Slot Machine Design Psychology

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Journal Information
Journal ID (publisher-id): jgi
ISSN: 1910-7595
Publisher: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Article Information
© 1999-2005 The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Received Day: 27 Month: 2 Year: 2004
Publication date: March 2005
Publisher Id: jgi.2005.13.8
DOI: 10.4309/jgi.2005.13.8
  1. Slot machines produce recurrent neurological responses with the human brain.They are able to seduce players by stimulating dopamine production. Dopamine is the chemical responsible for rewarding you when you do things that promote survival, like sex & food cravings. It’s also stimulated when you take risks, it’s your neural pathways’ way of balancing risk, pleasure & rewards.
  2. In addition, slot machines are by nature unpredictable, due to what the authors refer to as a “variable-ratio reinforcement schedule.” They focused on players who entered the “slot machine zone,” a state of absorption during which the game dominates their awareness, causing time to pass by without notice, a state many players find extremely pleasurable.

.Around 50 per cent of gaming machine gamblers have false beliefs about how gaming machines work, which pose risks to them' (APC, 4.1).We have just seen four ways in which slot machines foster faulty cognitions. –Reel design –Awww Shucks Effect –Losses Disguised as wins –Unbalanced reels.

The psychology of music in gambling environments: An observational research note
Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, U.K. E-mail: soc3griffmd@ntu.ac.uk
[This article prints out to 12 about pages.]
For correspondence: Professor Mark Griffiths, International Gaming Research Unit, Psychology Division, Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU. E-mail: soc3griffmd@ntu.ac.uk.
Contributors: JP compiled the data and MG wrote the paper
Competing interests: None declared.
Ethical approval: Nottingham Trent University Psychology Ethics Committee
Funding: A Nottingham Trent University Student Bursary for JP.
Dr. Mark Griffiths is professor of gambling studies at the Nottingham Trent University. He is internationally known for his work into gambling and gaming addictions and was the first recipient of the John Rosecrance Research Prize for “Outstanding scholarly contributions to the field of gambling research” in 1994, winner if the 1998 CELEJ Prize for best paper on gambling, and 2003 winner of the International Excellence Award for “outstanding contributions to the prevention of problem gambling and the practice of responsible gambling.” He has published over 130 refereed research papers, two books, numerous book chapters and over 350 other articles.
Jonathan Parke is a postgraduate researcher and part-time lecturer at Nottingham Trent University and a visiting lecturer at Salford University, Manchester. In the past year, he entered the field of gambling and gaming research with many conference and research papers in the United Kingdom. He has also as a consultant for government and industry.

Effects of the listening context on responses to music largely have been neglected despite the prevalence of music in our everyday lives. Furthermore, there has been no research on the role of music in gambling environments (e.g., casinos, amusement arcades) despite gambling's increased popularity as a leisure pursuit. An exploratory observational study in gambling arcades was carried out to investigate (i) how music is used as background music in amusement arcades, and (ii) how slot machines utilize music in their design. Results indicated that arcades often have music that caters for their customer demographics and that this may influence gambling behaviour. Furthermore, music from the slot machine itself appears to produce important impression formations about the machine (i.e., quality of the machine, familiarity, distinctiveness, and the sound of winning). It is suggested that music (whether it is in the gambling environment or in the activity itself) has the potential to be important in the acquisition, development, and maintenance of gambling behaviour. Some preliminary ideas and hypotheses to be tested are offered.

Introduction

Effects of the listening context on responses to music largely have been neglected despite the prevalence of music in our everyday lives (North & Hargreaves, 2000). Furthermore, there has been no research on the role of music in gambling environments (e.g., casinos, amusement arcades) despite their increased popularity as a leisure pursuit. Pleasant feelings, and other modifications of mood associated with listening to music, have been described by several authors (e.g., Deliege & Sloboda, 1997; North & Hargreaves, 1997; Sloboda, 1991). The relationship between human behaviour and music is necessarily complex. Hargreaves and North (1999) reviewed the functions of music in everyday life and concluded that the social functions of music are manifested in three principal ways for the individual: management of self-identity, interpersonal relationships, and mood. Studies have shown that different types of music can have different types of effects on listeners. Two of the many effects music can have may be to heighten psychological arousal or to relax (North & Hargreaves, 1997). This may have an effect on behaviour in commercial situations such as shopping or gambling. For instance, does the presence of music make people spend more or less money in such environments?

Early studies showed that when customers in a supermarket were exposed to loud music, their shopping rate—how much they bought per minute spent in the store—was higher than when quiet music was played. However, people would spend proportionally less time in the supermarket, so in the end the result was the same for the shop owner (Smith & Curnow, 1966). On this basis, it could perhaps be speculated that people may spend more in a gambling environment because gambling behaviour is limited to factors such as event frequency (i.e., the number of times it is possible to gamble within a given time period).

There is little doubt that music can effect both spending and perceptions of the environment. North, Hargreaves, and McKendrick (2000) reported on the effects of music on customers' perception of the atmosphere in both a city centre bank and a bar. They found a positive correlation between ratings of the listening environment and ratings of the music. The results demonstrated that music can have reliable effects on atmosphere and purchase intentions in commercial environments. They have also found that music can increase or decrease sales of wine depending on what type of music is played as background music (North, Hargreaves, & McKendrick, 1999).

