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The casino in your pocket

347 points by baggachipz 3y ago

fbdab103 3y ago
Vegas machines are calibrated with a certain win rate. The author surmises that this game has something more like a loss rate at pre-determined points. Would such a machine be legal in the regulated real-world? Or only in the wild-west of online casinos?
- TylerE 3y ago
  Absolutely not. Nevada requires two things that are very important: 1. Anything that appears to be a representation of a physical object or device must behave exactly as the thing it represents. So, like in this case of the article if you have 4 cards, one of which has a rock behind them, each must have exactly a 1/4 chance of containing the rock. Wether this is pre-determined or after the choice is made is irrelevant if the odds are fair. 2. Any manufacturer selling games to Nevada must abide by the Nevada rules for any machine they sell anywhere in the world, so no switching a machine out for something that looks the same but operates differently. It should also be noted that there is a seperate class of machines called "pull tabs" that are legal in some jurisdictions (often found in places like gas stations and bars) that often present as a slot machine or video poker, but actually work more like a lottery scratch off - the result is 100% pre-determined, and any agency the player appears to be given is an illusion. So, like, if you hit the jackpot on a video poker (like) machine, and get given a royal flush on the initial deal, even if you discard all 5 cards you'll get another royal flush on the draw.
  - Eji1700 3y ago
    Vegas really is very well regulated. There are some extremely ugly sides to gambling, but if you're going to have it, vegas is a pretty good starting point for how to try and keep things under control. There's no casino in town that will "look the other way" for a few 20 year olds who want to gamble, because doing it once could lose that operation it's gaming license. There's no casino that's going to on purpose risk going above the 25% max hold, because again, you could lose the ENTIRE OPERATION. The rules are rock solid (sorta....simplifying) and heavily enforced, and while at the end of the day all the machines give worse odds than the ATM, there's caps on what you can and can't do. Somewhat ironically, I'm not sure if it's changed, but if a slot machine shows you a "pick 1 of 3" choice, it's never a real choice. The decision was made before you picked. Every "pull" of the lever determines your payout basically instantly, ALL the shenanigans after that (including free auto play games i believe) are just placebo/different ways of doing a jackpot.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      There's absolutely no reason for a casino to cheat - they don't need to, they already have the house edge.
      - resolutebat 3y ago
        The entire reason Nevada regulations exist and are strictly enforced is that the casinos did, in fact, cheat.
        Eji1700 3y ago
        Ehh...kinda? For the most part, it's because they were cheating the government and skimming funds for illegal businesses and laundering money and not paying taxes on it, not cheating the players (sorta kinda....again summarizing a lot.)
      - Terr_ 3y ago
        That's like: "There's absolutely no reason for the executive to embezzle - they don't need to, they already have the cushy job." Cheating means greater profit, and (unless caught) more-reliable profit.
        TylerE 3y ago
        Except they're competing. If players think they win more at Casino B than Casino A, Casino A makes less, not more.
        mark_up 3y ago
        [dead]
        gpxyz 3y ago
        Unless the same company[0] owns both Casino A and Casino B [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vici_Properties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vici_Properties
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- narag 3y ago
  Would such a machine be legal in the regulated real-world? I live in Spain. I dislike slot machines and, a long time ago, while a friend was wasting his money, I made a quick calculation. Given the number of options and the prizes, if you assumed randomness, one in three coins he inserted would have produced a prize, even the smallest, that was reimbursement. But that wasn't what happened. It was more of a prize for one in seven coins or maybe one in ten. My friend knew more than enough maths to understand what I told him, but he said he knew, right? (he didn't) and that the question was to wait for the moment the machine was loaded. I realized it was just an addiction. And yes, at least then and there it was legal.
  - aezart 3y ago
    > the question was to wait for the moment the machine was loaded "Stacker" arcade machines work like that. It's always possible to win the minor prize (a little plastic toy generally), but if you refuse the small prize and keep playing for a major prize (game consoles, gift cards, etc.), it's impossible to win until the machine has banked enough money for the operator to make a profit.
