8 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2025 From the Publisher The genius of Malcom Gladwell is how he applies the science used to understand bio-physical phenomena to explain the psychology and sociology of human behavior and cultural/sociological trends. For instance, in The Tipping Point (his first book, written twenty-five years ago), he applies the science of epidemiology (how infectious diseases spread) to the way ideas spread, the way cultural trends take hold, and the ways that societal mores and attitudes evolve. One of the main insights of this book is that change rarely happens in a steadily climbing progression. More often, just like a pandemic, the progression of an idea or trend starts slow and stays slow until it hits the proverbial tipping-point at which time it explodes. For instance, there were a small number of super-spreader events (a technology conference in Boston, some big sporting events, MardiGras, etc.) in the U.S. in late February of 2020 that turned COVID-19 into an out-of-control global pandemic. Jumping over to the realm of ideas and public sentiment: The Viet Cong TET offensive is usually identified as the tippingpoint that turned public opinion against the Vietnam war. COVID-19 was a tipping-point for the decline of going to movie theatres, and the pop phenomenon of Barbenheimer the tipping-point event for the return to theatres. COVID-19 is also the tipping point catalyst for the dramatic increase in social media usage, especially TikToc, because people needed something to do with all the time we had to play on our Mobile devices. The closing of casinos could perhaps qualify as a minor tipping-point to cause consumers to turn to lottery and cause lottery sales to spike. Angry Birds and the Apple App Store were a tipping-point for Mobile Gaming. The U.S. Supreme Court overturning of PASPA in 2018 was the tipping-point that presaged the explosion of sports betting in the U.S. This whole Gladwellian narrative gets much more interesting with the introduction of overstory in his most recent book Revenge of the Tipping Point. The term “overstory” was first used to describe the uppermost layer of trees that form a dense overhead canopy in tropical rainforests. Studying the life-forms that reside on the floor of the rainforest is not very productive without understanding the effects of this dense upper canopy that absorbs over 90% of the sunlight. Reconstituting the way humidity and sunlight combine to produce photosynthesis for everything beneath it means that everything that happens on the ground is determined by what happens far above the ground, in that canopy of treetop cover. Likewise, the understanding of specific human behavior (like why people play lottery games) is enhanced if we think about it as a part of an overstory not of tree canopy but of ideas, underlying trends, and cultural change. That is what Gladwell does. He applies the scientific concept of the rainforest overstory and the process of transforming the elements that sustain life (photosynthesis) to the way ideas and cultural phenomena evolve. The TET offensive, COVID-19, and the overturning of PASPA may have been tipping-points. But that’s not the real story any more than the high price of eggs is the reason Donald Trump was elected, or the low price of a lottery ticket the reason people like to play the lottery. Gladwell is pointing us towards the overstory to understand the underlying drivers of human behavior, mega-trends, and paradigm shifts in societal attitudes. Or, as the case may be, what attracts people to play games-ofchance. Public sentiment towards Vietnam happened far below the over-arching canopy, the overstory, that was reshaping American culture. We take some of these things for granted now, but that was when TV news first delivered war-time coverage into our living rooms and so emerged as the shaper of societal attitudes and cultural trends. Walter Cronkite simply arched an eyebrow to express skepticism at the proclamations of battlefield successes being spouted by General Westmoreland and President Johnson (who commented "If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America"). This period also included the emergence of an activist college student body. It included the first cracks in public confidence in the integrity and even efficacy of government institutions and authority in general. The TET offensive may have been the tipping-point, but tipping-points happen on the forest floor. We continue to struggle to understand the formative impacts of the real overstory that reshaped U.S. culture in the late sixties and early seventies and the “long-tail” effect it has on us even today. Gladwell does over-simplify. Mobile gaming would have happened without AngryBirds. If Apple didn’t create its App store, someone else probably would. Social media certainly existed before TikTok and in fact was growing before Thank you to Randy Spielman, Pat McHugh, Chris Shaban, Renato Ascoli, Melissa Pursley, and Philippe Vlaemminck for your fabulous interviews and digging right into the issues that will make us successful in the coming years. And a special thanks to Andreas Kötter. What started out as an informal discussion turned into a far-reaching interview that addresses much of the top-of-mind issues that affect our industry going forward. The theme of Smart-Tech Fort Lauderdale is What causes the modern consumer to choose lottery over other recreational games-of-chance? A corollary to that: How might we tap into the overstory to recreational gaming, gambling, and lottery? See PublicGaming.org for more information and conference updates. You can always visit our main news website PublicGaming.com for access to any of PGRI’s informational resources. Thank you for your support – and best wishes for a prosperous and healthy 2025! Let’s continue to strive to make a difference. What’s our Overstory? continued on page 39
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