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 of 30 machines, someone will have near miss fanfare every minute. If a bigger win is (1:5)^5, that is 1:3125 spins, or every 150 minutes per machine. That same 30 EGM bank will be paying out a large win every 5 minutes, ie. just short enough for every player on the bank to realise that the machines are “hot”. Its not planned, it just works out that way.
2) when it comes to addiction, if the stats the media are stating is correct, every 6th employee in the industry would also be addicted (using the definition of addiction used from chemical substance abuse). Since there is no measurable difference in addiction levels for employees (who spend 40hrs per week interacting with slots) and players who spend less time, the addiction argument looses its basis.
3) games adjusting payouts based on the outcome of previous games are illegal. The industry is heavily regulated (independant compliance agencies), and no operator wants to lose their license doing illegal things.
4) people have a natural tendency to arrange items, from socks and underwear in drawers, to payout symbols on the screen. There is a natural high people get when they complete a sorting job. I’ve worked with 3 big slot companies, and none of them had paid psychologists on call - there is no need.
5) its a voluntery activity. There are lots of people who enjoy the activity, the excitement, the thrill, etc and they’re responsible enough to only wager less than the cost of a theatre ticket. Sometimes they finish the night with more money than they brought in. Its a regulated activity for adults.
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) players are problem gamblers. Of those who start playing slots monthly, 10% develop gambling problems within a year.
These are bad numbers. Really bad. And they match my experience from million-players-+ databases of actual gambling data.
The most significant marker to predict gambling problems is the amount wagered, say per month. The more someone plays, the higher the risk of that person having gambling problems. About 10% of players make up 80% of the turnover; about 0.1% about 10%. The Pareto principle at play, sure, but combined with the former it basically says that you can't trust the industry for advice on problem gambling.
This is not your safe-little-hobby thing, and the amount players who really enjoy them are much, much, much fewer than you make it sound. The majority of the industry's revenue come from people who would like to stop but can't. This is by any useful definition neither rational nor voluntary. The main claim of the industry is "informed choice" and the users' responsibility to take control, despite loss of control being the very definition of the illness.
This is another tobacco-industry-like example of society slowly realizing the hidden costs being pushed by a powerful industry to unknowing and often vulnerable third parties.
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 months ago and the "experts" (if they can be called that) couldn't prove that gambling was an addictive activity, since a large portion of playerswho participated in 'gambling activities' could not be classified as addicted. Since the prosecution couldn't prove the slot machines were addictive, the case against the Casino was dropped (lots of expert testimony ended up being dismissed).
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 gambling software for five years before I went to work with problem gambling. If integrity is important to you though, you should read up on the subject (Addictive by design is a good book), meet some of your customers, and take your own and your company's self-interest biases into account.
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.
Something being a recognized diagnosis is not meaningful on its own. The nature of medical documentation and its ties to payment in the US and interoperability everywhere means structured, defined codes are needed for everything that could conceivably occur. That is why there are also special codes for other problems like your subsequent encounter with being sucked into a jet engine, or wounds sustained in a jetski accident that occurred while you were on fire.
Look you may not want to admit it, but you make your money from praying on and promoting addiction. You are a drug dealer and directly ruin people's lives.
Denial has a strong psychological basis, but if you want to look back on your life without massive regrets leave the industry.
I could not agree more; I long ago decided that while I might work on many a terrible corporate project I'd never work for two types of companies; defence or anything gambling-related.
Do you agree that 'problem' or 'compulsive' gambling (Wiki: "an urge to gamble continuously despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop") is (a) real, (b) responsible for a significant portion of your industry's profits, and (c) responsible for a great deal of human misery?
If you agree that it is real, what distinction are you drawing between compulsive gambling and gambling addiction, and why is that distinction important?
First, do you agree that there are experts in some fields? If yes, why the quotes on these experts? If these specific experts deserved the quotes, then, were they the right people to be called to testify in a court case?
Second, you've chosen a tricky country to set as an example: Australia has an extremely strong pokies (slot machines in there) lobby. There has been several cases of corruption linked to them, so I'd take the rulings with a grain of salt.
