Kevin Valliere

With the explosion of gacha games, loot boxes, videos which purport to teach people how they can hunt patterns in the financial markets, and the increased proliferation of sports betting (just to name a few), our culture is assailed on all sides by new ways to gamble your money away. But still the old models of effective money extraction via traditional gambling machines plod on, strong as ever.

So what would make someone want to sit in front of a slot machine day in and day out, often for a dozen hours or more, all the while feeding a very finite supply of money into its avaricious maw? That’s the exact question that this book sets out to answer using a treasure trove of academic research, first-hand accounts, and behind-the-scenes information normally kept secret.

Published in 2012 by Natasha B. Schull, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas is an exhaustive and unflinching analysis of what makes machine gambling in Las Vegas so dangerously addictive, and what effect it has on its players. Addiction by Design skews more academic than pop sci writing, but is still an easy and engaging read from start to finish. It shines a light on familiar, fundamental game design and cognitive engagement principles as well as authors (like Caillois and Csikszentmihalyi), and how they are used in a less wholesome setting than educational technology.

Addiction by Design is set out in four parts: Design, Feedback, Addiction, and Adjustment. Of these, parts one and two are the most relevant to ECT students, but part three also provides some useful insights.

“Design” dives into the myriad ways in which not just slot machines but casinos writ large are designed down to the smallest details to bring in money. The designers of these spaces have considered the physical environment (maze-like, clustered, and jam-packed to keep people feeling cozy), the sound (not so soft you can hear everyone else, not so loud that you can’t think), and even the smells (smell, after all, is tied heavily to memory). All of this is done with the intention to maximize what the industry would call gaming productivity, or the wagering action per patron per interval of time. It will all feel strikingly, perhaps hauntingly familiar to an ECT student who has spent time considering how color or shapes might better entice learners to engage with their material.

“Feedback” builds on these design principles and brings in assessment techniques that will also sound quite familiar. The machine designers discuss the feedback and development cycle that allows them to attempt the creation of a perfectly addictive device, and are happy to quote Csikszentmihalyi when discussing the mind-altering benefits of achieving a flow state. Again, the chapter draws clearly from the texts that are prevalent in the ECT program. Only, instead of trying to maximize learning outcomes, these designers are aiming for what they call player extinction, a uniquely morbid term for the (generally temporary) depletion of a gambler’s funds.

While “Addiction” is more of a sociological look at what sorts of people make up problem gamblers (hint: it could be just about anyone), it’s in the final part, “Adjustment” that the author begins to look at possible fixes for this problematic industry. Ultimately, though, the conclusions are lackluster at best, disheartening at worst. A critical researcher’s journey into becoming an industry benefactor is highlighted, as are a number of interventions which are shown to be double-edged swords: they might be just as likely to help someone as to push them back into the cycle of problem gambling. Even the process of demystifying the machines - or, explaining their inner workings and all the tricks they like to pull - doesn’t seem to be terribly helpful in getting problem gamblers out of the casino.

So with such a downer of a premise and ending, why is this book worth reading?

Ultimately, parsing through Addiction by Design has the distinct effect of calling back to all of the important cognitive and motivational engagement factors we’ve learned about, dialing them up to 11, and using them for the sole purpose of extracting as much money from problem gamblers as possible. I think that this is a bleak and important reminder that we must couch the work we are doing in broader society, i.e. a late capitalistic one in which the extraction of money is almost always the final goal. And while this book’s scope is limited to just the gambling machines in Las Vegas, there are clear and obvious parallels to a number of modern industries on the rise. Addiction by Design, then, provides ECT students with a number of explicit chances to see how the use of the tools we learn without critical examination can lead to some truly horrifying results, and to be on guard not just for their own sake but also for the sake of the people who may play their games or use their apps in the future.

If you are interested in reading the book, you can check it out for free from the NYU Library. Alternatively, you can listen to the “Games Studies Study Buddies” podcast which provides an abridged summary of the text for free here.