- julianwachholz 3y ago
  It's not a casino or falls under gambling laws I assume because there is absolutely nothing to be won.
nadermx 3y ago
That was a pretty good read. Makes me realize how lucky we are that some games existed before in app purchases. Could you imagine playing chess and paying for an upgraded queen?
- Blammar 3y ago
  Wow. Great question. "Add knight moves to your queen for only 200 coins!"
  - TylerE 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(chess) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(chess)
- batiudrami 3y ago
  There are still lots of great games (mobile and board games) which aren’t like this at all. It’s just that mobile gaming is an awful platform because it has fully succumbed to financialisation.
  - Yhippa 3y ago
    I remember having an iPhone 5 and the quality of games were pretty good, albeit pricey. I did pay for a bunch of games at the time because I thought that was fair. Coming back to iOS a decade later and the quality of games is unrecognizable from the era I started in. Even Apple Arcade has a lot of stuff that feels like f2p/p2w stuff that is basically mobile casinos. I tried to give a bunch of modern games a shot and they're essentially slot machines that gate game progress with pulls. I'm glad console and PC gaming hasn't been completely taken over by this, but it is very close.
    - freeone3000 3y ago
      Looking over the best games for Apple Arcade and it’s… Temple Run, Cut the Rope, Fruit Ninja. Really! That was the peak?
lsmeducation 3y ago
You're gonna be able to easily get these kids to lock into all kinds of financing structures in the future.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ohdannyboy 3y ago
  Like a five (or even six) figure unsecured and non-discharhable loan given to fresh 18-year-olds for education that often has no market value?
  - lsmeducation 3y ago
    No, people who took those are just morons. I'll leave it up to the finance people to come up with interesting instruments to take advantage of these kids. Maybe their bank accounts will just become money market accounts that are tied to leveraged ETFs. I think abstracting away their real life money into a crypto that is worth 1/10th of the dollar is a good way to go. Make that crypto the exclusive currency for their habits (games, social media) so they have no choice but to convert to it. Easy way to part them from their real earnings that way. There's easy money here if you are ruthless. If you print your own crypto for their habits, you can effectively act like the US Fed. Just inflate away the value of their coins every time. It's a no brainer.
    - ohdannyboy 3y ago
      Too many people fell for it for them all to just be morons, but that's not my point. What I'm saying is that young people will make fall for all sorts of scams if the adults in their life (and government incentives) push them in the wrong direction. Same thing for older generations thinking that things like social security was ever going to be more than a Ponzi scheme (similarly, too many boomers fell for it for me to write them all off as morons). Getting kids addicted to gambling with virtual currencies might shape the structure of the scams, but the idea that Gen Z is going to be uniquely vulnerable to finance scams doesn't track for me.
ehnto 3y ago
It has been fascinating and demoralizing to watch monetization roll out. To younger generations like my brother, they don't know any different, it's just part if gaming for them. But at least something like aesthetic loot crates are a sideshow to the actual game. Some games are good at keeping the separate and you can understand that it's just how they choose to fund the game. When the whole game is just a loot crate/gambling mechanism it's just a sad outcome.
- beebmam 3y ago
  If people are dumb enough to consentually waste time and money on casinos, they deserve to lose their time and money. Some might say the government should intervene; I personally don't care.
  - tetris11 3y ago
    If the main audience is the uninformed or the desperate, isn't that just predatory behaviour
  - efitz 3y ago
    In a casino, you know what you’re there for and what you’re up against. Gaming commissions have curbed many of the worst abuses with inspections, posted odds, etc. With mobile gaming you have a free for all that is intentionally exploiting the same neuroanatomy of addiction, but it’s wrapped up in pretty pixels and you can do it anywhere, privately. The industry is too big for gaming commission type controls to work. I think that mobile game monetization is populated by morally deficient actors and we should consider banning the whole thing.
    - anonymous_sorry 3y ago
      In a meatspace casino, if someone shows you 4 face down cards, asks you to pick one, and then turns them all up to reveal 3 prizes and 1 "you lose" card, you can be fairly sure you had a 25% chance of losing. If the croupier used sleight of hand or secret e-ink cards to turn your card into the "you lose" card after you'd picked it, that would be fraud. The dark patterns and dopamine manipulation are bad enough, but isn't it fraud in this case? They're using a visual metaphor that is a straight-up lie.
