Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

Addiction by Design by Natasha Schüll is an in-depth look at how the gambling industry designs machines and how these designs affect consumers. Schüll provides a look at the psychology of casino interior design in terms of gambling machines, with clustered and tight spaces being preferred. Aspects of the games themselves are also discussed and a detailed explanation of how the odds are calculated is also provided. With no knowledge of gambling machines, I was still able to follow the explanations laid out and the implications behind them. Schüll provides detailed but easy-to-follow explanations as well as diagrams. She also explains what effect these odds have on the player and how there is a false perception of “near wins” and the sense that each round increases a player’s chance. All these methods are employed to increase a person’s time on device, which is desired by casinos because it increases the revenue possibilities. The lower-value slot machines, like penny and nickel slots, begin to make more sense as Schüll explains the impact time on device has. The longer a player can gamble the more money can be drawn from them slowly. Penny and nickel machines take a little each round and have small intermittent wins. The low bet amount allows a player to gamble for days before running out of money. These are seemingly obvious revelations once reading Schüll’s work, but before this, I had not spent much time thinking about the predatory nature of gambling machines. Casinos provide rewards programs and member cards to better market to gamblers. Every time a card is used on a machine it is monitored and some machines can even adapt to the personal style of play. Schüll’s interviews with addicts in gamblers anonymous are very interesting as they all have similar themes as to what draws them to play. Many mention the idea of a “zone” or “machine zone”. This zone is where gamblers find themselves escaping reality and numbing the outside world by connecting to a machine, this is what draws them in and holds them for hours. The gambling industry also knows this and applies convenience to gambling machines so that this zone is not interrupted. Schüll examines the intersection between machine and human interaction, which I believe is a very good perspective on addiction. exploring both the machine and human causes of addiction provides a clearer picture of the gambling industry. I found the book to be very interesting, well-written, and worth reading. Some aspects of the machine zone Schüll discusses could be applied to how social media and video games are used as escapism as well. There are so many more topics introduced in the book, seeing how they are all connected and seeing the big picture is very interesting and raises questions about the nature of addiction.

Equal parts fascinating and heartbreaking, Ms. Schull's book is one of the few books I've read recently that made me feel like a different person after I finished reading. Though her style is overall very neutral, the simple facts she assembles about the history of the gambling industry constitute the most devastating critique of modern capitalism I've ever read, and forced me to rethink a lot of my attitudes about choice and public policy. But don't mistake this book for any kind of political screed or polemic. It's more like a real-life version of the first third of Ocean's 11, except instead of explaining casino security systems, she's explaining the games themselves. And what games! Through decades of trial and error, game designers have learned more about human psychology than a million studies of bored undergraduates could ever hope to reveal. Mind control may be an overstatement, but after you read the words of the gamblers themselves you'll have no doubt that machine gambling exploits our natural risk preferences and emotions so effectively that many of the people held in its sway have essentially stopped making choices, being unable to satisfy their longings in any way other than continued attachment to a slot or video poker machine. Ms. Schull does not stop there. She takes the reader further, examining the financial structure of the gaming industry, the mindset of key players in the industry, and the uneasy relationship between the industry and regulators, all supported by an impressively thorough set of sources and original research of her own. To her credit, there is no call to action, no indictment of the industry, though her views on the morality of the gaming industry are not exactly hidden. Rather, the reader is left with a vexing set of questions. What to do about the current trend towards legalizing and liberalizing gambling restrictions? What other industries are operating in a similar way (processed food, I'm looking at you)? Does regulation do any good, or does it simply serve to protect incumbent players so long as government gets its cut of the wealth that the industry extracts from players? The answers, sadly, remain elusive.

