I have long been on the operations side of the gambling industry, but it doesn’t take someone with my experience to realize that slots are packed with design features and presentations meant to encourage more play, which can leave players with the impression that a win is “coming soon.” In fact, I’d argue that many regular slot players recognize these tricks and play anyway.
The fact that this design choice has long been a pillar of the slot experience does not exclude it from judgment, and the truth of the matter is that some of these features go too far. So far, in fact, that I’d argue some should be made illegal.
Slot Design Already Plays With Perception
The misleading design choices begin at the baseline with the symbols and paylines themselves. Getting a large number of symbols on screen doesn’t dictate a win, nor does a payline being missed by one symbol dictate an upcoming win. The random number generation (RNG) that slots utilize does not take into account any previous outcomes or results. However, casual players may believe they’re “getting closer to a win” or “should have won,” depending on the configuration of those symbols.
When players do “win”, those wins are often actually losses disguised as wins. A player can place a $1 wager and “win” $0.75, enjoying all of the lights, effects, and sounds that come with it, when in reality it was a $0.25 loss. It’s one of many sensory tricks that slots utilize to keep the reels spinning.
Digging deeper, the design that encourages players to keep playing only gets worse, with bonus features that appear to be more focused on visual antics than on actually providing a bonus. Those bonus features, and non-bonus features, can also mislead players into believing that their play is heating up or that they’re in for a good run of wins. This design choice brings us closer to what prompted me to write this.
Setting the Scene
It’s a Friday night, and my wife and I head down to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to play. Of course, I know going in that the most likely outcome won’t be a positive one for us, but I’m willing to put that aside and treat it as an investment in entertainment. My wife, less experienced with gambling and nowhere near the gambling industry professionally, also understands this, which is why we bring a set budget before we even step foot in the casino.
What my wife doesn’t understand as well as I is the design and functionality of slot machines. She picks her slots by how fun and exciting they look, paying little to no mind to RTP percentages and player-friendly features. From that choice, she ends up at MONOPOLY Big Board Bucks, by Aristocrat Gaming. And, I can already see a problem.
Progress Bars and Moving Goalposts
At the top of the screen, displayed prominently, are four clear-as-day progress bars. These progress bars appear to show you how close you are to triggering four bonus features: Extra Spins, Extra Properties, Extra Houses, and Free Games. As one plays, the house progress bars ever so slightly extend upwards. The most obvious progress bar of all, Free Games, slowly fills.
My wife quickly goes through half of her budget for the game. I suggest moving on to a game where we may fare better, but she locks in. She wants to play until at least one of the progress bars reaches its trigger point.
What I know, and find confirmed in the rules pictured above, is that the progress bars aren’t actually progress bars at all. They mean nothing, they do nothing, and to me, that makes them inherently misleading. In true “small print” fashion, I find confirmation on the final page of the Game Rules, and we move on.
Stricter Slot Regulations are Needed
If we are to actually take responsible gambling seriously, there needs to be a stronger set of rules. “Here’s what you can do, here’s what you can’t.” Without this, slot developers will run wild and do whatever they can get away with to keep the reels spinning. Design choices this blatantly misleading should be outright illegal. If slot manufacturers want to use progress bars or similar design choices, they should either correspond to genuine progress or carry a prominent on-screen disclosure that isn’t buried deep in the rules.
Slot machines are subject to extensive regulation. According to New Jersey gaming equipment regulations, “the slot machine shall be designed in such a manner that prevents scripting and fairly represents the reel symbols selected by the RNG.” It goes on to state that it is only acceptable to display an alternate version of the video reel strips during reel spin animation provided that “the spinning video reel display is not misleading.”
The keyword here, and the one that I’ve repeated throughout this piece, is misleading. The word also appears in the RNG standards, which state that “after the random selection of an outcome, gaming devices which utilize an RNG shall: not be misleading in any manner.”
These regulations, in my opinion, simply don’t extend widely enough and at times appear quite hyper-focused. After all, even with those regulations in place, they still allow features like this to be implemented. Beyond that, New Jersey requires the machine to provide fair notice of the rules of play, including bonus features, denominations and related payouts. There is a difference between simply disclosing how a feature works deep in the game rules and ensuring that the feature itself is not misleading and/or encouraging of irresponsible gambling.
This article is not to blame Aristocrat in particular, although this is perhaps one of the most obviously misleading design choices I’ve seen. The issue extends beyond one supplier. And, if nothing changes, it will continue to be a problem because it leads to more house win. Casinos certainly won’t speak out, because they’re the ones benefiting the most. It’s up to people in the industry, such as myself, to make more casual bettors aware of these pitfalls and advocate for a better way.
If we truly want gambling to be a form of entertainment, people deserve to know exactly what they’re getting into. That stands beyond the broad understanding that “the house always wins.” Having these features explained deep in the rules isn’t enough, especially at land-based casinos where everybody knows players aren’t going to sit and take a deep dive into the rulebook while sipping their latest complimentary cocktail. In the end, as an industry, gambling needs to do better.
