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A better mousetrap

Were it not for a mechanical whiz named Charles August Fey, poker machines might never have come into existence.

Born in Bavaria in 1862, Fey left home at a young age to travel and work across Europe as a mechanic and instrument maker before travelling to New York. Like many people in America at the time, he then headed west and eventually settled in San Francisco. ‘Nickel-in-the-slot’ machines that had been invented in Brooklyn in the early 1880s were already popular in the city’s bars and tobacconists. Based on poker, these machines had playing cards affixed to five drums that were visible in a small viewing window. To play, a person deposited a nickel and pulled a lever. This set the internal gears and springs in motion that randomised the cards. The hand that appeared determined whether and what the player won — candy, drink tokens, cigarettes, cigars, and, sometimes, cash — all to be collected after the fact from the proprietor.

Fey acquired some of these machines and began tinkering with their design. He wanted to create a revamped version and, in 1899, did just that when he released the Liberty Bell machine. Named in honour of America’s famous symbol of freedom, it was a countertop contraption built of sheet metal, reinforced by a brass frame and propped up on silver feet. It had three spring-loaded reels, each carrying a mixture of ten symbols — diamonds, hearts, spades, horseshoes, and, the jackpot symbol, a liberty bell. When a player inserted a coin and pulled a side handle, these reels spun around a metal shaft and were stopped, one by one, left to right, by an inbuilt braking system. The rate of play was slow — around five games per minute — and the viewing window smaller than a car’s dashboard. Three bells aligning across the one-and-only middle pay line rendered a jackpot of ten nickels that was paid out automatically, the coins cascading down into a metal tray.

The Liberty Bell was a hit among gamblers. Other manufacturers took note and began manufacturing copycat models. Marshall Fey, one of Fey’s grandchildren, wrote in a 1975 article that it ‘proved irresistibly popular and rapidly became the backbone of the entire gambling-machine industry’.

The Liberty Bell is widely considered to be the prototypical poker machine. But in the 100-plus years since it was developed, poker machines, while still fundamentally based on Fey’s spinning reel and automatic payout design, have continually evolved to become ever more sophisticated than, and virtually unrecognisable from, their mechanical forefather. In the 1960s, they became electromechanical, powered not by springs and gears, but by electrical motors and a circuit board of switches. Then, in the 1990s, they became fully computerised — as they are today. They are powered by a digital microprocessor known as a random number generator (RNG), have animated video reels instead of physical ones, and are played by pressing animated buttons instead of pulling a side handle. They are also now much larger and faster than they once were; most are around a similar size as a vending machine — some are even bigger — and allow a bet to be placed approximately every three seconds.

Other basic features of virtually all of Australia’s poker machines are that they have five reels, and allow players to bet on multiple pay lines rather than just one across the middle row of symbols. These pay lines run in many different directions across the screen — horizontally, diagonally, zig zag. The exact number of pay lines varies with every machine, but there are often so many that they form an unintelligible web when illuminated simultaneously.

This five-reel multi-line format of poker machines, which, because of its popularity among gamblers and profitability for operators, is now the industry standard worldwide, was pioneered in Australia by Sydney-based manufacturer Aristocrat Leisure. Ever since it was founded in 1953 by a then young medical student named Len Ainsworth — now ranked by Forbes as the 33rd-richest man in Australia, with a net worth of $1.29 billion — the company has continually remained at the forefront of poker machine design; indeed, manufacturing the most innovative poker machines was Ainsworth’s vision from the start.

Aristocrat is the largest manufacturer in Australia, controlling around 60 per cent of the domestic market, and is the second largest in the world behind International Game Technology (IGT). In 2016, the company recorded a $398 million net profit.

When asked by the ABC’s Four Corners in 2000 what explained Aristocrat’s success, Ainsworth replied, ‘I think building a better mousetrap …’

I contact Aristocrat on several occasions to request an interview with a company representative. My requests are repeatedly refused. When I speak very briefly with an employee over the phone, I am told that, ‘The company has a long-standing tradition of not participating in research of this kind.’

I also contact the other major manufacturers of poker machines in Australia — IGT, Konami, Ainsworth, Aruze Gaming, Scientific Games — in the hope they might be more willing to participate. I am wrong.

