The game of chance I played this week was a slot machine emulator called FreeSlots, developed by the company SimSlots Inc. in 1999. However, the invention of slot machines as a whole dates back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. While FreeSlots doesn’t state any particular demographic, the game likely targets adults who enjoy gambling, or otherwise enjoy playing games that are high risk, high reward, and incorporate some sort of explicit reward for winning.
FreeSlots leverages a couple of mechanics and aesthetics in order to put people at risk for addiction. Namely, the visual and sound design, the “reconfiguration of loss”, and unpredictability, invokes sense-pleasure. Moreover, these mechanics also feed into players’ psychological needs for agency and control.
The mechanics of FreeSlots are fairly simple. The version I played in particular is called Prosperous Fortune. You are given a certain amount of credits to start, options to bet 4, 8, 14, 20, or 26 lines, and a button to spin after having selected the amount to bet. After pressing the “spin” button, FreeSlots simulates the reels in the machine moving and then highlights if you have won anything in particular.
The first thing that becomes obvious is that the visual and sound design are meant to draw players in. The simulator is designed to resemble a real slot machine closely—the graphics on the reel are big and colorful, the buttons light up, the machine plays anticipatory music as it spins, which turns into a celebratory riff when the player wins. Furthermore, on any sort of win, the simulator emphasizes the increasing credit count on the screen and flashes repeatedly the matches that led to the particular win. Overall, the visual and sound design both serve to emphasize the feeling of victory and create sensation as an aesthetic.
However, while the graphics and music serve to emphasize the sensation aesthetic, FreeSlots and slot machines in general rely on the rush that comes with winning as the core form of sense pleasure. It is players chasing this “high” of winning that puts people at risk of addiction, and it specifically uses randomness to elevate this high point. As the article Addiction by Design puts it, “purposive obfuscation is key to seductive appeal to gambling machines”. It is exactly the randomness and the uncertainty of when the next win will happen that keeps players coming back. Players continue to play not only for the monetary reward, but also in some sense to try to uncover “mystery” or “liveliness” of the machine. Moreover, the Addiction by Design describes how these further “reconfigure loss” to make the next spin more enticing. Many of these randomly generated numbers are mapped to “blanks” that show up on either side of a winning combination, which makes losses feel more like “near misses” instead. This then makes the player feel like they are making progress, or otherwise are close to uncovering the mystery and winning big soon, when each losing combination is truly no closer than any other.
This idea of providing the illusion of player control—that they are on the right path to winning—is also elaborated in Addiction by Design. The random number is generated ahead of time, before the player has even touched anything. By the time the player presses spin, it’s only displaying the predetermined result, but the mechanic of letting the user “reveal” their win fulfills the psychological need for agency. The setup of the machine makes players feel like they are creating the result, instead of the other way around.
This also differs from some other games of chance, like poker, where the player does have some actual meaningful agency to the game. While at heart, poker is still a game of chance, there are elements of strategy and player actions that can significantly affect the outcome, such as when to bet and how much.
My friend’s first big win.
These elements were apparent when I played this online version with a friend. Initially, she was rather disengaged for the first few spins as she failed to win anything, saying things like “I don’t think this is working for me,” as if her results were attached to her specifically, and not completely arbitrary for any of us. However, after the first win, accompanied by the fanfare of the machine going off, she was surprised, and immediately seemed more interested in spinning more. This was also the point she started to try higher betting values. After a few interspersed wins, she laughed and admitted she could see how “this could get addicting”.
Overall, FreeSlots leverages its mechanics—visual and sound design, the unpredictability and reconfiguration of loss, the illusion of player agency—to create sense pleasure and keep players addicted.
