Innovative Casino Machine Designers Thriving

Thanks to Wired for their article discussing the success of ex-arcade designers in the casino machine business. The article focuses on Larry DeMar, once the co-creator of classic arcade titles such as Robotron, Defender, and Stargate, but now producing innovative video poker games such as Multi-Strike which "..add an element of fun to machines that traditionally have been routine gambling devices." According to industry executive Joe Kaminkow, "By making a game entertaining, you can enhance the wins and soften the losses for your players. You learn to give your players good cookies - things that are fun and exciting. Good designers understand how to dole out those cookies in just the right amount." Since a top-selling game "can reap more than $1 million per month in royalties for its creator", gambling machine design is a bigger business than many might think.

Captain Obvious Strikes Again!

Wonder why it took so long. Any arcade game designer knows that if your game is fun, there are people who will be willing to pump quarters into it all day long for a zero percent return on their investment. Given that, actually getting something back, even if it's only thirty percent of what you put in, would seem to just be an additional draw.

Re:Captain Obvious Strikes Again!

Just because a game accounts for skill doesn't mean it's based entirely on skill. You can easily have a game that is part skill, and still have the majority be luck driven (such as, say, poker).

Unskilled people play arcade games and lose money, so there's no reason as to why they wouldn't play a game that would occasionally give them some money back. As for skilled people, you just need to make sure that luck is enough of a force to keep the skilled player from being able to consistently beat the machine. That would involve making the game "unfair", but, hey, it pays money out occasionally.

slot machines aren't luck driven

They don't run rand() to see if you win.

The patterns are pre-programmed so that the ratio of win to lose (which is legally mandated - in the UK at least, presumably other countries that issue gambling licences will have similar legislation) is constant over a particular time period.

A manufacturer can tell it's customers how much money the machine will make during it's lifetime.

The BBC has a story about it [bbc.co.uk]

I was asked to make an internet slot machine and was given documentation on the general principlies.

DeMar co-creator of Defender? I think not!

"Larry DeMar, once the co-creator of classic arcade "

I don't know about Robotron or Stargate but calling DeMar a "co-creator" for Defender is pushing it a bit.
All he did was help out Eugene Jarvis iron out the bugs towards the end of Defenders development along with a lot of other people at
Williams. It was Jarvis and sound man Sam Dicker who did all the hard work pushing the concept through and writing the code!

but is it moral?

Watching a senior citizen convert their entire social security check into nickels, then put it all in a slot machine is gut-wrenchingly depressing... I think I'd stick to turning kids into cold blooded killers by developing traditional video games.

take it from me...

As a former casino employee I can attest that the most innovative thing about most slot machines is the licencing. At my old casino more and more slot machines were Austin Powers or I Dream of Jeanie, Monopoly, or Cassablanca. So in that way they were like pinball machines. The differenece is that, with the sole exception of the Austin Powers machine, all of the licences were things that had been around for over 20 years. No doubt it was because most of the suckers, err I mean customers, were at least 50 years of age.

I hear people say all the time, "Oh I just play the nickles" but nickle slot machines are the bread and butter of casinos. Our casino used to open at 9 am (its now 24 hours) and it was so funny to see the little old ladies push and elbow each other to get down to the nickle machines.

The thing people don't realize is that a lot of those machines you can play 90 nickles a spin. That's $4.50 a spin. How they get you is "Oh wow I won 40 tokens." but it took you 90 to get it and you won't even "win" that much on every spin.
I can still remember those damn machines. They crank the sound all the way up on them so if you worked in the cage like I did you got to listen to their stupid crap all night long. "Life of Luxury!" "Wow that was a good one!" "I've been waiting!" "That's a good one!" "Scratch and win!"

If you want to go to a casino, just give me your money and I'll kick you in the balls. Because that's how you're going to feel when you get done 9 times out of 10. Of course its that one time that keeps the suckers err I mean customers coming back.

The Fat Man

George "The Fat Man" Sanger and Team Fat, legends in the computer game audio biz, have been making some really great music and audio for slot machines recently.

They've done the spectacular music for Wing Commander I/II, The 7th Guest, Loom, and loads more. And their slot machine audio has been getting really great reviews too!

Fortunately for us gamers, the Fat Man is still in the game business.

The Fat Man's website [fatman.com]

an interesting (if depressing) view of casinos

This series of articles [kuro5hin.org] is a very interesting look at casinos, how they work, and the psychology of gamblers.