Addiction by design: Problem gamblers, problem machines

Contemporary slot machines, revamped by ever-more compelling technological innovations, have unseated traditional table games as the gambling industry's revenue mainstay. Along the way, they have earned such nicknames as "electronic morphine" and the "crack cocaine of gambling." Does problem machine gambling stem from inside the gambler, from inside the device, or from the interaction between the two? Drawing on fifteen years of research among game engineers and machine gamblers in Las Vegas, Schüll argues that to understand electronic gambling addiction it is necessary to look beyond afflicted gamblers and take account of the environments, products, and business practices of the gambling industry. She travels “inside the machine” to examine how contemporary slot machines—their game algorithms, their cash access systems, their ergonomic design—work to facilitate gamblers' escape into a trancelike state in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away. Gambling addiction, she argues, emerges out of the dynamic interplay among corporate interests, product design features, the human sensorium, and consumer vulnerabilities.