Kevin Harrington is an advocate of posting information on each slot machine that tells people just how much the odds are not in their favor.
For instance, how a slot machine might celebrate the fact that a play just won 80 cents, even though he bet a dollar. The Ontario, Canada man who teaches at the University of Waterloo makes it a mission to fight problem gambling.
He first became interested in finding out how slot machines hook players into spending more than they can afford, sometimes to the point of ruination about 17 years ago. He noted that all video games are designed to keep people playing, or else there wouldn’t be video game addicts. But slot machines have the added problem of involving the loss of money.
He told the Record, “I thought, there must be something about these games that is part of the problem, and so I started to research to see how these games were designed, and a couple of things bothered me.” He discovered that the machines often disguise actual losses by celebrating them as wins.
He also discovered that in general players will underestimate how much they have lost and overestimate how much they have won.
Some machines, such as reel-style machines, will suggest that a player came closer to winning, Encouraged, the player may continue to push in quarters.
Says Harrington, If you watch players in a casino — and there’s lots of research to support this — if they get one of these they’ll snap their fingers and say ‘Oh shucks’ or something like that. They really do have an effect on the player.”
Over the years Harrington says, “I made it a bit of a mission of mine to spread the word about how these games were designed.”
He teamed up with a fellow Waterloo professor and took as their inspiration the nutritional labels on foods. They designed such a label and went looking to see if they could get anyone to put their labels on machines.
They approached the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., which runs gaming in the province, which gave them the opportunity to find out the most important odds, and put them on some machines, on an experimental basis.
The idea was to see if the labels would provide enough information that players would change their behavior.
The labels tell players how volatile the game is, i.e. whether it pays small amounts frequently, or large amounts less so; how much chance there is to reach a bonus round and the payback percentage.
The labels were introduced three months ago on 250 slots at the Grand River Raceway. However, apparently they haven’t actually changed many players’ behavior.
OLG considers the experiment a success. Sheona Hurd, OLG’s director of social responsibility, told the Record, “I would consider this a very successful project. If this helps players better understand slot machines and how they work, better understand how to choose a slot machine that best fits their unique style, then this is successful.”
The labels have become part of a larger effort by OLG to promote responsible gambling. Two percent of gaming profits are directed towards problem gaming prevention. Ontario has an estimated 250,000 residents with this problem.
OLG plans to continue to tweak the wording of the labels and do another study. It doesn’t plan to consult any outside researchers, who might reach different results since they wouldn’t have a bias.
Harrington believes the labels should be placed closer to eye level on the machines than they were. Or to include the information in pop-up animation on the screens.