Tuggtablett 3y ago
For some, a casino in a pocket is a cryptocurrency exchange. It's probably even worse to trade with leverage than to click this colorful buttons.
- ketzo 3y ago
  At least children can't sign up for a Robinhood account.
- drug-freedom 3y ago
  On a trading exchange at least you have the theoretical possibility of winning more than you put in.
- pard68 3y ago
  For others it's the Robinhood app
- grotorea 3y ago
  At least on the stock market, assuming the Efficient Market Hypothesis, the expected payout is 100% minus fees.
hristov 3y ago
This is pretty screwed up, because it kind of trains your brain to be a gambling brain. To crave the instant gratification, the high of risk taking etc. I think the time has come when android and ios should make a special versions of their online shops for children and teenagers and simply ban those types of games from those shops. This will at least prevent children from having their brains rewired. Of course this will remove the vast majority of games from the online shops, but so be it. I remember my experience with these types of games. I wasted a lot of time and got a lot of needless frustration but I never once paid those bastards a single cent. There was a game called Candy Crush Saga. It was very popular in its day. Their in game super power currency was something called "lollipop hammers." They made one candy disappear. It seemed a pretty simple game, assuming the game boards (i.e., the candys) were randomly generated, but of course they weren't. They were carefully created so that they present problems that are very difficult to solve under the game's usual rules but were easy and downright delightful to solve using a lollipop hammer. I would look at the gameboard for a long time and imagine all the great combos I would achieve, if I could only get rid of a single pesky candy, but alas, one had to use a lollipop hammer for that. I actually ended up having a lot of respect for the designers, it was not easy to design a board that would be incredibly difficult unless one candy was removed but if that candy was removed, it would all solve itself in an explosion of combos and extra points. I was very proud that I solved so many of these boards without using a single lollipop hammer. But my reward would always be a board that is even harder and where the temptation to use the hammer was even greater. Eventually I decided that this is simply torture. I did not mind hard puzzles, I liked solving hard puzzles, but the temptation of the lollipop hammer being always there and me having to constantly use willpower to avoid clicking on those hammers made the whole experience miserable. So quit and deleted the game, but I can proudly say that I never paid for a single lollipop hammer and I left 8 of the 10 hammers you get for free unused. I hope some random King employee looked at my cancelled account with so many puzzles solved and yet so few lollipop hammers used and felt a little pang of defeat. But I doubt it.
- chucky_z 3y ago
  Apple Arcade allows these types of games and removes all monetization like this. The games are still kinda predatory in their frustrations, however there’s no coin to spend. You just randomly get items and that’s it.
kioleanu 3y ago
Many years ago I worked for a company that offers a very popular in-browser game. The company branched and expanded and had more than 10 games with various levels of profitability, but this game, which was bringing in about 30 millions EURO per month, was the only thing keeping the company alive. Then they decided they want to try to sell the company to a fund and wanted to increase the revenue this golden goose was bringing, so they implemented a wheel of fortune. You could spin the wheel for free once per day and get some sort of in-game resource, but you had unlimited spins if you paid coins, which, you guessed it, costed real moneyz. There was a huge uproar from the community stating that the game was now pay-to-win and virtually unplayable otherwise and they had to reverse the change. The company didn’t get sold in the end, but they’re doing fine still
- fbdab103 3y ago
  >...which was bringing in about 30 millions EURO per month, was the only thing keeping the company alive. I am curious what were the expenses. Few things are as simple as they appear, but from the mobile games I have seen, they look like they could be put together by tiny development teams: simplistic (+recyclable) art and rules. Once the foundational app is created, feels like the further development could happen on a shoe string budget: artist to make new cosmetics and/or someone to develop additional puzzles. Presumably minimal server load from the whales to handle converting dollars into tokens. I suppose the trick is in getting lucky with the one app that happens to hit it big due to some unknowable pattern of the universe. How many $0 flops preceded the blockbuster hit?
  - fer 3y ago