I change tack and begin contacting insiders privately. Luckily I do manage to find some who are willing to talk, albeit, in most cases, on the condition of anonymity for fear of any repercussions they may face.

One is a man I’ll name Ryan Jacobs. He has worked in the industry in Australia for several decades and has extensive links with many of the major manufacturers. Ironically, he was also, as a young man, a gambling addict. ‘One day, I just won a few grand. And then, for about a year after that, I was down at the pub, every day, every second day, pouring money into the pokies,’ he tells me in his office. ‘If anyone should’ve known better, it was me.’

When I ask Jacobs why he thinks there is such reluctance among industry members to speak with me, he says, ‘You can get ridiculed for it, dragged over the coals, and it could be detrimental to your company. The gaming industry in Australia has been beaten up forever, over the last 15 years at least.’ I would, he adds, get the same response from British American Tobacco or Phillip Morris if I was writing about tobacco.

Why, then, did he agree to meet with me? ‘It’s nice to talk to you, because I don’t have this conversation with anyone,’ he says. ‘I could persecute the manufacturers, the operators, or the people playing them. I’ve got a really broad view of all that.’

Jacobs is surprisingly candid — at times, unbelievably so. He explains that today’s machines are built to maximise what is known in industry circles as a player’s ‘time on device’ — in other words, to maximise the amount of time a person spends gambling. ‘The objective is to keep you there, to give you just enough reward that you think you’re winning, having a good time when you’re actually losing. That’s what people design them for.’

Later in our meeting, Jacobs articulates this objective of machine designers more vilely. ‘My analogy of a pokie is like a woman,’ he says. ‘It’s got to be attractive and it’s got to give out. If it doesn’t give out, then you’ll just move onto the next one. You’ve got to entice the player first, get them onto the machine, and then you’ve got to take their money away as nicely as possible to keep them playing and keep them having a good time.’

To hide my disbelief at what I’ve just heard, I keep my eyes on the notebook in my lap. I pretend to still be taking notes until I have gathered myself.

Natasha Dow Schüll, a cultural anthropologist, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of Addiction by Design: machine gambling in Las Vegas, elaborates further on the design objective of modern-day poker machines. She writes that manufacturers build poker machines to suspend players in a dissociative zone characterised by the erasure of sensory and bodily awareness — a zone comparable to the state of ‘flow’ popularised by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. But instead of being life-affirming, restorative, and enriching — as flow is for the artists, athletes, and scientists that Csikszentmihalyi has studied — the state of flow for poker machine gamblers is, according to Schüll, ‘depleting, entrapping, and associated with a loss of autonomy’.

‘Machine gambling is a potentially inexhaustible activity whose only sure end is the depletion of gamblers funds,’ Schüll writes. ‘The operational logic of the machine is programmed in such a way as to keep the gambler seated until that end — the point of “extinction,” as some gaming executives call it — is reached.’

To achieve the design objective, manufacturers of today’s poker machines employ vast creative teams composed of mathematicians, software engineers, sound engineers, musicians, artists, graphic designers, industrial designers, and animators. They also spend millions. As revealed in its submission to the Productivity Commission’s 2016 review into Australia’s intellectual-property arrangements, Aristocrat spent $191 million researching and developing poker machines in 2015.

The first way that manufacturers aim to maximise ‘time on device’ is through the cabinet that houses the game. It’s ergonomically crafted to reduce the likelihood of backaches, leg aches, or eye strain, lest these distract the player and break their focus on gambling. As the brochure for one of Aristocrat’s cabinets, the Helix, explains: ‘All the bells and whistles in the world don’t mean much unless the player is comfortable.’

Button panels are positioned at an optimal spot for a range of female and male player heights. Plushly padded bolsters are added to ensure that players do not feel discomfort from resting their arm on a hard surface for hours. High-definition screens are angled or arched to minimise glare. Leg room is maximised. Speakers are located to direct the perfect amount of sound to the player. Lighting is chosen to maximise ambience. Accessory hooks are included for the safe stowing of personal items.

Karten Design, a Los Angeles-based product-design firm, has designed a number of Konami’s most recent cabinets. One of the newest ones they have worked on is the Concerto — advertised in Konami’s product brochures as being ‘as seductive as it is smart’.