This book has three aspects — first, it is a history of the machine gambling industry and the design of casino floors that hold slot machines and video poker games. It is thus a study of how the gambling industry seeks to addict people. Secondly, it is a study of the addicts, how they fall prey to the machines, and their mechanisms for coping with the addiction. Finally, it is an academic study, citing Max Weber and Jacques Derrida among others, attempting to describe an intellectual framework for machine gambling and its effect on society. For me, the first-person discussion by addicts about their lives was fascinating. I had not realized that most modern gambling addicts were machine players, or that most did not play to win. Rather, they seek self-abnegation through entering a kind of trance state they call "the zone", triggered by the games. The discussion of the industry was infuriating, but fascinating. The philosophy, I could do without. From the perspective of 2025, the book should be read as history. All the lessons learned by the industry have been picked up by modern "investment" apps like Robin Hood, and the industry can not hope to compete with the cell phones that hundreds of millions of us carry around at all times. The chapters on government regulation seem quaint, as all forms of gambling have been legalized in essentially all jurisdictions in the U.S.

Dr. Schull’s book is one of the best works I have ever encountered in the field of human-machine interaction. More than a decade of her work provides extraordinary annotation of evidence by the brightest and best in her field, interlaced with her own interviews and contextual inquiry. The topic is also compelling. Machine gambling provides the incentive for designers, architects, marketers and others to push human factors to the most advanced levels technology can empower and money can buy. In her book, Schull documents the truly mind-bending power of targeted human factors engineering, architecture, and environment. Given its academic sophistication and scientific depth, Addiction by Design is pleasantly approachable and superbly written. Regardless of a reader’s opinions of gambling, this book is a treasure; the culmination of years of work by a superb writer and behavioral scientist. Highly recommended for: Human Factors Engineers Students of human-machine interaction Those interested in marketing Anyone interested in the business and behavioral issues of gambling Every social and political leader in America

I found this book profoundly interesting. It is not an easy read, but that is more, I believe, due to the complexity of the concepts with which the author is dealing, rather than his prose style, which I find very clear and fluid. The book's emphasis is on the rise of the digital gambling machine, particularly "slots", which account for such a huge portion of modern casino revenues (and profits). The author examines the design and construction of the machines, their interaction with their users, and how this interaction leads to the formation or enhancement of gambling addictions. This is no hackneyed piece of academic research. The author spent many months with "boots on the ground" in Las Vegas casinos and machine manufacturing centers, trying to develop a comprehensive understanding of the forces at play in the modern human-machine interaction. I believe he has succeeded admirably. His explanations of what is really happening in the gambler's mind- and how the machine plays to those cerebral patterns- is profound and much different from conventional thought. If you want to understand what makes casino gamblers tick, and how the gambling industry takes advantage of every nuance of the gambler's psyche, this is a wonderful read. It should not be rushed through, but savored. Highly recommended, and ground-breaking research, compellingly presented. A few reviewers have complained that this book is difficult to read. They criticize the author's writing style, declaim his density of style. Sorry, I don't buy any of that. This is wonderfully written

As an enthusiast of technology, psychology, videogames and gambling, slot machines are a fascination of mine. I bought this book, as it’s the most contemporary take on the current slot machine landscape, although it’s showing it’s age somewhat, simply because the industry has moved along significantly since it was written. What I found disappointing and strange, is that the author fails to see her own conclusions, repeatedly observed, throughout the book. She is hyperfocused on the damage problem gambling causes. (It’s a lot.) She is also quite eager to point out the cynical nature of everyone involved in deploying slot machines, from the developers to the casinos and the bureaucrats in the middle. I think this is fair too. What is overlooked is the transactional nature of slot machine usage, and what that means to players. The author seems insistent that this transaction (paying to be in “the zone” at a slot machine) is naturally and unwaveringly usurious. This opinion appears to be one that was formed prior to writing the book, is debunked in the book itself, and then, it felt to me, deliberately overlooked and/or understated. The first half of the book ends with an absolute definitional explanation of the willing transaction most players enter into. I believe that should be true takeaway. The latter part of the book largely concentrates on the personal stories of damage, as related by problem gamblers. But again, even in these interviews, even while the interviewee is explaining they were paying for an escape from their lives, there is no true genesis moment of understanding relayed. As an addictive in recovery, I find a truly unique place in front of a slot machine. It’s an erasure of self (I believe this may be a line in the book) that is deeply therapeutic, and scratches the old itches of drugs and alcohol in what I find to be a safe and enjoyable way. Of course there are problem gamblers. Of course the amount of problem gamblers is underplayed by those in the gaming industry. But that’s not the whole story. As such, it makes for a frustrating read, especially when the author has this very specifically spelled out to her, acknowledges it in print, but refuses to give it the weight it deserves as it strays from what is a preconceived narrative. I will say the book is excellently written, very well researched and reads nicely.