    I know for a fact that there's at least one company (that I can't name) that offers what I would call "Addiction as a Service". Their system allows to create n-dimensional currency systems (coins, diamonds, etc), currency conversion rules, collectible management, in-game stores with their schedules, crafting/merging logic, probability distributions (including "dark distributions" like OP's link) and even prices (for profitability hints/warnings). Basically everything a fleecing game needs. They even offer templates inspired in famous games to get you started and tune as you go. They charge quite a bit, but the "foundational app" upfront cost is much lower: it's limited to UI and a relatively thin business logic that targets their API endpoint (mostly mapping API ids to in-game assets and use or server-side logic).
otikik 3y ago
Any game that offers a virtual currency purchaseable with real currency (be it coins, diamonds or energy rays) should be avoided. Especially if you have children.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  Don’t most games have those now?
  - otikik 3y ago
    Not at all. It's just that they have reached high visibility in some markets - mobile, concretely. It's a combination of marketing engineering and tacit complicity on the part of Apple/Google.
  - bakugo 3y ago
    99% of mobile games do. If you want to keep your children away from these things, you don't really have much of a choice beyond not letting them have a phone at all.
    - otikik 3y ago
      One possible alternative to banning the phone or total surrender could be finding proper games for them, instead of these slot-machines-in-disguise. One would need alternative App browsers for that, the default ones don't allow filtering out apps with in-app purchases since they are too lucrative. Here's one: https://appapp.io/us/genre=Games;has_iap=false;supported_devices=iPhone;price=Paid/search https://appapp.io/us/genre=Games;has_iap=false;supported_dev...
      - ychnd 3y ago
        Thanks for this! I've been searching for this simple filter (no in app purchases) for a long time. Unfortunately, this particular site is Apple only, so I'll have to keep searching for Android counterpart...
      - 3y ago
tomwojcik 3y ago
I was working in mobile gamedev and igaming. Coming from Europe, I was not that familiar with the real gambling, the one we can see in movies. But I was familiar with mobile games. Let me tell you, mobile games are much more addictive than casino games. There's more mechanisms to make you addicted, to squeeze the money out of you and everything is sugar coated. I felt terrible when starting a job in igaming, as I always considered it to be a "dirty" sector. I was surprised to see how many things are regulated. Examples: ID age verification, sometime you need to ping the government API to let them now, there are casino level limits, country/global level limits (can't be exceeded), daily/weekly loss limits, num of tabs opened in the browser limited to 1, max spin time etc. It's surreal that kids play on an unregulated casino without any winning ods.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Yes, in addition to traditional casino tactics, they also employ false community/social manipulation/ group psychology (aka guilds/clans), bullying/targeting, abuser/savior bait and switch, resource devaluation treadmills, and others
yosito 3y ago
I would love to see this analysis applied to mainstream dating apps, which I'm convinced are rigged exactly like casino games. You win often enough to feel lucky, but infrequently enough to keep you paying and pushing buttons hoping to win more.
- enlyth 3y ago
  Funny you say that, Tinder has the exact mechanic described in the article, if you're on the free version once every while it will show you 4 hidden cards to reveal one secret match, but it's the same trick, doesn't matter which card you pick, the API has already predetermined which person it reveals.
vintermann 3y ago
> In a casino, any rational adult expects this. Whoa, no way we don't. I do expect that while the game has a house edge in a casino, if something seems random (roll of dice, draw of cards) then it's random in the way it seems, e.g. that there's a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a 6. I'm pretty sure that's regulated in most places. That online casinos and casino-like games rampantly cheat is another matter, I do expect that but I also think the people making those things are the scum of the earth.
- kyteland 3y ago
  It is regulated. If it looks like a die in a game of chance then it is a fair die. If it looks like a deck of cards, it is a fair deck of cards. This is written into the gambling laws of each regulated gaming jurisdiction. And like most regulations, these rules exist precisely because someone tried exactly this scheme at some point. And the regulators saw it and said "Oh hell no" and made a rule. As the saying goes, regulations are written in blood. Source: Casino game developer and mathematician for 20+ years.
  - bluesign 3y ago
    normally it is something like: it looks like poker (single player) but with some bonus side game/bet added to add more edge to casino, where it tries to give you an illusion that you have more chance.