Stuart Karten, the firm’s founder, tells me what it’s like designing poker machine cabinets. Unlike insiders in Australia, he does not seem at all nervous about speaking on the public record.

Karten echoes Jacobs and Schüll in saying that ‘time on device, attraction, drawing people in — these are the things that people are trying to do with the machines’. With the Concerto, Karten boasts that he thinks he and his team met these objectives in a ‘better’ and ‘more sophisticated’ way than other companies. They sought to build a cabinet that is ‘attractive’ and ‘immersive’, and ‘gets people to sit there and play, as long as possible, and keep them engaged’. Importantly, he adds, the Concerto needed to achieve a balance of being a ‘lighthouse that draws people in and gets them there’, but then ‘fades away’ when they’re playing so they’re focused on gambling, not the cabinet itself.

The first step in designing the Concerto was visiting casinos to interview gamblers about their preferences, habits, and motivations, and to get first-hand experience of playing a poker machine. What made machines attractive? What faults were there in existing cabinets? What could be done to improve comfort? What was the ideal volume for sound?

Armed with this knowledge, they began blueprinting. Issues of comfort — or what Karten calls ‘low-hanging fruit’ — were addressed first. ‘Then,’ Karten says, ‘we went on to the higher level of trying to understand people emotionally to give them a good connection to the device.’ This involved adding features such as a crisp, booming sound system and twin high-definition, flatscreen monitors that enriched a player’s sensory experience and heightened the level of engagement. The two screens are angled so as to, in Karten’s words, ‘maximise immersion’ and to make it seem like they are a unified surface — a feeling enhanced by the seamless flow of images and symbols across the two monitors during gameplay. ‘When you’re sitting there, you’re feeling like you’re sitting in front of one large screen that’s sucking you in,’ Karten explains.

The cashless money system now standard in modern poker machines, known as Ticket In/Ticket Out technology, works in collaboration with the cabinet to further immerse a player and keep them gambling. While the cabinet serves to reduce any possible physical distractions, this technology serves to reduce the amount of downtime on a machine by streamlining a player’s access to money. It has made cash payouts obsolete, and allows for wins to be paid out by the machine instantaneously in the form of a barcoded receipt that can be redeemed for cash at an ATM-like kiosk or immediately reused at another machine.

Since the technology debuted in 1999, it has increased the overall speed of play by 20 per cent. The value of it from an operator’s perspective, as Professor Schüll writes, is that it shrinks ‘the time that transpires between a player’s impulse to continue gambling and the means to continue gambling, thus minimising the possibility for reflection and self-stopping that might arise in that pause’. Or, as IGT put it on their website, Ticket In/Ticket Out technology ‘decreases [the] number of hand pays resulting in longer periods of gaming machine operation’, and helps to provide an ‘easy transition from one gaming machine to another’.

But while the cabinet and the cashless payout system help to achieve the design objective of maximising ‘time on device’, they are peripheral to the main event of poker machines. As Karten himself tells me, ‘The game is the mastery of human motivation.’

Because the reels of modern games are virtual — essentially, just columns in an Excel spreadsheet — they can be programmed to accommodate as many symbols as a developer wishes. In a hypothetical game whose five reels each contain 40 symbols, there are therefore over 102 million possible combinations for every spin. This creative freedom is what explains why poker machines now have such large jackpots: the odds of winning the largest prizes are so slim that, on the incredibly rare occasions they are won, the house will still be in front due to the amount that has been already gambled.

The RNG, the beating heart of a modern game, determines the way the reels land. It is perpetually cycling through numbers, regardless of whether a person is playing. Every random number is programmed to correspond to one symbol contained on each of a game’s reels. The moment the ‘PLAY’ button is pressed, the RNG polls five numbers, and the symbols that these numbers are matched with are the symbols that appear on-screen. This ensures that every spin is completely random, unaffected by any wins or losses that have occurred before, or anything a player does, such as rubbing the screen, or tapping the ‘PLAY’ button twice.

However — and this is where it starts to gets complicated — although all games are random, they are precisely programmed to pay out an exact percentage of all the money gambled. This Return to Player (RTP) percentage must be set at a minimum of 85 per cent in all Australian jurisdictions, with the average minimum being set at around 90 per cent. It does not refer to the percentage of money that will be returned to an individual player in a single gambling session. Rather, it refers to the percentage of all the money that has been gambled by multiple players that will be returned over the course of the game’s entire spin cycle. This cycle can total hundreds of millions of spins, depending on how large the developer is that programs the reels.

