Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How slot machines are designed to be addictive

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 201 posts

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#181

Post by crankylinuxuser »

lsmarigo wrote: post #177
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is lot of us adults don't really see much of it, cause it's not targeted at us. I see the regular "come to hopping awesome great casino" ads on tv/radio/internet. My thoughts - thats where people go to lose money. But these loot boxes, I had to research what this was referring to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box And after reading how they're used, yeah, thats like years ago when I played and bought Ma…

you're absolutely right you can trace the roots of this back to Magic and if you want to go further back Baseball cards. It was fairly innocent back then, with the advent of gaming technology and research into dopamine-releasing mechanics/skinner boxes it's reached insidious levels.

Tell me about it :/

I remember the older days of MTG, around revised and 4th ed. There were ante cards - it was set up so games could be gambling between players. They finally removed all the ante cards (like ante another card, and gain life back to 20 and a full hand of cards). But in the end, there were good and bad cards - but the game was fun.

MTG started doing the "YuGiOh" scam, of foil cards. Then uber-rares. And then also using the chase-rares to loot-boxify the game.

But now, I've seen a few games that try to incentivize purchasing coin to play more. There was some car game I remember that did that - if you were to buy every upgrade it would be over $12,000 . Hill Climb Racing 2, I think its name was.

And here I was, thinking that a $50 game was expensive. Yeouch. I feel bad for people who got suckered into that scam.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#182

Post by freeloop3 »

sigi45 wrote: post #175
freeloop3 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some people, you know, that don't have the physical ability to do much else to get the same amount of entertainment in their lives. Casinos are a boon to seniors, giving them a chance to go somewhere where they can actually enjoy themselves with worrying too much. Jesus, how many sharp edges to we have to round over to make sure that adults live a "safe" life, according to your standards?

Just to be clear: i was never in a casino before until this year when i went to Canada (i'm from germany). I was always under the assumption, that a casino is fun. Something you don't do that often, you go there to loose money and eat and drink and see people and have a little fun. When you play poker in a casino, that is somehow okayisch but on an edge: The casino gets a fair share for providing a table and a dealer…

I've had the opposite experience. Casinos are a fun way to spend a little cash and waste an hour or two. I especially like pachinko games because of the novelty.

I guess this means that no one has the exact same experience, and this mythical "you" you keep referencing isn't representative of everybody.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#183

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

jhbadger wrote: post #115
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, but the way I see it there are two parts to a gambling game: (a) the physical rewards (blinkenlights, twinkly noises etc) and (b) the monetary rewards. If the physical rewards were enough of a draw in and of themselves, I think we could reasonably expect there to be a market for games that don't involve money. For instance, I could imagine smaller, cheaper slot machines sold directly to players, to take t…

You've basically described a lot of mobile games though. Candy Crush for example. At first you just play for free but then cleverly they put in a level that most people can't get through so you buy the in-app purchase to let you bypass that level to get to easier addictive levels. I ended up deleting the game when I realized what was going on, but I ended up paying $20-$30 dollars before that -- it really is a simila…

>> You've basically described a lot of mobile games though. Candy Crush for >> example.

I guess I have and I totally believe games like Candy Crush are exploitative, perhaps even at the same level as gambling.

I remember reading an interview with Tarn Adams (I can't find it anymore) where he pointed out that games that make people perform repetitive actions for some in-game reward are exploitative. At least that was the gist of it. I think he had Cookie Clicker in mind- although maybe I misremember that, because Cookie Clicker is more like the opposite, a game that doesn't hog up your time (it plays itself).

In any case, I think what he said is true. A game that makes you want to press the same key 100 times is just stealing your time. There's always rewards, of course, but if you think of what you could be doing with your life in the time it took to press that key 100 times, it starts to sound a bit pathetic.