  - notpushkin 3y ago
    Does it apply to video slot machines as well? Is there some leeway?
    - kyteland 3y ago
      It applies to all regulated gambling devices in a jurisdiction that has that rule. Virtual dice/card decks must behave like a fair version of their physical counterpart. And they basically all have that rule because Nevada has it. Every manufacturer wants to sell in Nevada and they only want to make one version of their software, so even if some places doesn't have that rule it's highly likely that the game still behaves that way anyway.
doctorhandshake 3y ago
This article employs a common tautological use of ‘algorithm’ I see more often than I’d like. It explains that there is an underlying method to something, explains how the method works, then further clarifies by explaining that it’s an algorithm, with a link to the Wikipedia entry for the word. It’s framed almost as a reveal, as though the rest of the article hadn’t already explained the same thing in other words. There’s some magic to this word that gives it some kind of recursive emphasis - you can provide a completely sufficient explanation for an algorithm without naming it one, and somehow up the stakes by invoking the word all the same. Another comment, more on-topic: it may surprise some to learn that the ‘crane’ or ‘claw’ games in arcades and rest stops are also games of chance, not games of skill. They are programmed with the value of their prizes, the cost to play, and the operating margin the operator would like to have. The machine handles the decision of who wins, when.
- kikokikokiko 3y ago
  "Another comment, more on-topic: it may surprise some to learn that the ‘crane’ or ‘claw’ games in arcades and rest stops are also games of chance, not games of skill. They are programmed with the value of their prizes, the cost to play, and the operating margin the operator would like to have. The machine handles the decision of who wins, when." It wouldn't surprise me a little bit if it was true, since it's almost impossible to get any prize using those cranes, but if it is in fact true, it should definitely be illegal. When I see a game in the style of these crane games, I and pretty much everyone believes it is a "game of skill", and if you just get the crane in the right position, it would be able to get your prize. Down here in Brazil those machines are everywhere.
  - doctorhandshake 3y ago
    I’m sure there are some ‘dumb’ machines out there but on p8 you can see the basics of how a ‘smart’ machine works [pdf]: https://www.betson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/E-Claw-Service-Manual-10.3-Copy.pdf https://www.betson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/E-Claw-Ser...
    - 3y ago
underdeserver 3y ago
This reminds me of the claw machines you see in malls. They look like something you can be good at - place the claw more accurately, choose a toy placed at a cleaner angle - but what they actually do internally is randomly give you a (say) 10% chance, if you hit it you will grab the toy (unless you're REALLY far from one), if not you won't. The illusion is there, but the profit is stable and guaranteed.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Is there a source for that? Has anyone ever reverse engineered the code driving one of these machines? Would be interesting to read about it.
  - dddddaviddddd 3y ago
    You can just read the machine's manual: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37658844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37658844
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  Also applies to other supposedly skill based games at arcades, like "Cyclone"[1]. Interesting to contrast this to how pinball machines were considered gambling for a while, even though they were not[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXBfwgwT1nQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXBfwgwT1nQ [2] https://www.history.com/news/that-time-america-outlawed-pinball https://www.history.com/news/that-time-america-outlawed-pinb...
- musicale 3y ago
  Prize game machines (crane games, stacker, etc.) are scams (though technically not gambling since they are predictable?) but they seem to be the last arcade machines standing in many venues. I was encouraged recently to find that Mountain Mike's chain pizza restaurants seem to have mini-arcades with emulated retro cabinets from Arcade1Up.
redka 3y ago