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.
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.
The problem in identifying addition prone candidates is a problem of ethics. The primary behavior that defines "the gambler state", and many other forms of addiction, is a neurological disorder related to responses of dopamine flooding. This is a physiological condition in the brain that can be observed, validated, and analyzed against trends.
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The addiction
In the most simple of terms dopamine is a brain hormone related to pleasure responses. If you eat chocolate and it tastes great your brain might get a small reward of dopamine. This is normal behavior and it is intentional so that the brain learns that pleasurable responses follow good decisions that result in rewards.
The part of this behavior that triggers addiction is that the dopamine response is not consistent. Planned and known wins result in small rewards. A surprise win results an observably larger reward. Again, this is proper human behavior intended to influence learning and decisions in the brain.
Addiction sets in when there is a disconnect between the dopamine cycle (the pleasurable stimulus from a win) and the resultant learning. A healthy person learns that the surprise win results in greater pleasure and modifies their behavior to find or achieve other surprises, because the current win is no longer a surprise and will no longer trigger the big dopamine rush. An person suffering from addiction, however, repeats the same behaviors in order to reproduce the same surprise wins because their brains haven't learned from the surprise. In their case their behavior is like-wise modified as influenced by the dopamine response, but instead of influenced in a direction for making future decisions they are stuck in a state of instant replay.
While the learning dysfunction is bad it isn't the primary problem of addiction. When the cognitive decision making is informed by a short-circuited response to a non-cognitive physiological condition of the brain the person won't know there is anything wrong or impaired. After all, either way there is a dopamine cycle and modified behavior. It is impossible to determine the impairment yourself because that very level of awareness and reasoning are influenced by this dopamine-learning cycle that is impaired in the first place.
That impossibility is the problem of addiction.
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The ethics
People with the dysfunctional behavior are identifiable. The problem is what do you do with them. You already know they are subject to a hopeless cycle of instant-replay and can use that knowledge to bleed them dry. Their decision making on a very foundational and emotional level is hopelessly damaged.
On one hand you can ask them to give you everything they own, and they will if you ask them correctly. This isn't just gambling or addiction, but qualifies a whole host of behaviors associated with marketing generally and isn't necessarily wrong... immediately.
Ethically speaking there is nothing wrong with persuading or manipulating people. People encounter such choices numerous times everyday. The ethical part creeps on two fronts:
1. If you know somebody's basic decision making capability is damaged and you intentionally abuse that damage to your self satisfaction
2. If you know bombarding a person, whether or not in a state of reasonable deciding capacity, with messaging to influence that person contrary to their objectives or in excess of a reasonable period of messaging
In many cases things that are commonly referred to as vises intentionally violate those two identified points of ethics. The legal available of a service or product does not qualify the ethics around such.
Apparently the casinos' response is to give them free food, drinks, flattery, personal attention, attractive host(esse)s, and comp them luxurious hotel suites with big windows overlooking crowded country music festivals.
>If you know somebody's basic decision making capability is damaged and you intentionally abuse that damage to your self satisfaction
Wouldn't this include a lot of advertisement? Simply informing a person that an option exists wouldn't fall under it, but so many advertisements use psychological tricks that take advantage of common flaws in our decision making patterns.
>If you know bombarding a person, whether or not in a state of reasonable deciding capacity, with messaging to influence that person contrary to their objectives or in excess of a reasonable period of messaging
Agreed, but where do you draw the line? How do you determine when a person has had too much or who are too broken to police themselves? Just to be safe let's poison the well by casting the widest possible net and ensure we capture everybody equally.
Only then can we be sure who are the weakest links... the people most ripe for abuse. I suppose the social problem is that there is little motivation to identify people prone to addiction unless you have motivation to abuse that addiction.
Oh come on, this is some doublethink if ever I saw it.
> Every 6th employee in the industry would also be addicted
No- the employees would be out of a job if the addicts werent in there, they see both sides of the coin, winners and losers, and have a completely different perspective on gambling. If anything I’d expect employees to be more immune to addiction than anything else.