I have been gambling for over 30 years. I have almost never played the slot machines. After reading this book I never will in the future. Through years of careful research the author details how slot machines have been designed to extract money from slot players through extensive yet covert psychological manipulation. The techniques are based on the theories of B.F. Skinner and go to a truly unbelievable level. I never imagined the sophistication of the science being applied here. Also examined are the players themselves who through interviews with the author describe how they are lulled into what they call the "machine zone". This is a place where the player enters into a state they describe as similar to suspended animation. The player shuts out everything around him or her and focuses on continuing to play solely to stay in that zone hour after hour. There's more in this book than I have time to write about here. This book is based on thorough, level headed and objective research. It will open your eyes to what slot machines and the people who are involved with every aspect of them are all about.

This book is one of the finest books that I have held in my hands. The strong and weighty covers are durably clothed, giving a distinctly well-constructed feeling to the book. The paper is thick and opaque (no seeing through to the other side of the page with this one) and the font is set nicely onto the page - a little towards the top, which makes it so that resting the book on top of one's bed-covers never obscures the lines near the bottom of the page. The font itself is also very nice - thin and elegant, yet never ostentatious - eminently readable and appealing. The binding is fantastically strong - the pages falling on top of each in perfect line no matter how many times you crack the spine (which of course detached from the binding of the pages, so you will never see wrinkles on it). Princeton University Press has outdone themselves with this one. The content of the book is also fantastic; a perfect snapshot of the future as it appears to us today. Interesting from many angles, it is worth reading regardless of whether your interests lie in technology, psychology, sociology, economics, politics or philosophy. This alone was worth buying the book - but it's construction was so fantastic that it compelled me to write a review.

This study of addiction to slot machine gambling in Las Vegas is itself an addictive read. The bland design and marketing jargon of the gambling industry is juxtaposed with the misery of its best customers, who destroy their lives not so much in search of a big win as in seeking refuge in the "zone" of solitary, repetitive play. Actually my one doubt about the book was the lack of discussion about really big winners. Las Vegas slots do offer the remote possibility of multi-million dollar payouts, so a tiny number of people do actually have their lives transformed positively... If they are sensible with money... a big If, I know. I would have thought that even the remote possibility of such a life-changing win must affect gamblers' psychology, but this is never discussed. Instead the author insists that addicted gamblers do not even want to win, just to have longer "T.O.D." (Time On Device). That one question mark aside, I found this a very thoroughly researched, well-argued book that taught me a lot about gambling psychology. A thoroughly depressing read.

Fantastic book, delivered in good condition. If you are at all interested in gambling, video games, or gacha I would recommend you pick this up. It reads easily, and Schull did a great job putting this together.

Really interesting thoroughly researched perspective

Great read with insights from multiple perspectives (gamblers, designers, casino owners). There's a good mix of both personal accounts and more clinical information about how gambling addiction is formed and how it works. The writing is very engaging and made me curious to learn more (which was a pleasant surprise for this type of book) Bought it after seeing an interview with the author and liking how in-depth she pursued the topic, and the findings in the book didn't disappoint. Seems even more relevant now with how prevalent gambling has become in the last few years.

It is good to find a book that is based more upon research than opinion. This author has done a good job exploring many of the mechanisms as to how these machines are wired to addict. Perhaps a greater emphasis upon the mechanics of online gaming now that it is growing.