So a hypothetical game with an RTP of 90 per cent will, over the long-term, return 90 per cent of every bet made; or, put another way, it will, on average, retain 10 per cent of every bet made. A player may, of course, win or lose more than 90 per cent of their stake in the short term, but over time the game will get closer and closer to the set RTP. This means that the longer a person plays, the more money they are guaranteed to lose. As Jacobs says, whenever he is asked by friends and family how to win on a poker machine, his answer is always the same: ‘Don’t play them.’

The reason the RTP can be precisely programmed is because the mathematical odds of every possible combination of symbols are precisely programmed, too. As the ex-head game developer for one of the leading poker machine manufacturers, who I’ll name Peter Wells, tells me, ‘I can never tell it [the game] exactly what to do, but I can say, “Well, that combination is going to happen more regularly.”’

Developers achieve this by stacking reels with certain symbols and starving them of others. This same trick was used in old mechanical poker machines. Each reel might only have one jackpot symbol, but several low-paying or non-paying symbols. Thanks to the advent of computer technology and virtual reels, developers now have an infinitely greater degree of precision and flexibility in adjusting the probability of each combination, as they have many more symbols with which to experiment.

The aim is to configure the game’s reels so that just the right-sized wins are delivered at just the right intervals, keeping a player gambling while also ensuring that the machine comes out ahead and meets the RTP. ‘It’s all about the cadence of play — the regularity of wins, the size of wins, the way those wins are created,’ Wells tells me. ‘There needs to be a very fine balance.’

This balance is easier to achieve in multi-line games than single-line ones. This is because multi-line games, in allowing bets on multiple lines, increase a player’s chances of winning in the same way that buying multiple tickets in a raffle does. According to Professor Schüll, multi-line games ‘carry less risk of sudden losing streaks and the quick depletion of play funds’ that preserve ‘the flow of play.’

Importantly, though, many of a player’s ‘wins’ on multi-line machines are actually net losses, as the amount won is less than the total amount wagered. For example, if Doug bets fifty cents on 15 lines to make a total wager of $7.50, and wins $4 on one line, he will have actually lost $3.50. But the machine celebrates this as a win, resulting in the phenomenon being dubbed by some gambling experts as ‘losses disguised as wins’ (LDWs).

Near misses — that is, when a winning combination is only a symbol or two away — also help developers achieve the right cadence of play to keep a player gambling. While they are losses, they still generate excitement by making a player feel they are close to winning. The industry denies that they are deliberately programmed into a game, but as Schüll explains, this denial rests on a ‘remarkably arbitrary and narrow definition of a near miss’. This definition stipulates that a near miss is only a near miss when, in the event of a loss, the game initiates a secondary operation that adjusts the symbols seen by a player so that winning ones appear just above or below the pay lines.

This doesn’t happen. However, developers use another trick when developing a game to ensure that near misses occur more frequently than they would by chance alone. As Jacobs explains, ‘In old hopper games, there were more winning symbols on the reels furthest to the left, and less on the right, so that if you get the jackpot symbol on the first and then on the second, it will be much less likely to come up on the third, but you will be thinking you’re close. It’s the same on video poker machines, just that it is done using virtual reels. So, you’ll have more virtual reel stops paired with winning symbols on the furthest left reels, but barely any on the furthest right reels.’ Jacobs adds that games have to be designed like this. ‘It’s the only way to ensure profit for the manufacturers,’ he says.

There is no set formula to guarantee that a game will play the way a developer intends — namely because the results are ultimately randomly generated. In fact, the chosen mathematical configuration is the result of trial and error and extensive experimentation in a company studio, with a development team cycling through the millions of possible combinations to get a sense of how the game plays and whether wins are regular enough to offset the losses and keep a player engaged. ‘It’s very hit and miss,’ Wells tells me. ‘It’s one of the last industries where there’s a lot of gut feel still going on.’ As a result, he adds, ‘there are numerous games that fail totally and die in the first three months’ of being released.