Your arguments 4 & 5 can be applied directly to hard drugs without modification.
I don’t think gambling or what you do is immoral, but if your line of thinking is how you justify your job you should think again as it sounds like it doesn’t match up with your own morals.
There is an important distinction between "program these 30 machines such that every 5 someone gets a pay out" and "program this machine such that 1 out of every n pulls is a pay out."
4) people have a natural tendency to arrange cocaine into nice straight lines. There is a natural high people get when they complete a snorting job. I've worked with 3 big coke dealers, and none of them had paid physicians on call - there is no need.
> 5) its a voluntery activity. There are lots of people who enjoy the activity, the excitement, the thrill, etc and they’re responsible enough to only wager less than the cost of a theatre ticket. Sometimes they finish the night with more money than they brought in. Its a regulated activity for adults.
I'm not really sure that it's voluntary. My last several trips to Vegas I was surprised by the new number of pamphlets placed just about everywhere around the casinos (probably by law) that state in very short and simple terms how bad your odds of winning are and that gambling is not meant for making money, but it doesn't seem to stop the wave of sad stories in any way - there's an addictive quality to the games, the same that keeps kids spending hundreds or thousands on loot boxes in games.
It's predatory, and yes, the gambler themselves do need to make the effort to show restraint, it's not really something that's easily controlled for a lot of the population. I'd posit that those who are able to take the hit of a loss have the same problem and addiction as those who can't take the hit of a loss; they're chasing the same high and the same result, it's just that one has a more generous buffer for failure than the other. Both are equally susceptible to over-spending.
2. I used to work in the gaming industry too (not slots). If you're on the other side you just realize in the long run gambling is a losing proposition so you won't be pursuing the activity as hard. Also that job is a consistent stream of income.
3. Yes, but they are designed to be as addictive as possible. I'm quite appalled by online slots (Android, iPhone) where no money is at stake, but coins can be purchased, and the amount of coins purchasable is adjusted based on how much you play. I'm thinking Zynga based games primarily.
5. That's fair but a weak argument. 100% of people who go to the theatre or eat out spend money, but the amount is fixed and known up front. I guess you can say the same for slots when the payout percentage is up front, but still, Vegas wasn't built by giving away money.
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, alone.
About point number (2)
I really don't get what you mean here. Do you mean industry employees are
gamblers themselves, or that they gamble as part of their job? I'd appreciate
a clarification.
About point number (5)
I don't gabmle and I've never played any slots. The reason for this is that I
can tell there's no way to come on top. If I play slots and win more than the
house wins, then the house is losing money. So for slots machines to be
profitable, players have to lose moeny. And if they weren't profitable, there
wouldn't be any of them around. Since there are, it must mean players lose
their money.
So the people who gamble on slots either: (a) don't realise they can't win, or
(b) can't help themselves despite knowing.
That doesn't sound to me like an activity in which informed, responsible
adults engage.
They certainly didn't get so addictive by chance, but not quite by design either. It's a kind of evolution, where some machines suceeed and some fail, with successful techniques carrying through to newer machines, eventually leading to hyper-optimised money making devices. Whilst not disputed that this leads to ethically dubious profits, I can see how it allows the manfuacturers a certain plausible deniability as to their intentions.
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
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 them home and feed them coins all day, just to see the pretty lights (I mean they could get their coins back at the end of the day).
The fact that there doesn't seem to be any serious interest in that sort of game machine tells me that the monetary rewards are the primary purpose of play.
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 similar psychological draw as to gambling -- except you can't make money in Candy Crush -- only spend it.
>> 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 :)
> For instance, I could imagine smaller, cheaper slot machines sold directly to players, to take them home and feed them coins all day, just to see the pretty lights (I mean they could get their coins back at the end of the day).
Already exists, in a way, and are quite popular. Check out the slots games on the Apple and Android app stores; the ones that are created by subsidiaries of slot machine manufacturers (and therefore can make their slots in the likeness of real machines) rake in an astonishing amount of money, despite the fact that the player is just playing for virtual tokens rather than real cash payouts. A couple are in the top 10 by revenue in both app stores.