The worse thing about this for me was realising that many of my favourite games are exactly that kind. I play lots of shmups, for example. In fact I used to play shmups since I was a kid, when you could find them in arcades and you had to pay to play. I played some of them long enough that I got to the point where I could finish them with one or two coins, so I could say I had some sort of control on the game, but the truth is that each one of those games I liked as a kid was specifically made to draw me in and hook me up, by plugging into my reward centres. And there's no escaping, either, that no matter how good I got I couldn't play if I didn't pay at least one coin.

So, yay, I do 100% think that there are other games besides slots that we're used to think of as bening, but that are also designed to hook you in to some useless rewards and to make you waste your time and your money.

And I haven't even touched on my one true addiction: Magic the Gathering. You don't want to get me started :)

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#184

Post by nickevershed »

smallstepforman wrote: post #76
halhen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked with data analytics in problem gambling for ten years, your dismissal of the addictiveness of these games is either uninformed or rationalized, most likely both. Recent research in Sweden shows that some 75% of online casino turnover are from what can be loosely described as moderate risk gambling (PGSI3+) and approximately 50% from problem gambling (PGSI8+). Similarly about 25% of regular (monthly) pla…

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…

What's your source for this? The only large court case involving a casino in Australia that I know of is the Crown and Aristocrat case, and the judgement hasn't actually been handed down yet.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#185

Post by quickthrower2 »

darrenf wrote: post #107
thinkingemote wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did it feel like? Honest fatalism, a happy cynicism? I'm thinking your experience may not be unique, perhaps most gambling addicts are fully aware what they are doing? Maybe it's a common thing with all addicts, or perhaps gambling as it's less, well, chemical allows the brain to see things clearer.

It changed over the years. From, like, 92-00 I was sinking way more money than I could properly afford into them, and often hated the experience. Losing felt absolutely horrible, but winning felt fantastic. Most of my friends would gamble too, but I took it that much further. I'd put enough money for the drinks I wanted in one pocket, and the other pocket was my gambling funds. It was very fatalistic, I knew that I w…

Fruity - that's the word! I've been out of the UK long enough to forget. The Australian pubs have entire "VIP Lounge" dedicated to the "Pokies" and brings in a lot of money for them. But the challenge of those machines isn't there - there is something very addictive about the UK fruit machines. A mix of the gambling addiction plus general game-playing addiction trying to upskill and win better. I new many 16 year olds pumping serious coin into them, getting better but still losing. I also heard of people who could make money from them (although $/hour wasn't too hot), although not sure whether to believe that.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#186

Post by kopos »

jerf wrote: post #118
kopos wrote: post #113

Sadly, the article does disservice to a lot of actual mechanics of the industry. And the amount of hard work that goes on to actually makes these games addictive. It is not for no reason that these are called one-armed bandits. * This industry is highly regulated; but it rarely does help those really in need. If the regulations were very strictly implemented (player wager limits, player time controls, self-regulation…

As I write this, I think you have a typo there; 94-97% payout on $1000 is $940-970. (But I am confident it is just a typo.) And you sort of state this, but I'd empasize that's per spin ; for a $1 spin, the casino expects to make 5 cents and give back 95 cents... but then they expect you to put those 95 cents right back in with high probability, meaning that you can now expect .9025 of the original dollar, which again…

Yes, that is a typo (I had 100$ in my mind ...).

Since these machines are fixed odds games each result of a spin is completely exclusive of the result from the other spin. So a 97% avg payout for a spin or over a billion spins (a game cycle) is the same.

The problem is that a player cannot take a hit a continue playing while a casino can keep doing it theoretically forever.

The problem with slots as with most games is to know when to quit. When a player who has lost 5 pennies coming back to bet 95 pennies is not the problem. The problem is for a player who has put in a thousand pounds over a year, wins a jackpot of 4000 pounds, does not cash out put again goes back to betting those 4000 pounds - that keeps losing.