Couple years back I joined a paid accelerator program to write a mobile game under the wings of some company. My eyes were opened after having a fun time creating my game when the time came to publishing and tweaking. My mentors from the company explained to me the _requirements_ for it to succeed. Basically every change from that point was about manipulation. In order for the game to be high on the charts it needs to meet very specific metrics so subsequently the game was dumbed down so as much people can "have fun" as possible, levels were tweaked to control exactly how much time people spend on their "sessions". Mechanisms were introduced to limit how fast the game can be played and for how long (without paying). Certain tresholds were introduced where difficulty would be unfairly raised in order to create frustration and at the calculated times fake "promotions" of in-game purchases were supposed to be introduced. Updating the game exactly after getting a positive google review with game rating option - click 5 stars to get a reward and be forwarded to game page to post a review ; or click less than 5 stars and just have the pop-up closed without forwarding. Even thogh my game wasn't a simple clicking and getting rewarded and I put a lot of work into making it fun, challenging, dynamic and generally _mine_ I was sucked into the same situation as everyone else on the mobile games market. My game lost all the appeal to me and I couldn't keep it up. Creating another exploitation machine takes all the fun out of gamedev.
- nwellinghoff 3y ago
  Why doesn’t anyone who tells such stories also reference the game and the company that made it? Wouldn’t it be good to call out the actors explicitly?
  - pauldenton 3y ago
    It's a small industry and the walls have ears. Don't want to reduce your ability to get another job in the industry I guess
- grotorea 3y ago
  Reminds me of this must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4 Sometimes I wonder what is is about specifically mobile gaming that makes this sort of thing so much more prevalent. Like it is very far from absent from PC or consoles, but it's still a bit different.
cj 3y ago
If it’s at all comforting, I remember these sort of mechanisms deployed in Neopets (was it Neopoints?) a couple decades ago when I was a teenager. I remember going on some crazy feats in the chase of neopet points. Perhaps it wasn’t as damaging because it was limited to a computer and not literally in our pockets.
a13o 3y ago
Having worked in the f2p games industry for a decade, nothing is as you perceive. Your entire reward stream is scheduled down to the coin, in spreadsheets written by people like me. I know how much you have today and how much you will have tomorrow. Any reward presentation, assume there is a loot table behind it. You see 4 cards on the screen, but there may as well be 1 big slot lever; cuz no matter where you tap you're doing a single prng rand and getting what the loot table says. The loot tables aren't at all what you expect, they skew heavily towards 'booby' prizes cuz that makes it easy to predict your progression. The screen might show you 4 cool things you can get alongside 1 lame prize, implying 20% odds; but the sum odds of those 4 cool things will be <5% and most of the time you're getting a predictable lame drip. The one thing working in your favor is a 'pity' counter. Every time you get a booby prize the pity counter goes up and leads to another rand call. If you succeed at beating the pity counter, it'll give you a good prize and reset the pity counter. The net effect is that I can program the reward stream such that you're guaranteed a good item every 50 pulls or whatever. Some games are just straight with you about this, others aren't. During the onboarding flow, which could be designed to last months depending on the game's age, your entire reward schedule will be painstakingly controlled down to the coin. Not a single rand call in sight. My advice is to play these games if you understand all this and have friends to play it with. They've got good hobby value, on a per dollar basis. I mean, have you seen the cost of golf? If you don't get how the monetization works, and you're alone, there's healthier hobbies to spend your money on.
- artursapek 3y ago
  Do you ever regret working on this kind of software?
  - dannyw 3y ago
    I played F2P games for a number of years and spent probably thousands of dollars on one. I don't regret it. I made a lot of friends, one of whom I still hang out in real life, learned leadership skills, and it was a pleasurable pasttime. I don't think it should be demonised.
    - 3y ago
earthboundkid 3y ago
This reminds me of when I got an emulator and found out that Toad was cheating us in the Mario 3 power up houses!
howmayiannoyyou 3y ago
Some in the WSOP (World Series of Poker) iPad game world (non-cash, just tokens) wonder if the game is rigged to manipulate token purchases, or if the variance is standard.
luxuryballs 3y ago
laughs in programmer
micromacrofoot 3y ago
I think there's a major player here that most adults overlook because it's a bunch of kid-created nonsense: Roblox. This platform is absolutely rife with gambling and scammy currency-spending mechanics, and all of this is directed towards children. You're constantly bombarded with pay-to-win, pay-to-cheat, pay-to-play, one-arm bandit, "donation" requests, "invite your friends to unlock", literally every dark pattern you can imagine... all on top of near-constant copyright and trademark violations. I'm entirely convinced that this platform only exists because it's too annoying for adults to even scrutinize too closely but they pull in huge amounts of money from this stuff.
grotorea 3y ago
Must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4