Utility of money is nonlinear, so it could be rational to throw out a small amount of money for the expectation of large payoff. Of course, it means you should never play again, when you have thrown out sufficiently large quantity of money.
2) Employees are paid by the hour, they have no emotional investment in the outcome of a spin.
5) There are people who can gamble responsibly. They literally don't matter. They are small fry. Their money does not build those opulent Vegas palaces. It's all about the whales, the high rollers.
2) The employees are not gambling, so they are not exposed to the addictive product.
3) Incorrect. Standalone progressives and linked progressives adjust the payout based on the outcome of previous games. Either the jackpot is awarded and reset, or the increment is added and will be available as a future payout. Furthermore some markets have had a history of compensators (eg fruit machine markets / awp).
>Furthermore some markets have had a history of compensators (eg fruit machine markets / awp).
What do you mean by "compensators" and "fruit machine markets / awp", please?
Another dumb question I was too embarrassed to ask in a real casino, but everybody in the gambling industry probably already knows:
I've never read a slot machine "instruction manual", and the instructions on the slot machines in Amsterdam are in Dutch. So my experience is just walking up to them and pressing the buttons to learn how they work.
Some times when you put money into a slot machine, it starts out in this mode where it's only blinking between a few numbered lights but doesn't spin the slots, and it seems stuck in that mode, since I can't reliably get it out of that mode by pressing all the buttons. But sometimes I can, and it's not clear what I did that I didn't do those other times.
Sometimes I'm able to press enough buttons to get it out of that dumb mode and back to spinning the slots as I expected, but some times I just have to eject my money and move on to another machine.
Sometimes a machine will start out in this mode, not spinning the slots, but not usually, and other nearby machines of the same type will act normally (spinning the slots the first time you use them).
What's going on? Is there a reset button around the back of the machine that I don't know about? It seems like a really boring game, and I can't imagine anyone would become addicted to that mode.
A 'Compensator' is an element that dynamically controls the payout typically based on the current 'hold'. The hold being the amount of money in the machine.
If I recall 'Barcrest' has a range of patents covering compensators. (For those interested).
Not sure about the Dutch market. I recall a game shipping to Netherlands called 'Golden Goals', so I believe they have class 3 gaming machines (at least in Casinos?).
Its possible the machine you are talking about has the BET (per line) set high, so that your current CREDIT amount is insuffient to activate all the available LINES.
On most modern video slots there is a BET per line, a possible ANTEBET a number of LINES to wager on. The total STAKE = BET * LINE + ANTEBET. The LINE lights (or BET lights in USA) will illuminate based on which valid bets.
My advice is press the collect button, take your money and buy yourself a drink :)
Gaming machines work on 'Negative Compound Interest' - thats all you need to know. If you keep re-'investing' you will only end up with a $0 balance.
Finally every Jurisdiction typically operates on different rules. These rules are normally publically available.
This covers the national standards that are generally applicable to machines in Australia and New Zealand, and then variations and specializations for the particular market of NSW - management protocols, jackpot behaviour, prohibited features etc.
I mean, I guess you have to think like that to do the work you do, but are you really disputing the existence of gambling addiction? It seems like a pretty well documented phenomena by now.
Drinking is a voluntary activity but we still have alcoholics, gambling addiction is the same. Of course no one is forcing people to gamble but similarly no one is forcing a heroin addict to keep taking the drug.
Do you have much experience in taking a look who is playing your slot machines?
I mean do you really go to places and check it out for a few hours?
Here in germany there are small casinos. Not real casinos but with a few machines like 5-20.
I went to such a place because there was a pool table in thenext room. I saw, while playing pool, how a few people used multil machines at once, feed those machines 10Euros and more (around 11$) in a quick feshion.
Do you think, that those people, who play on a saturday afternoon enjoying this? i mean do you really think "yes the experience im providing for them through my job is is an activity they enjoy and the enjoyment stands in relation to the amount of money they are spending".
