed from two students’ perspectives, one from each team. Based on the participants’ in-game discussions and interviews, relevant situations in relation to identity (co)construction were transcribed and analyzed inductively. The participants employed the following tools for identity (co)construction in CS:GO; choice of weapon, weapon skill, weapon customization, stats/rank and language use. These tools were employed to (co)construct identities connected to player customization, competence and team discourse. Although there are individual variances, the identities (co)constructed orient towards a perceived competent player identity shaped by technomasculine norms in online game culture, where traits that connote femininity and queerness are seen as signs of incompetence.

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

Book

Aug 2012

Natasha Schull

The convergence of gambling and monetised gaming activities

Article

Feb 2020

A recent innovation contributing to the massive growth and profitability of the gaming industry has been the development of in-game monetisation. In-game purchasing features (e.g. ‘loot boxes’, ‘skins’, and other microtransactions) have also generated debate in some jurisdictions as to whether some activities constitute a form of gambling. This brief review presents some academic perspectives and recent studies that have examined the validity of this claim. Evidence has focused on the nature of micro-transaction purchase behaviour, its similarity with gambling, parallel involvement in gambling, and its association with problematic gaming. Early evidence suggests that higher levels of involvement in monetised gaming activities may be associated with symptoms of problematic gaming or gambling.

Gaming lounges in India afford socially productive gambling: The moral economy and foundations of play in Udaipur, Rajasthan

Abstract

Supplementary resource (1)

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