Addiction By Design-Schull
#notesFromPaper Year : 2012 Tags : addiction Authors: Schull
Addiction by Design looks at machine gambling (slot machines) in Las Vegas
This book talks about highly addicted machine gamblers, so its lessons may not be applicable to non-machine gamblers or those who are only moderately addicted.
=== Core Points ===
Machine gambling is very different from the stereotypes of normal gambling.
Stereotypes of normal gambling:
- Bombastic
- Social
- Pleasure from winning it big
- It’s all about randomness
Bombastic
Machine gambling is about small, claustrophobic escapism. The areas in which these machines are located are low-ceilinged with narrow rows. The machines themselves might be loud, but that loudness is still in some ways confined to their little world.
Social
Machine gambling is not at all social, and its players prefer it that way. Poker, blackjack, etc. are for the socialites, but machine gamblers are either heavily undersocialized, or heavily oversocialized and looking for escape from that.
Pleasure from winning it big
If I were to design a gambling machine right now, I would gamify the **** out of jackpots. I’ve seen media where prize winners gleefully stare at money pouring out of the machine, and just common sense tells me that it’s a big moment that needs to be emphasized.
Addiction by Design actually warns against that. For machine gamblers, flow is paramount over the rush of big victories. A big victory (and money in general) is a marker that you have more time to play, and nothing more. Because of this, a big victory can actually be annoying:
- Waiting for the jackpot animations to stop breaks flow
- Some players want to leave, but the fact that they now have money means they have to stay (they forget that they can cash out, since that’s just not how they play)
Instead, Addiction by Design recommends that these animations be skippable, and the “cash pouring out of the machine” moment be only on player demand.
It’s all about randomness
Ostensibly, the rush from gambling comes from variation, but for machine gamblers, the enjoyment actually comes from predictability. Many gamblers contrasted machines with people in social situations. People are unpredictable, and gamblers who are undersocialized may not understand how to properly deal with others. Machines are predictable, every animation and action is understood, it’s only the order and time to play that varies. Most variation is evened out over time, and once players are in a flow state, it doesn’t really matter to them.
=== Other Things ===
- The design of casinos should gently (through curves) guide players towards gambling.
- Players want speed of play and time on device
- Cards with credits on them instead of physical money are problematic, for obvious reasons.
- There are a variety of ways to make players appear like they are winning, without them actually winning. Through clever mechanical (and later digital) means, “near misses” can be manufactured, where the slot is only one off from a jackpot.
- Similarly, there can be X winning slots and Y normal slots, but mechanical trickery can make the machine land on normal slots Z number of times, Z > Y. Thus perceived win chance is X / (X + Y) but in reality it is X / (X + Z), Z > Y
- Action players play for jackpots, escape players play for time on device
- Time is measured in “rounds”, not clock time. Thus a faster game feels better. Some machines even let you play multiple games at the same time if you are skilled enough to keep up. (There are machines that let you play a hundred hands of video poker at the same time)
- Casinos have used intelligent systems to understand when a player feels frustrated, and can then give them meal vouchers or literally just some money to get them to keep playing.
- Similar intelligent systems swap out the games within gambling machines depending on what demographic is expected to show up (e.g. day gamblers are very different from night gamblers)
- In the opinion of some in the industry, player observation is a great way to gain insight, but formalized focus groups are too slow.
- Casinos don’t want burnt out players, and so sometimes they actually implement anti-gambling features to prevent players from hurting themselves too much in too short of a time.