North and Hargreaves (1998) have also examined the effect of different types of music in a university campus cafeteria. They examined how the presence of a certain type of music affected customers' view of the atmosphere in the cafeteria and how it influenced their purchase intentions. Pop music made customers view the cafeteria as an “optimistic” and “confident” environment, but not peaceful. Classical music led to a feeling of “elegance” and “high class,” but scored lowest on the “optimism” factor. The absence of music altogether resulted in a feeling of “peacefulness” but a lack of confidence. “Easy listening” music led to the most negative feedback. Overall there was no statistically significant differences amongst the amounts customers were prepared to spend when subjected to different types of music. However, the study showed that customers were willing to pay more for their food when they had been exposed to classical or pop music.

Given this previous research, another area worthy of further investigation is that of “background music” in gambling environ-ments and the use of music in certain forms of gambling, as in the use of music in slot machines. A number of authors (e.g., Hess & Diller, 1969; White, 1989; Griffiths, 1993) argue that the sound effects (including music) can be gambling-inducers. Constant noise and sound in a gambling environment (such as the sound of money falling into payout trays) gives the impression (i) of a noisy, fun, and exciting environment, and (ii) that winning is more common than losing (as you cannot hear the sound of losing!). However, these are very general sound effects that create the overall impression, rather than music specifically.

Since there is little work on the psychology of music in gambling environments, the research study carried out was primarily exploratory. It had the aims of investigating (i) how music is used as background music in arcades, and (ii) how slot machines utilize music in their design. Since the study was exploratory there were no specific hypotheses.

SlotMethod

The following data were extracted from a larger study examining situational characteristics of amusement arcades (Parke & Griffiths, 2001). Only the findings regarding music and sound are reported here. The observations that follow in the next section were collated from two different sources:

1) An in-depth observational study of amusement arcades (mainly) in Nottingham, U.K. (over 600 hours). A substantial amount of time was spent in one particular amusement arcade. This is because the second author was able to collect data while working in the arcade itself. All data were collected with the consent of the arcade owner.

2) Participant and non-participant observation by both authors over a ten-year period as either researcher (first author) or gambler (second author) respectively. The data collected from these sources are more speculative, but are capable of generating hypotheses.

The approach was on the whole empirical and qualitative, and can be regarded as an observational field study capable of suggesting hypotheses but not of confirming fact. Due to its qualitative nature, much of the data reported in this results section cannot be reported without some kind of initial interpretation that would normally find inclusion in a “discussion” section. A more general discussion of these results follows the results section.

Results and preliminary discussion

The findings from this study are broken down into a number of distinct areas. These are observations concerning the (i) use of background music in arcades, (ii) use of music in slot machine gambling, (iii) use of music in pubs and clubs housing slot machines, and (iv) the absence of music in some gambling environments (e.g., betting shops). These are examined in turn.

Background music in arcades

It is clear from our observations that arcades often have music that caters to customer demographics. Furthermore, the clientele can be differentiated between those who play “low-tech” (reel order) machines, and those that play “high-tech” (feature) machines. Arcades and designated areas in arcades that have feature-orientated (hi-tech) slot machines often attract males aged around 18 to 30 years. In these areas, dance and rock music are often played or (alternatively) customers will ask for requests. Requests by the gamblers themselves may possibly have the strongest effect on gambling behaviour as these songs have personal meaning, bringing new factors (such as emotionality) into play. Reel order (lo-tech) machines, in contrast, attract a different group of gamblers—primarily women aged over 45 years. These areas or arcades often decide to play pop-music-based radio, or play pre-recorded music that was first released in the 1980s. Arcades which cater for those under 18 years of age invariably play pop music, or may have a jukebox to cater for these tastes and also to earn additional income.

In the arcade where the second author worked to collect data, the arcade was split into two levels, the first level housed both high-tech and low-tech slot machines, and the second level housed video games. Three different genres of music were used by the arcade management. These were:

  • Easy listening music (local radio station, country music) was played in the first level in the morning to cater to the majority of older players, many of whom were female.
  • Rock and dance music was played in the first level in the afternoon and evening to cater to the younger males usually playing the hi-tech fruit machines.
  • Pop and dance music was played in the second level to cater to older teenagers playing video games.

In this particular arcade, it is important to note that playing music that customers requested was encouraged. During informal interviews with the management, the researchers were told that playing requests kept the customers happy “and when they are happy, they are spending.”

Music used in slot machine gambling

Music appears to be important in many slot machines—particularly newer machines which feature television shows, films, and video games. The music that slot machines are capable of producing is important in a gambler's impression formation about the machine. More specifically it is associated with (i) the quality of the machine, (ii) familiarity, (iii) distinctiveness, and (iv) the sound of winning. These are expanded upon below.

