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How slot machines are designed to be addictive

theguardian.com

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Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#91

Post by thinkingemote »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #84
smallstepforman wrote: post #60

Disclaimer: I design the machines and games for a living. 1) regarding near miss, with basic math knowledge you can easily calculate the odds of near miss. Eg. with 2 special symbols per 30 symbol reel, for a 3x5 reel game, you have a 1:5 chance of seeing the special symbol per reel, or once per spin for a 5 reel game. The odds of a 4 symbol near miss is (1:5)^4, which is 1:625, or once every 30 minutes. With a bank…

About point number (4) I don't think anyone said you have psychologists on call. Slot machines have been around for hundreds of years. Obviously, someone has figured out how to best make them work. The industry clearly has the know-how to make addictive games that hook players in: if it didn't, then its machines would not be as addictive as they are. Unless we want to pretend the machines got so addictive by chance,…

I agree with you about the house always winning, and I also don't gamble, however you can consider the activity as a game like an arcade game where the actual playing and spending time costs money, and has value in its own right. I guess the economics is slightly more nuanced, just how you can find addictive computer games which also cost like world of Warcraft I guess

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#92

Post by intended »

salvar wrote: post #81
smallstepforman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human psychology studies are a tricky thing, where everyone only focuses on data which matches their preconceived notions. I'm sure that some university group has researched the cost of fashion addiction, music addiction, car addiction, holiday addiction etc. yet no-one is talking about the social cost of fashion/collections/other vices people may have. There was a large Casino court case in Australia a couple of mon…

Are you completely dismissing all human psychology studies as fraudulent?

I don't think that's supported by what he wrote - he said its tricky, not invalid.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#93

Post by intended »

halhen wrote: post #78
smallstepforman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human psychology studies are a tricky thing, where everyone only focuses on data which matches their preconceived notions. I'm sure that some university group has researched the cost of fashion addiction, music addiction, car addiction, holiday addiction etc. yet no-one is talking about the social cost of fashion/collections/other vices people may have. There was a large Casino court case in Australia a couple of mon…

Well, Gambling Disorder is a recognized psychological diagnosis in DSM 5[0], so I guess the reader will have to weigh the credibility of the industry's claims vs all the other evidence around. Also, from your comments I assume you rarely meet a representative sample of your customers. I did, and that experience ALSO matched my other claims. You do you of course, and I know where you're coming from: I too built gambli…

How do you get into the gambling disorder (?)/ problem gambling side of things? That sounds more like a task for healthcare than tech - making it all the more interesting to understand.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#96

Post by isolli »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #85

To make matters worse, after all this effort to hook players in with a promise of a win just around the corner, it seems that casinos often don't pay up when players win big. Instead, they blame jackpots on malfunctions. Three cases of this from Ars: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/1-4-million-jack... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/sorry-maam-you-d... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/…

From the article: the courts did not stand behind the casinos, they said that they do not have jurisdiction.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#97

Post by darrenf »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #53
phil248 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'be had the same experience, though you will start to get the hang of more complicated machines after a couple dozen spins. I wonder if that complexity adds to the allure. "Now that I understand this complicated machine, I better not let that that hard earned knowledge go to waste"

There is definitely a machismo about being able to master the UK pub slot machines with all the features and tests of "skill".

When I used to throw tons of money at the things, what amazed and impressed my friends wasn't that I would regularly win money - I wouldn't, and I was always up front about how much I was pissing away - but just that I understood what the hell was going on. It felt like neither mastery nor machismo.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#98

Post by zelos »

point78 wrote: post #95
zelos wrote: post #94

How soul-destroying a job must it be to develop these games? Spending all day designing software to trick more vulnerable people into giving you their money?

You just described probably 80% of video games and software...

Certainly addictiveness is an issue for all gaming - I'm pretty sure Blizzard hired psychologists, and look at the increasing use of loot box mechanics, even in full-price console games.

That said, there's a kind of distilled evil in the slot machine case. There's no gameplay to hide behind, it's just insert money, win/don't win.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#99

Post by halhen »

intended wrote: post #93
halhen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Gambling Disorder is a recognized psychological diagnosis in DSM 5[0], so I guess the reader will have to weigh the credibility of the industry's claims vs all the other evidence around. Also, from your comments I assume you rarely meet a representative sample of your customers. I did, and that experience ALSO matched my other claims. You do you of course, and I know where you're coming from: I too built gambli…

How do you get into the gambling disorder (?)/ problem gambling side of things? That sounds more like a task for healthcare than tech - making it all the more interesting to understand.

I took a job in a data analytics firm, which had the national Swedish gambling operator as customer. The idea was to predict which players were at risk of developing gambling problems using ML. Backing this was also a team of psychologists. (I left about a year ago, so I'm writing in the past tense below.)

As it turns out, the task became to identify those who are at risk today from gambling data, which is relatively easy to do probabilistically with actionable precision. From here, the next step was to figure out if the person wanted help to change, which also is surprisingly easy to do by just asking.

This is by the way also to the industry's excuse that "we shouldn't tell adults what to do!". When asked, on a gambling site, a majority of those with gambling problems SAY that they would like to change, but aren't able to. Then it's no longer about telling people how to behave, but instead helping those who ask for help. But by not asking, the industry can get away with "we shouldn't tell..."

The really hard nut to crack was to give those who want but aren't able to. It's definitely not just about telling them -- most know, _and take responsibility for_, that they do destructive things. Normative feedback (this is how much others play) seemed to work on a mid-term. Calling people also did some positives; many were relieved that somebody saw them and that they finally could talk to somebody, very few got annoyed. But as a first approximation, fighting problem gambling is still an unsolved problem.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#100

Post by salvar »

intended wrote: post #92
salvar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you completely dismissing all human psychology studies as fraudulent?

I don't think that's supported by what he wrote - he said its tricky, not invalid.

They also clarified tricky as meaning "where everyone only focuses on data which matches their preconceived notions". Reads like a general dismissal of an entire branch of science to me.
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