347 points by baggachipz 3y ago

Vegas machines are calibrated with a certain win rate. The author surmises that this game has something more like a loss rate at pre-determined points. Would such a machine be legal in the regulated real-world? Or only in the wild-west of online casinos?

TylerE 3y ago
Absolutely not. Nevada requires two things that are very important: 1. Anything that appears to be a representation of a physical object or device must behave exactly as the thing it represents. So, like in this case of the article if you have 4 cards, one of which has a rock behind them, each must have exactly a 1/4 chance of containing the rock. Wether this is pre-determined or after the choice is made is irrelevant if the odds are fair. 2. Any manufacturer selling games to Nevada must abide by the Nevada rules for any machine they sell anywhere in the world, so no switching a machine out for something that looks the same but operates differently. It should also be noted that there is a seperate class of machines called "pull tabs" that are legal in some jurisdictions (often found in places like gas stations and bars) that often present as a slot machine or video poker, but actually work more like a lottery scratch off - the result is 100% pre-determined, and any agency the player appears to be given is an illusion. So, like, if you hit the jackpot on a video poker (like) machine, and get given a royal flush on the initial deal, even if you discard all 5 cards you'll get another royal flush on the draw.
- Eji1700 3y ago
  Vegas really is very well regulated. There are some extremely ugly sides to gambling, but if you're going to have it, vegas is a pretty good starting point for how to try and keep things under control. There's no casino in town that will "look the other way" for a few 20 year olds who want to gamble, because doing it once could lose that operation it's gaming license. There's no casino that's going to on purpose risk going above the 25% max hold, because again, you could lose the ENTIRE OPERATION. The rules are rock solid (sorta....simplifying) and heavily enforced, and while at the end of the day all the machines give worse odds than the ATM, there's caps on what you can and can't do. Somewhat ironically, I'm not sure if it's changed, but if a slot machine shows you a "pick 1 of 3" choice, it's never a real choice. The decision was made before you picked. Every "pull" of the lever determines your payout basically instantly, ALL the shenanigans after that (including free auto play games i believe) are just placebo/different ways of doing a jackpot.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    There's absolutely no reason for a casino to cheat - they don't need to, they already have the house edge.
    - resolutebat 3y ago
      The entire reason Nevada regulations exist and are strictly enforced is that the casinos did, in fact, cheat.
      - Eji1700 3y ago
        Ehh...kinda? For the most part, it's because they were cheating the government and skimming funds for illegal businesses and laundering money and not paying taxes on it, not cheating the players (sorta kinda....again summarizing a lot.)
    - Terr_ 3y ago
      That's like: "There's absolutely no reason for the executive to embezzle - they don't need to, they already have the cushy job." Cheating means greater profit, and (unless caught) more-reliable profit.
      - TylerE 3y ago
        Except they're competing. If players think they win more at Casino B than Casino A, Casino A makes less, not more.
        mark_up 3y ago
        [dead]
        gpxyz 3y ago
        Unless the same company[0] owns both Casino A and Casino B [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vici_Properties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vici_Properties
deleted 3y ago
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narag 3y ago
Would such a machine be legal in the regulated real-world? I live in Spain. I dislike slot machines and, a long time ago, while a friend was wasting his money, I made a quick calculation. Given the number of options and the prizes, if you assumed randomness, one in three coins he inserted would have produced a prize, even the smallest, that was reimbursement. But that wasn't what happened. It was more of a prize for one in seven coins or maybe one in ten. My friend knew more than enough maths to understand what I told him, but he said he knew, right? (he didn't) and that the question was to wait for the moment the machine was loaded. I realized it was just an addiction. And yes, at least then and there it was legal.
- aezart 3y ago
  > the question was to wait for the moment the machine was loaded "Stacker" arcade machines work like that. It's always possible to win the minor prize (a little plastic toy generally), but if you refuse the small prize and keep playing for a major prize (game consoles, gift cards, etc.), it's impossible to win until the machine has banked enough money for the operator to make a profit.
julianwachholz 3y ago
It's not a casino or falls under gambling laws I assume because there is absolutely nothing to be won.

nadermx 3y ago

That was a pretty good read. Makes me realize how lucky we are that some games existed before in app purchases. Could you imagine playing chess and paying for an upgraded queen?

Blammar 3y ago
Wow. Great question. "Add knight moves to your queen for only 200 coins!"
- TylerE 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(chess) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(chess)
batiudrami 3y ago
There are still lots of great games (mobile and board games) which aren’t like this at all. It’s just that mobile gaming is an awful platform because it has fully succumbed to financialisation.
- Yhippa 3y ago
  I remember having an iPhone 5 and the quality of games were pretty good, albeit pricey. I did pay for a bunch of games at the time because I thought that was fair. Coming back to iOS a decade later and the quality of games is unrecognizable from the era I started in. Even Apple Arcade has a lot of stuff that feels like f2p/p2w stuff that is basically mobile casinos. I tried to give a bunch of modern games a shot and they're essentially slot machines that gate game progress with pulls. I'm glad console and PC gaming hasn't been completely taken over by this, but it is very close.
  - freeone3000 3y ago
    Looking over the best games for Apple Arcade and it’s… Temple Run, Cut the Rope, Fruit Ninja. Really! That was the peak?

lsmeducation 3y ago

You're gonna be able to easily get these kids to lock into all kinds of financing structures in the future.