  • Quality of machine – The quality of the music on a slot machine appears to be important, as most gamblers equate the quality of a machine with the quality of the sound and music. For some, this may be the primary reason for choosing a particular slot machine to play.
  • Familiarity – Music that a slot machine produces is important in creating familiarity. Griffiths and Dunbar (1997) in their research on the psychology of familiarity in relation to slot machines have argued that the names of machines and the music they emit appear to be important in terms of acquisition of gambling behaviour. It is often the case that slot machines are named after a person, place, event, television show, or film. Not only is this something that is familiar to the slot machine player but may also be something that the potential players might like or affiliate themselves with. Table 1 highlights some examples of some very common U.K. slot machines that all have theme tunes familiar to U.K. citizens. Some of the most popular slot machines are those that feature The Simpsons. There are many cases similar to these, where it could be speculated that the slot machine becomes more enticing because it represents something that is special to the gambler. It is possible that familiarity is a very important aspect of why, for example, media-related slot machines have been more prominent over the last decade in the U.K. The media theme may induce a “psycho-structural interaction” (Griffiths, 1993) and may result in repeated use. Consequently, if the themes are increasingly “familiar,” an individual might be more likely to persevere with the complexities of a machine. Players may find it more enjoyable because they can easily interact with the recognizable images and music they experience. Therefore, the use of familiar themes may have a very persuasive effect, leading to an increase in the number of people using them, and the money they spend.
Slot Machine Design Psychology
  • Distinctiveness – Music can be used in slot machines to create a distinctive feature that is memorable to players and that may facilitate further gambling. For instance, the company Red Gaming utilises a distinctive guitar riff when slot machine players gamble on the game's feature, for example, on the slot machine Rampage. We have noted that some gamblers who played this machine were eager to play again as a consequence of the music. When the jackpot is won on this machine, the machine plays a rock music anthem.
  • Sound of winning – Music from a slot machine is instrumental in creating that sound of winning. As seen in the example above, a particular piece of music (i.e., a rock anthem) can send out a signal that a person has won on the machine, both to the player and to others in the vicinity . It also helps raise the self-esteem and standing of the person playing. This is clearly reinforcing for the gambler and may lead to further play. As with the sound of falling coins in the payout tray, music can create the illusion that winning is more common than losing, for you do not hear the sound of losing. As a consequence, successful slot machines will minimise music that signals losses.
Music in pubs and clubs with slot machines

The use of music in pubs and clubs is both interesting and different from arcades. More specifically, we have noted in our observations that:

  • The music is “focal” rather than in the background.
  • The quality of background music (for example, good quality sound systems used by DJs and live bands) improves in terms of sound, volume, and content.
  • Most slot machines in these environments are high-tech (feature) machines that cater for the same group as the club or pub itself (i.e., males aged 18 to 30 years).

We speculate that all of these can potentially increase arousal and risk taking—particularly the quality of the music. On the negative side, pub and club music can detract from the machine's auditory cues that may be needed for “skilful” gambling.

Absence of music in some gambling environments

Some gambling environments, such as bookmakers, do not play any background music whatsoever. The main reason for this is that it would obviously interfere with both the television broadcasting of events being gambled on—horse races, greyhound races, etc.—and other betting information that is given out, such as possible sports betting, random numbers betting, and tips from experts who are interviewed . The lack of background music in these environments perhaps has a marginal effect, but its implications are nonetheless worth considering. We speculate that the lack of music will:

  • limit arousal
  • put more focus on the loss for the gambler (i.e., the lack of soothing auditory stimuli heightens the loss feeling). Music would be likely to reduce negative affect experienced by players through cognitive regret and frustration.
  • lower gamblers' concentration levels. Given that there is seldom any music (not even from the slot machines on the premises), players' concentration levels may be negatively affected, as there will be no auditory cues from the machine and no facilitating effect from the background music. The only background noise is the broadcast commentary on sporting events.
Conclusions

Our tentative observations lead us to conclude that music (whether it is in the gambling environment or associated with the activity itself) may have a role in the acquisition, development, and maintenance of gambling behaviour. Based on our observations, we suggest that slot machines can be more appealing depending on the music in the background or from the machine itself. Therefore, it can be speculated that gambling may also increase in these areas where music is a critical factor.

How music initiates gambling behaviour is open to speculation. However, a theoretical model outlined by Condry and Scheibe (1989) described the stages in the persuasive process (as applied to advertisements). This can be adapted to the playing of slot machines. The framework constructed can be used to display the possible effectiveness of familiar musical themes in slot machine gambling. The stages in the persuasive process have been identified as exposure, attention, comprehension, yielding, retention, and decision to buy. Of these stages, the “decision to buy” is reinterpreted here as the decision to gamble. The following adaptation of this framework illustrates the point.

Exposure: For an advertisement to be effective, the individual must first be exposed to it. The same can be said for slot machines. Exposure to slot machines can occur at two levels. At the macro level, U.K. slot machines are endemic and can be found at a wide variety of outlets, and are thus constantly exposed to the public. Secondly, at a micro level, machines within premises are placed so that they can easily be seen. For instance, in public houses, they are usually found near doorways or close to the bar.

Attention: Even though many people may be exposed to the machine, very few may pay attention to it. Therefore, to gain the attention of an individual, manufacturers may use diverse and/or familiar sights and sounds to achieve this (e.g., the use of a television show's theme tune, bright flashing lights, a picture of a celebrity). In general, the musical tunes are repeated often enough to catch a person's attention particularly when no one is playing on the machine.

Comprehension: When the individual is fully attentive, the message has to be comprehended and understood. Therefore, as far as slot machines are concerned, if a familiar musical theme is incorporated into the machine, the individual is more likely to comprehend that gambling may be socially acceptable, because the images and sounds they see and hear are familiar and likeable.

Yielding: The individual agrees with the message or claim made by the advertiser. When referring to slot machine gambling, if a familiar television show's musical theme is included in the design of the machine, the person may be more likely to fully accept (i.e., agree) that gambling is socially acceptable because they “like” the images and sounds that are experienced.

Retention and decision to gamble: According to Condry and Scheibe (1989) these two final stages occur much later than when the individual is initially exposed to the advertisement. When in the shop, the person must recall the product that may have been advertised a long time previously, and decide whether to buy it. With regards to slot machine gambling, it is possible that the players may be instantly attracted to the machine because they are aware of immediately familiar images and sounds, leading to a much quicker decision to gamble. This point can be better illustrated with the following example.