But while a game’s mathematical configuration may be decided by trial and error, its music and artwork always follow a strict formula. According to Wells, the aesthetic of poker machines always follows ‘the Spielberg, straight-down-the-line strategy to keep people happy’. The themes vary to appeal to the broadest possible customer base, but are generally based either on a particular cultural mythology or a pop-culture franchise such as a television show, a music star, or a Hollywood film. Gameplay is animated, and the artwork will always comprise primary and pastel colours and cartoonish illustrations. ‘You don’t want it to be banal — you want the player to think about exciting things, exotic things,’ Wells says.

However, developers must also be careful not to overdo the imagery and graphics. As Wells explains, ‘It’s very interesting, because a typical thing that happens when people come out of video games, traditional video games, and go into slot machines, is they put all sorts of animations and crazy transitions in the design. They make it really cinematic, and it’s really over the top, and those games typically don’t work because people say, “It’s too much.”’

The music of poker machines adds to the feelings of happiness and escape that are generated by the imagery. It will always be composed in a major key, and will be uplifting, upbeat, and exciting. ‘With slots, you have to make sure that regardless of what style of music you’re writing, it still has to be exciting and make you feel like you’re winning,’ an LA-based composer for poker machines tells me. ‘If the music or the sounds aren’t making you feel like you’re having fun, then you’ll probably either turn the slot off or walk away from it.’ This echoes comments by Daniel Lee, a composer of poker machine music, who told a San Francisco newspaper in 2009, ‘In a slot machine, a person may be losing, and you want to write music that helps them feel like they’re having fun so they’ll stick around.’

According to Wells, a successful game is one in which all of the elements work together. ‘If you have a great math and a crappy art package, the game will do okay. If you have a great art package and crappy math, the game will do terribly. But if you have a cohesive package where the art represents the math in a very esoteric way, it will get right out there. If it’s all in simpatico, and the game tells you how it’s going to play before you actually play it, and then the game has some drama, some interests, and leads you along by telling you how it is playing — they’re some of the hallmarks of a successful game.’

Jacobs echoes this, but makes it very clear that the mathematics of a game are by far the most important element. ‘You can have the prettiest cabinet with the prettiest lights and sounds, but if the math is shitty then all of that won’t mean anything.’

Hearing about all this — about how every aspect of poker machines are designed to encourage players to keep gambling and, ultimately, keep losing — I’m reminded of Dr Sapir Handelman, whose work I stumbled across in research. In Thought Manipulation: the use and abuse of psychological trickery, Dr Handelman writes, ‘Manipulation creates an illusion of free choice to get the target to act against their best interests.’

Every year, poker machine manufacturers showcase their newest product range at the Australasian Gaming Expo in Sydney. The trade show is organised by the Gaming Technologies Association (GTA), the peak representative body in Australia for poker machine manufacturers.

In order to see where poker machines are headed in the future and to get a glimpse of the industry from the inside, I register online to attend the 2016 show. Soon afterwards, however, I receive an email from the GTA’s CEO, Ross Ferrar, explaining that I am ineligible to attend as the ‘Australasian Gaming Expo is a trade exhibition, for management representatives of Gaming Industry Organisations only’. My registration, Ferrar says, has been deleted.

The Australasian Gaming Expo, however, isn’t the only gambling trade show in the world. Another — and one with less strict entry requirements — is the G2E Asia, organised by the GTA’s American equivalent, the American Gaming Association, held over three days at The Venetian casino resort in Asia’s version of Las Vegas, Macau. With no chance of attending the Australasian Gaming Expo, I pool together my savings and book a ten-hour flight halfway across the world.

The Venetian sits on a large piece of reclaimed land in Macau called the Cotai Strip — reclaimed for the explicit purpose of making extra space for casinos. Opened in August 2007, the luxury 39-storey casino resort is the seventh-largest building in the world by floor space. Housed inside are over 3,000 poker machines, as well as hundreds of baccarat, roulette, blackjack, and poker tables; shopping malls with high-end fashion and jewellery stores; a five-star hotel; a lavish theatre that hosts world-famous musicians; a four-level sports arena; a McDonald’s outlet plus Italian, Cantonese, Portuguese, and Chinese restaurants; a mini-golf course; a kids’ centre; a day hospital; and an indoor replica of Venice’s famous canals, complete with singing gondoliers on motorised gondolas and a fake blue sky with puffy white clouds superimposed onto the arched ceiling.

