Why Are Gambling Machines Popular?

When most people think of gambling machines, they often think of slot machines.

But gambling machines includes all the video gambling machines found in the casino. Besides slots, there are also video poker games, which are as popular among gamblers as their slot counterparts.

In fact, I’ve seen video poker machines described as being more popular than The Beatles! But why are gambling machines so popular?

This post examines several reasons why there’s a continuous rise in popularity for machines that allow players to gamble for real money.

The Gambling Machine Zone

I’ve read accounts and interviews with various gamblers in a variety of books. In Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schüll, the author asked one gambling why she keeps playing slot machines.

Her answer was illustrative:

“To keep playing – to stay in the machine zone where nothing else matters.”

Indeed, casino managers and slot machine designers spend a lot of thought and time measuring various statistics related to the profitability of their games and gambling machines in particular. One of those measurements is “time on device,” which turns out to be the best predictor of a game’s profitability.

It’s more important even than the theoretical return for the game or, its cousin, the house edge.

Newer gambling machines are specifically designed to tickle the senses in ways that keep players in that zone and increase time on advice.

In other words, brain chemistry is the main driver of slot machines’ popularity, and slot machine designers are becoming experts at using sensory stimuli to manipulate gamblers’ brain chemistry.

How Slot Machines Have Changed Since Their Invention

Slot machines were invented in 1891 and have changed a lot since then. Originally, slot machines were literally just machines – they were mechanical rather than electronic in nature. They used coin slots to take your money, gears and springs to power the spinning reels, and levers to activate those reels.

They had a few working parts, sure, but not many compared to modern real money slot machine games, which has over 1,200 individual components. Designing a modern slot machine can take as many as 300 individuals. Some of them are surprising.

Story-based slot machine games involve script writers. Graphic artists create unique artwork for the modern slot machine. Mathematicians put together the PAR sheets that determine the game’s profitability per spin.

And that’s just some of the people working on the main game components. Additional designers work on accessories to the main machine—the touchscreens, the bill acceptors, and the actual physical cabinets that hold the machinery.

Slot machines used to be as simple or simpler than any other game in the casino. You put in a predetermined amount of money, spin the reels — which had a limited number of symbols on then — and won money when you lined up three symbols across the payline in the center of the machine’s display.

Modern gamers offer a seemingly infinite number of variety related to all these experiences. You can play a single machine for anywhere from a penny per spin up to $100 (or more) per spin. You can choose to play for one coin or multiple coins. Today’s slot machines might have five or even seven spinning reels instead of just three.

These reels aren’t limited to the 20 or so symbols a mechanical reel might be limited to, but they can also manipulate the probability of a reel landing on a specific symbol. With a physical machine, each stop has a 1/X probability of landing. The X is the total number of stops on the reel.

On a modern slot machine, some symbols come up 1/10 of the time, some 1/20 of the time, and some 1/40 of the time. It all depends on what’s been programmed into the software determining the outcomes (the random number generator, or “RNG” for short)

You’re also not limited to what’s showing on the reels for your gameplay. Most slot machines now offer bonus games that are randomly triggered. These bonus games can be as simple as a randomly generated number of free spins, guessing games resulting in more prizes, or even skill-based games that are more like video games than anything else.

How and Why Gambling in Casinos Changed During the 1980s

Until the middle of the 1980s, blackjack and craps were the most popular games in the casinos. They’re simple games using cards and dice played on tables with green felt covering them. The slot machines were found to the sides of where the “real gamblers” played. They were thought of as games for the wives of the real gamblers.

Over the decade and a half following, the slot machines in casinos had taken over the casino floor and were generating $2 for every $1 being generated by the table games in the casino. Industry figures started using another expression to describe slot machines. They called them “cash cows.”

Now, gambling machines drive an estimated 85% of the profits in the casino industry. In some jurisdictions, casinos are ONLY allowed to offer slot machine gambling.

One reason for the rising popularity of slot machines is that they don’t seem like as much of a “sin” as traditional gambling. They resemble arcade games, and so they don’t have the connotation of traditional casino table games. Elderly people and women are more likely to play games that don’t involve that seedy connotation.

In fact, the entire gambling industry made a subtle change to what they call their industry. You’ll notice that they’re no longer calling themselves the gambling industry at all. They now refer to themselves as the “gaming” industry.

This shift has also resulted in the public being more accepting of casino gambling in general. At one time, you had to travel to Atlantic City, Las Vegas, or Reno to gamble in a casino.

But states have legalized gambling and launched casinos at a rapid pace over the last 50 years. The rise in acceptable gambling mirrors the rise in the popularity of state lotteries.

That rise in popularity is a tide that’s lifting all boats, and one of the reasons for that rising tide is the immense popularity of the slot machine.

Where Can You Play Slot Machines Now?

As of 2012, at least 41 states had some kind of gambling machine available to play. Some states were considering legalizing slot machines, too, so the numbers might have grown since then. In the mid-1990s, half a million slot machines were available to play throughout the United States. By 2008, you had over 870k machines to choose from.

And those are just the legal gambling machines.

There are some establishments referred to as “game rooms” where they’re allowed to offer these machines legally as long as they don’t offer cash or prizes worth a specific amount.

At a game room that a buddy of mine was playing at, he won $400 on the machine. The attendant then suggested that they go outside for a cigarette. When they did, the attendant put a cigarette pack on the windowsill, which my friend took. It had the $400 he’d won in it.

It seems as if such silly tactics wouldn’t work well at keeping law enforcement from shutting down the hundreds of businesses offering illegal slot machine gambling throughout the state.

But apparently, they work well.

I’ve seen these slot machines in bars. I’ve also seen them in truck stops, and, less often, in restaurants. They’re called “amusement machines” or “sweepstakes games,” but we all know what they really are.

How Does the Rise in Machine Gambling Affect Table Games?

As slot machines grow in popularity, table games are being removed from casino floors to make room for more slots. In Addiction by Design, multiple experts compared the rise of slot machines to changes in forests where trees are being cut down in favor of different forms of vegetation.

This is a Darwinian process in a business setting. Casino games seem to be about the survival of the fittest, and the fittest consistently seem to be the gambling machines.

Changing Technologies and Different Gambling Experiences

Huge corporations are changing technology in the gambling world to increase corporate profits. The rising popularity of slot machines is a side effect of this quest for profits. Cities like Las Vegas are basically giant petri dishes where constant experiments are determining which game features result in the maximum losses for gamblers and maximum profitability for the casino companies.

The “gaming” industry is becoming a bigger force in the American economy every day. Two out of three people living in Las Vegas gamble. Most of them gamble at least twice a week, which isn’t the most profitable. The average gambling session can last as long as four hours.

On top of that, four out of five local gamblers belong to loyalty clubs that “reward” them for their play. They earn free meals and other comps like entertainment tickets or free hotel rooms.

Gambling machines have made the activity more convenient than ever. In Las Vegas, every business you frequent seems to have at least one slot machine, including convenience stores, restaurants, and bars.

And the number of gamblers who prefer slot machines has risen from 30% in 1984 to over 78% by 2012.

Conclusion

Las Vegas used to be called “Sin City,” but maybe a better name for the town now would be “Machine City.” The rise in popularity of gambling machines shows no sign of slowing or stopping.

The technology behind these machines and how they affect the brain chemistry of gamblers continues to improve. So, the amount of money gamblers lose to these machines will continue to grow for the foreseeable future, too.