I only thought "holy shit, poor people, throwing there hard earned money away" I felt sorry for those people. so sry that i was thinking if or how i could approach them.
My pool table for 2 hours and 4-5 drinks was cheaper of what one person was putting in those machines.
Out of pure curiousity, got any sources for me to read regarding 2).
Just because I read it and thought: "You know what, that would be one hell of an interesting study/experiment...".
Because every possible finding: whether industry involvement/employment had the effect of increasing demand, decreasing demand, or being totally irrelevant/representative of the population at large, would be an interesting outcome...
"...if the stats the media are stating is correct, every 6th employee in the industry would also be addicted (using the definition of addiction used from chemical substance abuse). Since there is no measurable difference in addiction levels for employees (who spend 40hrs per week interacting with slots) and players who spend less time, the addiction argument looses its basis.
Your premise is false: The article states the serious addiction rate as 1 in 6 people who play the slots regularly based on Australian govt statistics.
Also, employees paid to interact with slots for work purposes (building, testing, QA, etc) are not equivalent to other people who proactively go to casinos and pay to play for leisure purposes.
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. Fair i think because i had to pay 10% exchange fee or something similiar. Its fine.
But than i went to a table and i lost my money way way way faster than i could grasp. Srsly fast. Like wtf fast. 100$ gone in 15 minutes. Why? Small blind was small, big blind was only 2 dollars but everyone played for 5 dollars min. Seeing the flop 5$. The dealer is quick like hell. One round doesn't take long.
I went to the casino with a clear limit. I didn't change the limit, i didn't increase it, i didn't went back to an AT&T. But with a reasonble limit in place, you don't have fun in a casino for long. No way. Loosing 100$ i worked my ass of in under an hour? No srysl no. This is not fun and not entertainment. It is loosing money with the illusion that you could beat someone on that table and you can't.
You only can when you extercise when you do it as a job or when you have a gambling addiction and spend your hard earned money every money there and just losing losing losing.
Now back to the slot machines: Those are even more fucked up. I really mean fucked up. I thought you can play with them like different subgames, a little bit of reaction or choses but there non. And i mean non.
0 Zero non.
You have one button to press (which is more or less your 'losing money button') and another row of buttons to increase the amount you are 'betting'.
Wtf?
There is no emotional value in sitting in front of a slot machine, pressing a button and losing money. Yes everything else, getting fucking drunk in a bar next door and pucking the shit out of you or just sitting at home and watching tv has more value to live than sitting in front of a digital machine and pressing a button.
And no that has nothing to do with 'save' life. and it has nothing to do with 'enjoying themselves'.
Casino work because people get addicted. Casinos work because they have enough audiance arround it which gives the addicted people the feeling that they are not alone. But thats it. And its horrible.
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.
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 of 30 machines, someone will have near miss fanfare every minute. If a bigger win is (1:5)^5, that is 1:3125 spins, or every 150 minutes per machine. That same 30 EGM bank will be paying out a large win every 5 minutes, ie. just short enough for every player on the bank to realise that the machines are “hot”. Its not planned, it just works out that way.
2) when it comes to addiction, if the stats the media are stating is correct, every 6th employee in the industry would also be addicted (using the definition of addiction used from chemical substance abuse). Since there is no measurable difference in addiction levels for employees (who spend 40hrs per week interacting with slots) and players who spend less time, the addiction argument looses its basis.
3) games adjusting payouts based on the outcome of previous games are illegal. The industry is heavily regulated (independant compliance agencies), and no operator wants to lose their license doing illegal things.
4) people have a natural tendency to arrange items, from socks and underwear in drawers, to payout symbols on the screen. There is a natural high people get when they complete a sorting job. I’ve worked with 3 big slot companies, and none of them had paid psychologists on call - there is no need.
5) its a voluntery activity. There are lots of people who enjoy the activity, the excitement, the thrill, etc and they’re responsible enough to only wager less than the cost of a theatre ticket. Sometimes they finish the night with more money than they brought in. Its a regulated activity for adults.