A person may enter a public house, have a drink, and then notice the familiar tune of The Simpsons television show coming from a slot machine not far from the bar. However, the person decides not to gamble, never having done so before. The following day, they visit another public house, which has two fruit machines adjacent to one another. Their “attention” is gained when they once again hear The Simpsons tune that they recognise. They “comprehend” that because this well-known and likeable signature tune is incorporated into the machine, it is acceptable to take a closer look. They may believe that the gambling process involves a theme based around aspects associated with The Simpsons television show, and because they are attracted to, and “agree” with the “message,” they “yield” to the view that gambling on this particular slot machine is socially acceptable. This leads to the “decision to gamble.” This hypothesised example suggests that the decision to gamble may involve a number of stages, and that familiarity of the music appears to be an important aspect. It would appear that familiarity not only promotes a skill orientation once a player has begun to gamble (Griffiths, 1994) but may also be an important factor in a player's (or non-player's) initial decision to gamble. This line of thinking requires further research, as it is a potentially important factor in determining people's initial decision to gamble.

It could be the case that music maintains or exacerbates gambling behaviour in some individuals. This will obviously depend on the musical preferences of gamblers themselves. Given previous research in other commercial environments, it is likely that pop music will be the most effective. Empirical research would be useful in the following areas, as background music might:

  • increase confidence in slot machine players
  • increase arousal in slot machine players
  • relax the slot machine player
  • help the slot machine player disregard previous losses
  • induce a “romantic” affective state leading the gambler to believe that their chances of winning are better than they are.

It is evident from the observations we have presented that much of the data is speculative. However, all of the observations lead to further interesting research hypotheses concerning the role of music in gambling. Furthermore, much of the data presented in this paper relates to music in one particular setting (i.e., an amusement arcade) and one particular type of gambling, such as slot machine gambling. It could be the case that music effects are different for other types of gambling and gamblers. This obviously needs to be explored further by examining other gambling genres.

References
Condry, J.. Scheibe, C.. ( 1989). Non program content of television: Mechanisms of persuasion. In Condry, J.. (Ed.), The psychology of television, pp. 217–219. London: Erlbaum Publishers.
Deliege, I.. Sloboda, J.. ( 1997). Perception and cognition of music. Hove, U.K.: Psychology Press.
Griffiths, M. D.. ( 1993). Fruit machine gambling: The importance of structural characteristics. Journal of Gambling Studies, 9, 101-120.
Griffiths, M. D.. ( 1994). The role of cognitive bias and skill in fruit machine gambling. British Journal of Psychology, 85, 351-369.
Griffiths, M. D.. Dunbar, D.. ( 1997). The role of familiarity in fruit machine gambling. Society for the Study of Gambling Newsletter, 29, 15-20.
Griffiths, M. D.. Parke, J.. ( 2002, April). The environmental psychology of gambling: An observational analysis. Paper presented at the Canadian Foundation on Compulsive Gambling (Discovery 2002) Conference, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
Hargreaves, D. J.. North, A. C.. ( 1999). The functions of music in everyday life: Redefining the social in music psychology. Psychology of Music, 27, 71-83.
Hess, H. F.. Diller, J. V.. ( 1969). Motivation for gambling as revealed in the marketing methods of the legitimate gaming industry. Psychological Reports, 25, 19-27.
North, A. C.. , & Hargreaves, D. J.. (Eds.). ( 1997). The social psychology of music. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
North, A. C.. Hargreaves, D. J.. ( 1998). The effect of music on atmosphere and purchase intentions in a cafeteria. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28, 2254-2273
North, A. C.. Hargreaves, D. J.. ( 2000). Musical preferences during and after relaxation and exercise. American Journal of Psychology, 113, 43-67.
North, A. C.. Hargreaves, D. J.. McKendrick, J.. ( 1999). The influence of in-store music on wine selections. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 271-276.
North, A. C.. Hargreaves, D. J.. McKendrick, J.. ( 2000). The effects of music on atmosphere in a bank and a bar. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30, 1504-1522.
Russell, P. A.. ( 1987). Effects of repetition on the familiarity and likability of popular music recordings. Psychology of Music, 15, 33-43.
Smith, P. C.. Curnow, R.. ( 1966). “Arousal hypothesis” and the effects of music on purchasing behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 50, 255-256.
White, S.. ( 1989). Against the odds. Young People Now, April, 26-27.
TablesTable 1

Some common examples of U.K. fruit machines that employ music


Article Categories:
  • opiion pieces

Keywords: gambling, gambling environments, music, situational characteristics.

You can play a slot machine in Las Vegas before you’ve even reached baggage claim: there are tiny slots parlors in every terminal of McCarran International Airport. Once you pick up your rental car, you can stop for gas and play slots at a convenience store. And that’s all before you’ve even reached your hotel-casino, which — if it follows the modern standard — dedicates roughly 80 percent of its gaming floor to slots, and only 20 percent to table games.

The room was silent apart from the soothing hum of two dozen hibernating consoles

Bally Technologies, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of slot machines, is headquartered 3 miles south of the Strip. When I visited Bally in mid-March, Mike Trask, the company’s senior marketing manager, walked me into the company’s showroom to play some games. Compared to the cacophony of a casino floor, Bally’s showroom was practically monastic, the lights low and the room silent apart from the soothing hum of two dozen hibernating consoles.

Trask, a tall man in his 30s with dirty-blond hair, showed me the company’s new Friends-themed game, installed on Bally’s ProWave cabinet, a slick, 42-inch curved console. Friends celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, and the company hopes to tap some of that nostalgia. 'That person, that girl who watched every episode of Friends when it came out, is our demographic,' Trask said, standing alongside the cabinet.

