The recent posting about slot machines brings up a question I’ve been wondering about…
We don’t have legalized gambling in my home state. But nowadays I see a LOT of these videogame machines (in convenience stores, bowling alleys, etc.) that play a slot-machine-type game.
The really wierd thing is how people react to them. They treat them like they’re really gambling. They sit on a stool in front of the same machine for hours, pumping in coins, totally absorbed. When they lose, the get upset, cuss, and bang the side of the machine.
I’ve played a lot of commercial video games, but I’ve never seen anyone behave like this with one. The only time I’ve seen similar reactions is in people at the real slots.
So does anyone know what is it with these machines? Is there something about the game that has real-life win-or-lose consequences? Or are these games just tapping into the same addictive brain-circuits as the real things?
I’ve seen these in bars around Califonia and have never understood why anyone would want to play them. If you hit a slot jackpot you get credits to play some more on the game. So? Who gives a shit? I have no idea what the trill is, especially since all the Indian casinos here now have quasi-real Vegas-style slots.
What I want to know is, would it be gambling and against the law if, say, I offered patrons in my bar free drinks, free pool, or other non-monetary payout if they hit a small jackpot to incentivize them to keep pumping quarters into the stupid machine.
Without that, why any idiot puts money into one of those is beyond me.
Then again, I never understood the whole Japanese Pachincko machine phenomena in the 70s either.
Until recently, in my home state of SC [shudder], the video gambling machines were legal. Not just the pointless, win-a-T-shirt-if-you’re-really-lucky kind, either. But the hardcore get-cash-at-the-end-of-the-night-if-you’re-really-lucky kind.
After having been addicted to them for over a year and a half, or closer to two, I’m glad to see them go.
All that aside, all kinds of video games are addictive to the right individual. Look at Playstation, Nintendo, coin-op videos, hell–even the old hand-held football games that were confiscated by the millions in junior high and high schools in the '70s and early '80s.
When there’s a running tally, there’s the illusion of profit, and people get very emotionally involved when they think they may be winning or losing actual money. Whether they actually are is irrelevant on an emotional level.
I seem to recall reading that this type of gambling was brought in with pinball… that originally pinball was gambling of some type. Then, when that became illegal, they would reward you in “free games” which you could later cash out with the bartender.
Probably just another way to get around the gambling rules.
In the UK almost every Pub (Bar/REstaurant etc) has at least one gambling machine, either slots or quiz machines…
And I don’t know that we have a huge number of ‘gambling addicts’