Correct, as you said, know how much I want to spend on entertainment, spend it and return back. I've actually seen that in land-based casinos, people go out with a fixed moolah in hand, play and lose that and come back. In online casinos, though, there's no stopping them.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#187

Post by kopos »

dmh2000 wrote: post #158
kopos wrote: post #113

Sadly, the article does disservice to a lot of actual mechanics of the industry. And the amount of hard work that goes on to actually makes these games addictive. It is not for no reason that these are called one-armed bandits. * This industry is highly regulated; but it rarely does help those really in need. If the regulations were very strictly implemented (player wager limits, player time controls, self-regulation…

wouldn't a payoff of 97% means that with a fixed amount of money going in, over time you end up with $0? the payoff is exponential in the wrong direction, right?

That is the wrong interpretation - atleat the math says so.

The 97% payout is a payout over millions (billions) of 1$ bets made on the machine - called the game cycle. You have to remember that players win and lose too.

Theoretically, if I were to wager 1$ over a million spins, I should be left with 970K$. That is what happens too if we consider the payout of the machine over the full lifecycle of the slot game.

The problem is that a player's funds are always limited. So when they hit a losing streak, they would lose all money by the time a winning streak can come their way. The house however has theoretically infinite funds at their disposal.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#188

Post by kopos »

jklein11 wrote: post #166
dmh2000 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't a payoff of 97% means that with a fixed amount of money going in, over time you end up with $0? the payoff is exponential in the wrong direction, right?

The graph for the payouts would look like exponential decay.[1] Lets say you walk in with 1000 dollars in your pocket. If the payoff is 97 percent, you would expect the money in your pocket to be .97^n where n is the number of times you took the bet. Each bet reduces the money in your pocket by 3% While the curve approaches zero, the real limit is the minimum bet of that particular game. 1. http://teacher.nsrl.roches…

Not really. The graph for payout would be jumping up and down. With an exponential decay, you would mean no player would make any money.

You should remember, the industry would not have been so lucrative or addictive if there were no wins at all!

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#189

Post by kopos »

hollander wrote: post #117
kopos wrote: post #113

Sadly, the article does disservice to a lot of actual mechanics of the industry. And the amount of hard work that goes on to actually makes these games addictive. It is not for no reason that these are called one-armed bandits. * This industry is highly regulated; but it rarely does help those really in need. If the regulations were very strictly implemented (player wager limits, player time controls, self-regulation…

With a mechanical slot machine I can understand the reel thing. But with electronic screens, software making up reels, how do I know that the software does not fool me even more? Take the given example with first slot 1/16, second 1/32 and third 1/44 chance of winning big. Now assume the generated numbers are really random, and that day or week the machine has given two big prices. Then a third big number combination…

It is highly regulated. The software has to go through stringent gaming reviews every year, the RNG has to be re-certified, the software cannot be updated without prior regulatory approval, the game math has to be certified.

You cannot change rules based on prior winning strategy. Theoretically two spins can payout the jackpot (but the probability is very very low), and the casino has to pay them out as long as they were valid spins.

Re: How slot machines are designed to be addictive

#190

Post by darrenf »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #185
darrenf wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It changed over the years. From, like, 92-00 I was sinking way more money than I could properly afford into them, and often hated the experience. Losing felt absolutely horrible, but winning felt fantastic. Most of my friends would gamble too, but I took it that much further. I'd put enough money for the drinks I wanted in one pocket, and the other pocket was my gambling funds. It was very fatalistic, I knew that I w…

Fruity - that's the word! I've been out of the UK long enough to forget. The Australian pubs have entire "VIP Lounge" dedicated to the "Pokies" and brings in a lot of money for them. But the challenge of those machines isn't there - there is something very addictive about the UK fruit machines. A mix of the gambling addiction plus general game-playing addiction trying to upskill and win better. I new many 16 year old…

Australian pokies hold basically no allure for me. I've been visiting Sydney on a yearly basis for 10+ years, and only on my first trip did I really spend any time gambling. It wasn't much fun even though I won: unfamiliarity, plus the style of games were so different. Though what really put me off the most was the racism from the RSL employee who came to verify my payout!
Post reply on HN