The moment I enter the casino, I notice the sickly, sweet perfume that’s being pumped through the air-conditioning vents. I follow the posted signs to the trade show, passing several replica Renaissance sculptures and paintings, and giant video screens that advise people to ‘Game Responsibly’. I collect my entrance pass from a smiling young woman at the registration counter, then enter the aeroplane-hangar-sized exhibition hall.

Inside are over 150 exhibitor stalls where every possible form of gambling available is being displayed: virtual horse-racing, dealer-less card tables, animated playing cards, sports betting, virtual-reality gambling games, robot roulette dealers, and, of course, poker machines. At many of the stalls, young women hand out promotional material and gift packs. Their costumes vary from the sort of cat outfits you might find in a sex shop, to tight ballroom dresses and skimpy soccer uniforms. Some wear nothing but underpants and body-paint.

Gambling industry personnel aren’t the only ones at the event. There are also members of the public from Macau and Hong Kong who have simply come to sample the new products for free. By the event’s end, just under 10,000 people will have visited.

The stalls of the world’s leading poker machine manufacturers are the largest and most elaborate. IGT’s, located at the entrance of the hall, is especially notable. On display are over 100 poker machines. At the front of the stall are two fantastic female mascots. They are both on stilts, standing around nine feet high. One is dressed as a dragon: beneath a skimpy midriff top, her electric-blue skirt flares out around her in a kind of tail, sequins casting circles of light. In one palm she holds a fake-looking orange plastic flame, and her glitter make-up gives her the eerie look of a kewpie doll. The other is dressed as a sort of Amazonian goddess with a pair of giant orange wings on her back, an orange feathered headpiece, and orange feathered pants. Both the mascots hold forced smiles for the endless stream of people who stop to snap a photo.

A sales representative from IGT tells me that most of the poker machines on display at the expo cost between US$24,000 and US$28,000. ‘That’s for the whole thing — the game and the cabinet,’ he explains. He says his company has a sales target for this show alone of between 200 and 300.

Some of the machines feature bonus games where the reels disappear and are replaced with what looks like an actual, user-controlled computer game. I play one of these games — on Aruze Gaming’s Caribbean Rose. The bonus game begins when three helms align on the reels. I’m prompted to swipe my finger across the touchscreen to shoot cannonballs at targets on an enemy ship, and, once I’ve completed this level, I progress to the next, where I use my finger to guide the game’s pink-haired female pirate through the ship’s hold to collect coins. The apparent skill required, however, is all just for show — or, as one of the company’s employees tells me, ‘for entertainment’. In reality, he explains, the result of the bonus round is predetermined the moment the feature begins.

On every insider’s lips is Aristocrat’s Lightning Link game. It’s the envy of competitors, and many people I speak with label it the ‘best game on the market’. I play one of the Lightning Link machines, but, to my novice eyes, it seems practically the same as all of the others.

I ask one of the company’s sales representatives to explain what makes it so successful. Simplicity, he says proudly. ‘What you see is what you get. It’s that simple — there are no secrets. A big premise for us is if the player understands what they’re trying to do, they’ll enjoy the game.’ He says that the four different jackpots — minor, mini, major, and grand — are also important to the game’s success. The minor and mini, he explains, are fixed and unique to each machine. ‘If you play a dollar, the set jackpots are $1,000 and $5,000; if you play ten cents, they’re $100 and $500.’ The major and grand jackpots, however, are much larger and on a link with other machines. ‘And all of the jackpots are won in the feature. That’s what’s so sticky about it. I know that any Lightning Link I walk up to, I have a chance at winning any one of these jackpots. If I don’t hit one, I might want to go again and have another try.’

The cabinets are as diverse as the types of games. Some have one screen; others, multiple ones. Some have slanted screens; some, curved screens; and others have screens the size of a small cinema screen, like Aristocrat’s aptly titled Behemoth cabinet. IGT is even showcasing a cabinet with a 3D screen. One of the company’s feature products, it resembles an arcade car-racing game, complete with a multimedia chair that vibrates whenever a player wins. It has two built-in speakers positioned directly behind a player’s ears, for optimal delivery of sound effects, and a slider for players to adjust the intensity of the three-dimensional experience. Just above the playing screen, but invisible to the player, are two thermal eye-tracking cameras that allow the machine to gauge the exact position of a player’s eyes and to configure the images to the greatest effectiveness.

