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How slot machines are designed to be addictive

theguardian.com

1–10 of 201 posts

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#4

Addiction by Design is a book that takes a really comprehensive look at slot machine design it’s pretty wild how much thought is put into it and this is before ML became practical, I’m sure casino company’s are leveraging it now.

I remember reading an article years ago where a video-poker machine manufacturer "trained" the machine using real playing behavior of famous poker stars...

For German machines I can say they're not a target market for ML or other "experimental" stuff given the ultra strict regulations here. More or less illegal online casinos however are the new Wild West of the gambling industry.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#5

The content of this article is fantastic and frightening. However, viewing this page on mobile, you can’t help but appreciate the interactivity that feels as though it’s been designed with the mobile reader in mind. It’s marvelous.

Apparently it was designed for mobiles. On a desktop it's a nightmare.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#6
The original patent on virtual reels was granted in 1984 and is known in the industry as the "Telnaes patent"

https://patents.google.com/patent/US4448419A

The original design of virtual reels was more about decreasing the jackpot odds, since a high-payout combination was no longer bound to the physical stops on the reels. Machines that offered higher jackpots were more appealing, and also gave birth to things like progressive jackpots and progressive networked games.

It also made IGT (the owner of the patent) a giant in the industry. Many workarounds were tried and typically failed in the lawsuits that followed. The most successful deviation was the "bonus game" where a particular symbol set would trigger a small video game or some other activity that had its own paytable independent of the main slot paytable.

The psychological design of near misses didn't show up until probably a decade afterward, but since '419 is now expired it's become the new secret sauce of slotmakers.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#7

The content of this article is fantastic and frightening. However, viewing this page on mobile, you can’t help but appreciate the interactivity that feels as though it’s been designed with the mobile reader in mind. It’s marvelous.

I am sitting here on an upgraded Nexus 9 tablet with the latest Google Chrome. This thing came out less than 3 years ago and yet I literally cannot read this article. I wait ten seconds not touching the page for it to finish loading as fonts, banners, sounds all pop in and try to settle around me. Barely touching the screen to scroll it down causes a button to start sliding around the page, overlapping on top of a bunch of text telling me I can stop pushing the button any time. The roulette wheel animation in the background spins at 2fps while the motor in my fan spins at 7200rpm. Trying to touch the button causes the whole page to refresh. The page regresses to "Loading" on white while a banner ad and a pop-up self-congratulating the site for using cookies comes up. Another ten seconds to wait for my now baking sheet to cool down and I try sliding past the button while the music stutters, failing to play. The tab reloads again.

The only words I was able to read were the banner ad, the bit that tells me I can stop pushing the button, and "Loading". I think this is an apt metaphor for the modern web.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#8
post #5

The content of this article is fantastic and frightening. However, viewing this page on mobile, you can’t help but appreciate the interactivity that feels as though it’s been designed with the mobile reader in mind. It’s marvelous.

Apparently it was designed for mobiles. On a desktop it's a nightmare.

sure, it might not look very well done, but on desktop it doesn't sound as bad. in fact, it's pretty pleasant as well

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#10

The content of this article is fantastic and frightening. However, viewing this page on mobile, you can’t help but appreciate the interactivity that feels as though it’s been designed with the mobile reader in mind. It’s marvelous.

I assume this web page has words and images. But without JavaScript, it displays only trash: https://i.imgur.com/DEHdKy5.png
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