I took a seat in front of the unit, and Trask touched a logo on the display’s upper corner, selected a box on the display that ensured I would get a bonus round, and told me to hit the spin button. I did, and a pared down version of the show’s theme song played, the NBC sextet smiled at me from the prime of their youth, and five reels of symbols — a Central Perk decal, a guitar, screenshots of characters — scrolled down the screen. The Wheel of Fortune-style bonus round featured a clip of Rachel saying, 'Happy birthday, Grandma!' wearing a wedding dress.

Bally assembles all of its machines in a factory warehouse next to its game studios and tucked behind its Vegas corporate headquarters. Last year, Scientific Games, Bally’s parent company, shipped out more than 17,000 new units. On my visit, hundreds of freshly assembled slot machine shells, featuring the industry standard black exterior and jutting dashboards, lined the warehouse walls.

A tag attached to each cabinet indicated its destination: Oklahoma, Washington, Michigan, Canada. Only a handful were destined for Vegas casinos, a sign of gaming’s national and international expansion. Scientific Games acquired Bally last year for $5 billion. At the time, 23 states had legalized gambling, a heavily taxable industry, to quickly infuse deficient coffers.

Technology built for slot machines has found admirers in Silicon Valley

But the expansion of gaming generally is the expansion of slot machines specifically — the modern casino typically earns 70 to 80 percent of its revenue from slots, a stratospheric rise from the 1970s when slots comprised 50 percent or less. New York, the latest state to introduce gaming, doesn’t even allow table games, and Pennsylvania, now the third-largest gaming state in the country after Nevada and New Jersey, only later allowed table games in an amendment to its legislation. And increasingly, the psychological and technical systems originally built for slot machines — including reward schedules and tracking systems — have found admirers in Silicon Valley.

In the factory, Trask and I passed a ProWave cabinet, a design released by Bally in mid-2014 that features a 32-inch concave screen, like an even more curved Samsung TV. Trask claimed that putting the same exact games on curved screens increased gameplay 30-80 percent. I asked him why that was. 'It looks cool; it’s incredibly clear,' he said in a tone suggesting a guess as good as any. Game designers are charged with somehow summoning the ineffable allure of electronic spectacle — developing a system that is both simple and endlessly engaging, a machine to pull and trap players into a finely tuned cycle of risk and reward that keeps them glued to the seat for hours, their pockets slowly but inevitably emptying. As we stood over the gaming cabinet, Trask told me about the floor of the MGM, home to 2,500 machines and hundreds of different games. Trask’s mission, as he saw it, was simple: 'Our job is to get you to choose our game.'

The prototypical slot machine was invented in Brooklyn in the mid-1800s — it was a cash register-sized contraption and used actual playing cards. Inserting a nickel and pressing a lever randomized the cards in the small display window, and depending on the poker hand that appeared, a player could win items from the establishment that housed the machine. In 1898, Charles Fey developed the poker machine into the Liberty Bell machine, the first true slot with three reels and a coin payout. Each reel had 10 symbols, giving players a 1-in-1,000 chance of hitting the 50-cent jackpot if three Liberty Bells lined up. The three-reel design was a hit in bars and became a casino standard, but for decades gaming houses considered them little more than a frivolity — distractions for the wives of table-game players. Accordingly, casinos were dense with table games, and slots were relegated to the periphery.

That began to change in the 1960s, when Bally introduced the electromechanical slot machine. The new rig let players insert multiple coins on a single bet, and machines could multiply jackpots as well as offer up smaller, but more frequent wins. Multi-line play was introduced: alongside the classic horizontal lineup, players could now win with diagonal and zig-zagged combinations. The new designs sped up gameplay and breathed life into the stagnating industry.

William 'Si' Redd, the bolo tie-wearing Mississippi native who oversaw some of Bally’s new projects during the era, was instrumental to that renaissance. 'The player came to win,' he said, 'he didn’t come to lose, [so] speed it up, give him more, be more liberal. Let him win more, but then [you make money] still with the speeding up, because it was extra liberal.' In other words, the new machines lowered slots’ volatility — gaming parlance for the frequency at which a player experiences big wins and losses.

The casino floor of the Boulder Club, early 1950s. Image courtesy of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Slot Machine Design Psychology Concepts

Video poker gained a reputation as the 'crack cocaine' of gambling

In the 1970s, Redd left Bally and founded another gaming manufacturer that was later renamed IGT. IGT specialized in video gambling machines, or video poker. Video poker machines could be designed to have even lower volatility, paying players back small amounts on more hands. And video poker’s interactive elements made them extra engrossing, turning them into an enormous success: people lined up to play the first machines, and the game’s ability to command a player’s complete concentration for hours gave it a reputation as the 'crack cocaine' of gambling.

'If you were to take $100 and play slots, you’d get about an hour of play, but video poker was designed to give you two hours of play for that same $100,' Redd said at the time, instructing game designers to lengthen the time it took a poker machine to consume a player’s money.

Redd also acquired the patent for the newly created Random Number Generator, which computerized the odds-calculator behind the spinning reels and allowed game makers to control volatility. A modern slot machine, at its core, is nothing more than an RNG going through millions or billions of numbers at all times. When a player hits a spin button, they are simply stopping the RNG at a particular moment. Everything beyond that — the music, the mini-games, the actual appearance of spinning reels, Rachel, Monica, and the rest of the gang keeping you company — is window dressing to keep you hitting spin.