Sales representatives demo their product range to buyers, and give jargon-ridden explanations of how the different features work to immerse players and keep them gambling. They say things like, ‘The last reel drops slower to increase anticipation … When a player selects a prize, they are shown what the other prizes were so they can see what they missed out on … The higher someone bets, the more that jackpot increases — and they can see that. That builds anticipation … Players can get the mystery multipliers in the free spins as well, which helps with player retention.’

While he’s demoing IGT’s 3D cabinets, I overhear a company sales representative enthusiastically selling them to a buyer from Australia. The sales representative speaks in a thick Australian drawl, and leads the buyer over to the machine with an arm across his shoulder. ‘Now — sit down at this,’ he says. ‘But be warned — you might freak out a little. Pretty impressive, aye? The great thing about it is you can feel like you’re touching the coins. There’s plans on bringing it to Australia. We are just gauging interest at the moment. It’s a really good product. It’s something new, you know. It’s more of a feature product — not a mass product. You wouldn’t buy 200 of ’em. You’d put a few on a wall to get people in.’

The sales representatives, along with the game developers and technicians of each company, also visit the booths of competitors to familiarise themselves with the range of products on the market. Or, as one told me, to ‘steal ideas’. Many video the games of other companies on their phones for future viewing.

Watching them do this, I immediately think of Doug. I imagine him sitting in a VIP lounge somewhere in Sydney right now, videoing a jackpot he has just won.

Another leading product on display in Macau is what’s known in industry parlance as ‘social casinos’. These are, in plain English, online poker machines for smartphones, tablets, and computers — available for anyone of any age to play anytime, anywhere.

Most of the major poker machine manufacturers have their own version of these so-called ‘social casinos’ — named so because they are heavily entwined with social media, and encourage users to invite Facebook friends to play and share links about their wins on their profile. The games that are offered are virtually identical to those in gambling venues in Australia and around the world. They have the same title, imagery, music, and sound effects. There is, however, one crucial difference: these new online poker machines use only virtual currency. But while they are free to play and do not award monetary prizes, they do allow for in-app purchases if players exhaust their free funds and wish to continue playing.

These online poker machines are both hugely popular and hugely profitable. In 2016, Aristocrat’s app Heart of Vegas had 1.2 million global daily users — nearly double the number of 2014. It brought in $269 million in revenue — 13 per cent of the company’s total.

This money-making ability of social casinos was not expected when they were first launched. ‘No one ever thought these social casinos would take off,’ a game developer in Macau tells me. ‘The first ones were thought to be marketing tools, and not a money-maker at all. Companies thought people would play them for free so that they get exposure to games and then go into the casino and start playing with real money. It wasn’t until after they made and released these games that they realised people are actually willing to pay.’

Advertisements for social casinos are prolific on social-media platforms like Facebook and within other applications, too. Ones for Aristocrat’s Heart of Vegas regularly bombard Doug when he plays solitaire on his phone. He shows me one when we meet one afternoon. On the phone screen appears the More Chilli character, dressed in his trademark Sombrero and bright yellow flares. He dances around, firing his pistols and shouting ‘MOOOOORRREEE CHILLI’ as the flamenco guitar jingle plays in the background. A set of spinning reels appears, before a message that reads, ‘CLAIM YOUR 2,000 FREE COINS NOW! HEART OF VEGAS. PLAY NOW FOR FREE.’

These advertisements torment Doug. ‘I hate them. I always just hit the back button and skip them straight away. Part of me thinks, Why don’t you just play? It’s not real money. But then another part worries I’ll get sucked in, which I know would just cause a whole other world of hurt.’ So far, Doug has resisted the temptation to play.

But many others have not. Mark is one.

Now 49 years old, Mark lives in the Hawkesbury area of New South Wales, and has a long, troubled history with poker machines. He started playing them when he was 17, while living in a small town in western New South Wales. ‘There were clubs in the country that weren’t too strict on identification,’ he tells me. ‘I was playing rugby league then, and there was a football club there which had pokies.’ By the time he was 20, his gambling had increased significantly to the point that he sought professional counselling. In the years since, he has been in and out of treatment to help him quit gambling. After losing big one night several years ago, he attempted to take his own life. He survived.

Mark — who suffers from a disability, is currently unemployed, and spends most of his time at home — started playing Heart of Vegas four years ago after seeing advertisements for it online. ‘I just clicked on it and thought, Yeah — I’ll give it a go and see what it’s all about.’

Now, Mark plays Heart of Vegas on his computer for several hours — sometimes upwards of ten — most days. On top of the free coins he receives at the beginning of each day, he also posts links to the app on social media to acquire extra credit. Around once or twice a week, he will head down to his local RSL club to gamble on real poker machines. He says he usually spends a couple of hours there, but is rarely excited by wins anymore. ‘At this present moment, if I win, say, $600 at the club, it’s just like chump change. It’s not anything special. It’s not about winning. It’s about going there and shutting off from everything.’

This is also the main reason he plays online — which, he says, is ‘probably better’ for him, as he is only gambling with fake money and faces less risk of getting into serious trouble. But even though he is not playing with hard cash, he still feels the same emotions as if he were. ‘If I have a big win on Heart of Vegas, I think, Oh, fantastic. But when I actually lose it, I still become angry and frustrated.’

Mark knows the amount of time he spends playing social casinos ‘probably isn’t healthy’, but adds that, ‘It’s all I know what to do at the moment.’ He says he desperately wants to make changes to improve his lifestyle. ‘But I’m struggling, too, because it’s very, very difficult to walk away from poker machines — either in a club or on the computer.’

Academic research into social casinos and their use in Australia is in its infancy, but in an April 2016 discussion paper, the Australian Gambling Research Centre (AGRC) provides some preliminary findings.

The AGRC says a third of Australian adults and just over a fifth of Australian adolescents are estimated to play online gambling games each year. It says the manner in which players access these games affects how they play, with those who use smartphones or tablets adopting a ‘more “casual” style in which they play for short periods as a way to pass the time, while more “serious” or “involved” players prefer desktop or laptop computers.’

The AGRC highlights a number of problems regarding the connection between social casinos and real-world gambling. First, because they expose people to gambling-like experiences and introduce them to the basic rules of poker machines, social casinos ‘may facilitate transition to commercial forms of gambling’. Also, because players do not lose real money when playing online poker machines, they may behave ‘in a riskier manner when engaging with commercial gambling activities as they have experienced the pleasure of winning without the pain of “real” losses’. On top of this, social casinos have been shown to provide more wins compared to commercial gambling. This, the AGRC says, ‘may foster an inflated belief in the odds of winning, alongside false beliefs about the role of luck and chance in commercial gambling’.

According to the AGRC, these risk factors ‘may individually or collectively increase the risk of developing problems with gambling for those who play simulated gambling games. Multiple studies have shown that those who have played simulated gambling games in the past are more likely to have a problem with gambling than those who have not.’ However, the AGRC points out that it is still unclear whether social casinos contribute to risky commercial gambling ‘or whether people experiencing gambling problems are also drawn to simulated gambling’.

The AGRC also references a 2015 study which found that 37 per cent of adolescents and 25 per cent of adults who play social casinos experience problems with them. This study, the AGRC says, provides ‘evidence that a proportion of those playing simulated gambling games experience negative consequences associated with their play. The most frequently reported problems experienced by those playing social gambling games included an inability to limit time, and using them to escape from problems or negative emotions.’

As well as these problems with social casinos, the AGRC pointed out yet another: ‘the availability of simulated gambling on smartphones and tablets has generated concern, as the constant availability of gambling-related activities facilitates a deep integration of gambling or gambling-like activities into everyday life.’

As I leave the G2E Asia event, I pass the large reception area of the Venetian Macau. Waiting there are several busloads of families who have just arrived for their Disneyland-like holiday in a giant casino resort. While parents queue at the concierge desk to check in, many of their children have their heads buried in an iPhone or an iPad. Watching the children, I wonder how many are playing Heart of Vegas or another of the many games available on social casinos. I wonder how many will progress to the real thing when they’re older, and how many will end up like Doug or Mark.

I step outside into the humid, polluted air of Macau’s streets. It’s a relief from the air-conditioned, perfumed air that was inside.