IGT now makes 93 percent of the world’s video poker machines and is the largest manufacturer of video slots in the world. Its Wheel of Fortune franchise spans every kind of slot machine — reels, curved screens, and massive installations with enormous physical flourishes. On my visit to their Las Vegas offices, I asked Jacob Lanning, IGT’s vice president of product management, what makes a good game. 'If you can figure that out, you’ve got a job,' he said. Trask had told me something similar: 'If we knew what the perfect game was, we’d just keep making that game over and over.'

Perhaps no one has uncovered the Platonic ideal of the slot machine, but certain principles undergird most games. First, there’s a vague aesthetic uniformity: colors tend toward the primary or pastel, franchise tie-ins are a must, and the game soundtracks are typically in a major key. Meanwhile, the multi-line wins introduced by Bally have become an unintelligible tangle: modern slots offer players upwards of 50 and sometimes 100 different winning combinations — so many that without the corresponding lights, sounds, and celebration, most casual and even advanced players would have trouble recognizing whether they’d won or lost.

'If we knew what the perfect game was, we’d just keep making that game over and over.'

To keep players gambling, all slots rely on the same basic psychological principles discovered by B.F. Skinner in the 1960s. Skinner is famous for an experiment in which he put pigeons in a box that gave them a pellet of food when they pressed a lever. But when Skinner altered the box so that pellets came out on random presses — a system dubbed variable ratio enforcement — the pigeons pressed the lever more often. Thus was born the Skinner box, which Skinner himself likened to a slot machine.

The Skinner box works by blending tension and release — the absence of a pellet after the lever is pressed creates expectation that finds release via reward. Too little reward and the animal becomes frustrated and stops trying; too much and it won’t push the lever as often.

Like video poker, most multi-line slots rarely pay large jackpots, instead doling out smaller wins frequently. 'They’re imitating the formula of video poker, but they’re doing it in a slot formula,' Natasha Schüll, an associate professor at MIT who has researched slots for 15 years, says. In 2012, Princeton University Press published Addiction by Design: Machine Gaming in Las Vegas, the culmination of her research and a deconstruction of the slot machine.

Too little reward and the animal becomes frustrated and stops trying; too much and it won’t push the lever as often

Schüll says modern slot machines essentially continued the trend started by Redd so as not to jolt players too intensely in the form of losses — or wins. 'Too-big wins have been shown to stop play because it’s such an intense shift in the situation that you’ll kind of pause, you’ll stop, you’ll take your money and leave,' says Schüll. Stretching out gameplay with minor rewards, Schüll says, 'allows you to get in the flow of, another little win, another little win.'

As a result, modern slots pay out on approximately 45 percent of all spins, instead of the 3 percent of traditional slots. 'The sense of risk is completely dampened,' Schüll says. 'Designers call them drip feed games.'

That analysis is supported by a 2010 American Gaming Association white paper. 'Lower-volatility games often have greater appeal in 'locals markets' than in destination resort markets like Las Vegas or Atlantic City…Customers tend to play these games for longer periods of time…' In other words, lower volatility games paved the way for gaming’s wild expansion nationwide.

The advent of bonus games has also helped bolster slot machines’ popularity: instead of just winning money, certain combinations can trigger mini games. In the IGT showroom, Lanning showed me the company’s forthcoming Entourage game, in which a bonus game has the player match portraits of characters. In the industry, it’s called a pick-em bonus. 'Those are the most popular features,' Melissa Price, the senior vice president of gaming for Caesar’s Entertainment, told me. 'Customers enjoy ‘perceived skill’ experience.'

And then, there’s the emotional appeal: Price told me the company commissioned a study to find out why people love the Wheel of Fortune line so much. 'People said it was as much about the brand as anything,' she said. 'People said, ‘That brand — I used to hear it in the living room at my grandma’s house, I’d hear that wheel spinning because my grandma watched it. It reminds me of my grandma.’ I mean, how can you compete with that?'

Price and I spoke on the floor of Harrah’s Las Vegas at 9:00AM — the slots players were already at their machines, or perhaps they’d been there all night. Last year, Harrah’s parent company, Caesar’s Entertainment, declared bankruptcy as a consequence of overextension and growing competition. During proceedings, creditors appraised Caesar’s vast store of customer data as the company’s most valuable asset, worth about $1 billion.

Harrah’s pioneered the now industry standard Total Rewards player tracking system, first with a punchcard program introduced in 1985, then with a digital program and magnetic cards in the 1990s. Slots were easy to track, and stood at the very center of the program. The system grew even more sophisticated under the auspices of former CEO Gary Loveman. Loveman arrived at Harrah’s fresh from teaching at Harvard Business School, and he brought a methodical business savvy to an industry that, in many ways, had spent decades winging it.

Caesar’s vast store of customer data has been valued at about $1 billion

Before the tracking system, the player management was as sophisticated as watching which players spent a lot of money and comping amenities to encourage them to spend more. 'We all looked around and said, there’s got to be a more automated way to do that,' said Price.

Price and I stood behind a woman playing IGT’s Ellen Degeneres game. Ellen’s head whizzed down the reels on the parabolic display in high definition. As long as the player had her Total Rewards card inserted in the machine, every time she hit the spin button the system recorded the size of her bet, what game it was spent on, at what time, how long she’d been playing for, and so on, until she hits the 'Cash Out' button on the machine, at which point all the data is encapsulated in her file, along with all the other games she has ever played at a Caesar’s casino.

Slot Machine Design Psychology Definition

Player tracking systems revealed more than a pit boss ever could: over time, Harrah’s can create a portrait of the person’s risk profile, including how much money a player typically loses before they stop playing and what kinds of gifts to give them to keep them on the gaming floor. Sometimes, that can be a penthouse suite; other times, it can be as little as giving a player $15 in cash. In 2012, This American Life charted the lurid and unsettling extreme of how these systems can be used in a story about a Harrah’s in Indiana that enticed a woman to keep playing with unlimited hotel suites, diamond jewelry, and free trips to the Kentucky Derby. The perks fueled her gaming habit until she was $125,000 in debt.

'We are the envy of probably every consumer products industry out there.'

Every casino today has a form of the data system invented at Harrah’s — most of them are now built by Bally. 'We are the envy of probably every consumer products industry out there because of the amount of data that we really have on our players,' said Price. Newer systems can even visualize heat maps of casino activity — an operator can see precisely how much is being spent in a specific time period in localized areas.

The data also vindicates Redd’s approach: the small slots customer, over a lifetime of spending, is just as valuable as the high roller. 'The slot player was the forgotten customer,' Loveman told Bloomberg BusinessWeek in 2010. 'I had to be willing to be unsexy in this,' Loveman added. 'I can take you to a casino that would have a lot of young beautiful people in there and you would say, ‘Man, this is a happening place.’ I could take you to another place where there are a lot of people who look like your parents. The latter would be a lot more profitable than the former. My job is to make the latter.'

After my trip to Vegas, I visited the Sugarhouse casino in Philadelphia, on the bank of the Delaware River. Sugarhouse opened in 2010 and is one of 12 casinos that turned Pennsylvania into a gaming powerhouse after legalization in 2004. The casino’s interior — clear passageways, a clean line of sight from the eastern to western walls — brimmed with activity on a Tuesday evening. Sugarhouse squealed with the cacophony of slots and the saccharine melodies sounded like a thousand robots blowing bubbles. (The slot manufacturer Silicon Gaming decided at one point that soundtracks in the key of C were the most agreeable.)

In 11 years of legalized gaming, the state has earned $3 billion from table games and $17 billion from slots. Table players at Sugarhouse made their wagers at an island amidst an ocean of slots. As I made my way through the casino, I struck up a conversation with two slot players: Diane Singleton, a 45-year-old retiree; and Jack, who refused have his last name published. The two were playing Fu Dao Le, whose theme can only be described as Cherubic Chinese Babies. The game was loaded onto a ProWave cabinet, and a red cursive Bally logo hung in the upper right corner of the screen.

Singleton says she threw her rewards card away because it reminded her of how much money she’d spent

I asked what they enjoyed about the game. Jack said that unlike other games, Fu Dao Le is 'highly interactive.' He likes the game’s 'kooky stuff; you can touch the display,' he said, touching the image of cherubic babies above the reels, causing them to laugh with a Pillsbury Doughboy-like giggle.

Jack and Singleton say they’ve both earned 'Black Cards' through Sugarhouse’s player tracking system, meaning they’ve each spent more than $10,000 here. Jack says the casino has comped them four cruises so far; Singleton says she threw her card away because it reminded her of how much money she’d spent. I had more questions, but at a certain point it became apparent that Singleton was no longer listening.

'She’s in the zone right now,' said Jack.

The 'zone' is at the core of Schüll’s theory about the success and proliferation of slot machines. She heard the term over and over again in her 15 years of research — the players repeatedly told her that they played to zone out, to escape thought.

To understand the zone, you first have to understand 'flow,' the concept developed by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe a hyperfocused state of absorption. During 'flow,' time speeds up (hours feel like minutes) or slows down (reactions can be made instantly) and the mind reaches a state of almost euphoric equilibrium. Schüll, in her book, describes Csikszentmihaly’s four criteria of flow: '[F]irst, each moment of the activity must have a little goal; second, the rules for attaining that goal must be clear; third, the activity must give immediate feedback; fourth, the tasks of the activity must be matched with challenge.' For most of their history, slots easily fulfilled the first two criteria; after lowering volatility, they fulfilled the third criterion, and with the introduction of multiple lines, endless bonus rounds, and the occasional mini-game, they finally fulfilled the four criteria.

The 'zone' is hyperfocused, neurotransmitters abuzz, but directed toward a numbness with no goal in particular

The 'zone' is flow through a lens darkly: hyperfocused, neurotransmitters abuzz, but directed toward a numbness with no goal in particular. When Singleton emerged from the zone, I asked her again why she found the slots so compelling. 'I lost my husband two years ago to throat cancer,' she explained. 'He was the love of my life, and I started doing this just to — I was out of my mind and spent a lot of time at the cancer center.' Jack had lost his son to pancreatic cancer. As they told their stories, Jack and Singleton hit the spin buttons and the machines blared so loudly that their words were lost in the noise.

Singleton says she never recovered from the pain of her loss, and that’s why she keeps coming back to the slots. Jack echoed that sentiment: 'I don’t have to think. And I know I can’t win.'

'Right, so you know that,' said Singleton.

'Every now and then…you get something,' Jack agreed.

'But it’s never what you lost.'

'Because I don’t care whether I win 38 cents or 600 dollars.'

'You just want to see them again.'

Singleton rifled through her wallet filled with $100 bills. 'I’ll be right back, guys,' she said, and went off to get change.

Back at the Bally showroom, Trask and I had sat in front of the company’s new Duck Dynasty game. 'There’s never been more slot machines in the world than there are today,' he said. 'And that’s proliferation not just in the US, but abroad.' His hand rested on the game’s display, his index finger next to a reel symbol of a cast member sticking his tongue out and playing air guitar. Scientific Games’ market now includes 50 countries on six continents. This spring, the company announced it was planning on providing 5,000 of the 16,500 machines recently authorized in Greece.

The industry is also preparing for the eventual deterioration of its key middle-aged demographic and competition from free-to-play mobile games. 'People only have so much leisure time and there’s a lot of activity on iPhones,' Price told me. At one point in the Bally’s warehouse, Trask said, 'You know how you get people younger to gamble? Hand them a fucking telephone.'

'You know how you get people younger to gamble? Hand them a fucking telephone.'

The industry seems to be working on the same hunch. In 2011, Caesar’s acquired Playtika, an online casino games company that offers free and paid mobile games. A year later, IGT acquired the free casino games app DoubleDown, which runs as both a stand-alone mobile app and through Facebook. The company now offers online table games and a good sample of its portfolio of slots, including Wheel of Fortune, to mobile players. Earlier this year, the gaming giant appointed former Zynga studio manager Jim Veevart as DoubleDown’s vice president of games. And last year, Churchill Downs Incorporated, which runs seven casinos in addition to its Kentucky Derby racetrack, acquired the free games company Big Fish Games.

Meanwhile, the tech sector is adopting the principles of slot design for its own purposes. In the early aughts, the tech writer Julian Dibbell devised the concept of ludocapitalism, a term inspired by watching World of Warcraft players mine gold in the game to making a living in real life. Ludocapitalism was an attempt to explain the growing gamification of society through technology. Dibbell admits the concept’s parameters are vague, but at its most basic it identifies that capitalism can harness the human play drive for better or worse — and that increasingly, games aren’t allegories that say something about our lives; they are our lives. As people move toward more Schüll says. Writing in The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal tapped Schüll’s concept of the ludic loop to explain the inextricable entrancement of flipping through Facebook photos: you push a button over and over, primed for an eternally fleeting informational reward.

Slot Machine Design Psychology Software

A more exact replica of a slot may be Tinder. The mechanics of the dating app mirror the experience of playing slots: the quick swiping results in an intermittent reward of connection, followed by the option to either message your potential date or 'Keep playing.' Tinder recently launched a premium version that allows the user to undo an accidental 'not interested' swipe, essentially monetizing mistakes made while in the automatic rhythm of the zone.

'I can’t tell you how often I’ve been approached since the publication of my book by Silicon Valley types who say things like, ‘Wow, the gambling industry really seems to have a handle on this attention retention problem that we’re all facing,' Schüll told me. 'Will you come tell our designers how to do a better job?’'

Last year, Schüll heard from Nir Eyal, a tech entrepreneur who founded and sold two startup companies that produce advertisements in free-to-play games. '[Eyal] showed me his copy of my book, and it had, like, hundreds of hot pink sticky notes coming out of it,' she told me. In his 2014 book Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products, Eyal laid out his 'Hook Model' of product development that works on basic behaviorist principles: a trigger turns into an action turns into a variable reward turns into a further personal investment back into the product. Last year, he invited Schüll to speak at his Habit Summit, hosted at Stanford. Schüll gave a talk on the 'dark side of habits,' placing slot machines on the undesirable end of the habit spectrum.

'Everything that engages us, all pieces of content are engineered to be interesting.'

Eyal told me he invited Schüll to offer a less self-congratulatory, 'rah-rah' voice to the conference. Although the conference focused on how to build habit-forming tech products, 'These techniques — they have a dark side,' he said. 'If not used appropriately, or if used for nefarious purposes, then they don’t always benefit the user.'

Still, it was difficult to determine whether Schüll’s slot research has been received as a warning or a how-to guide within tech. Eyal criticized slot machines for what he said was a business model dependent on addicted players — 'that industry, I have a problem with,' he said. But Hooked is in many ways tech’s version of Addiction by Design: his model of successful product design is a loop going from 'trigger' to 'action' to 'variable reward' to 'investment' and back again. In his trigger section, Eyal uses Instagram to illustrate how emotional pain can be a powerful motivator to use a product — in that app’s case, the mostly insubstantial pain of lost memories. He writes, 'As product designers it is our goal to solve these problems and eliminate pain…users who find a product that alleviates their pain will form strong, positive associations with the product over time.'

I asked Eyal what distinguishes mobile games or dating apps from slot machines. He gave a range of answers that sounded at once comprehensive and somewhat defensive — that tech addictions never really plummet to the league of gambling addiction; that people prone to addiction will be addicted no matter what — before finally admitting that, in a sense, everything functions like a slot machine.

'All content needs to be made interesting. What you’re doing as a writer is introducing variable rewards into your story. Everything that engages us, all pieces of content are engineered to be interesting,' he said. 'Movies aren’t real life, books aren’t real life, your article isn’t real life. It’s manufactured to pull us one sentence after another through mystery, through the unknown. It’s a slot machine. Your article is a slot machine. It has to be variable. So just because an experience introduces variability and mystery — that’s good!'

'I think the answer is, it’s okay to addict people as long as your business model doesn’t depend on it,' he said, as if finally finding the answer to a problem that had long seemed without a solution. 'That’s the answer,' he added. 'That’s the answer.'

Correction: a previous version of this article stated that modern slots have a 45 percent payback rate. In fact, they pay out on approximately 45 percent of all spins. In addition Nir Eyal's Hooked was published in 2014, not 2003.

Slot machine design psychology 4th edition
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Photography by Tiffany Brown Anderson

Edited by Michael Zelenko

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