deleted 3y ago
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ohdannyboy 3y ago
Like a five (or even six) figure unsecured and non-discharhable loan given to fresh 18-year-olds for education that often has no market value?
- lsmeducation 3y ago
  No, people who took those are just morons. I'll leave it up to the finance people to come up with interesting instruments to take advantage of these kids. Maybe their bank accounts will just become money market accounts that are tied to leveraged ETFs. I think abstracting away their real life money into a crypto that is worth 1/10th of the dollar is a good way to go. Make that crypto the exclusive currency for their habits (games, social media) so they have no choice but to convert to it. Easy way to part them from their real earnings that way. There's easy money here if you are ruthless. If you print your own crypto for their habits, you can effectively act like the US Fed. Just inflate away the value of their coins every time. It's a no brainer.
  - ohdannyboy 3y ago
    Too many people fell for it for them all to just be morons, but that's not my point. What I'm saying is that young people will make fall for all sorts of scams if the adults in their life (and government incentives) push them in the wrong direction. Same thing for older generations thinking that things like social security was ever going to be more than a Ponzi scheme (similarly, too many boomers fell for it for me to write them all off as morons). Getting kids addicted to gambling with virtual currencies might shape the structure of the scams, but the idea that Gen Z is going to be uniquely vulnerable to finance scams doesn't track for me.

ehnto 3y ago

It has been fascinating and demoralizing to watch monetization roll out. To younger generations like my brother, they don't know any different, it's just part if gaming for them. But at least something like aesthetic loot crates are a sideshow to the actual game. Some games are good at keeping the separate and you can understand that it's just how they choose to fund the game. When the whole game is just a loot crate/gambling mechanism it's just a sad outcome.

beebmam 3y ago
If people are dumb enough to consentually waste time and money on casinos, they deserve to lose their time and money. Some might say the government should intervene; I personally don't care.
- tetris11 3y ago
  If the main audience is the uninformed or the desperate, isn't that just predatory behaviour
- efitz 3y ago
  In a casino, you know what you’re there for and what you’re up against. Gaming commissions have curbed many of the worst abuses with inspections, posted odds, etc. With mobile gaming you have a free for all that is intentionally exploiting the same neuroanatomy of addiction, but it’s wrapped up in pretty pixels and you can do it anywhere, privately. The industry is too big for gaming commission type controls to work. I think that mobile game monetization is populated by morally deficient actors and we should consider banning the whole thing.
  - anonymous_sorry 3y ago
    In a meatspace casino, if someone shows you 4 face down cards, asks you to pick one, and then turns them all up to reveal 3 prizes and 1 "you lose" card, you can be fairly sure you had a 25% chance of losing. If the croupier used sleight of hand or secret e-ink cards to turn your card into the "you lose" card after you'd picked it, that would be fraud. The dark patterns and dopamine manipulation are bad enough, but isn't it fraud in this case? They're using a visual metaphor that is a straight-up lie.

Tuggtablett 3y ago

For some, a casino in a pocket is a cryptocurrency exchange. It's probably even worse to trade with leverage than to click this colorful buttons.

ketzo 3y ago
At least children can't sign up for a Robinhood account.
drug-freedom 3y ago
On a trading exchange at least you have the theoretical possibility of winning more than you put in.
pard68 3y ago
For others it's the Robinhood app
grotorea 3y ago
At least on the stock market, assuming the Efficient Market Hypothesis, the expected payout is 100% minus fees.

hristov 3y ago

This is pretty screwed up, because it kind of trains your brain to be a gambling brain. To crave the instant gratification, the high of risk taking etc. I think the time has come when android and ios should make a special versions of their online shops for children and teenagers and simply ban those types of games from those shops. This will at least prevent children from having their brains rewired. Of course this will remove the vast majority of games from the online shops, but so be it. I remember my experience with these types of games. I wasted a lot of time and got a lot of needless frustration but I never once paid those bastards a single cent. There was a game called Candy Crush Saga. It was very popular in its day. Their in game super power currency was something called "lollipop hammers." They made one candy disappear. It seemed a pretty simple game, assuming the game boards (i.e., the candys) were randomly generated, but of course they weren't. They were carefully created so that they present problems that are very difficult to solve under the game's usual rules but were easy and downright delightful to solve using a lollipop hammer. I would look at the gameboard for a long time and imagine all the great combos I would achieve, if I could only get rid of a single pesky candy, but alas, one had to use a lollipop hammer for that. I actually ended up having a lot of respect for the designers, it was not easy to design a board that would be incredibly difficult unless one candy was removed but if that candy was removed, it would all solve itself in an explosion of combos and extra points. I was very proud that I solved so many of these boards without using a single lollipop hammer. But my reward would always be a board that is even harder and where the temptation to use the hammer was even greater. Eventually I decided that this is simply torture. I did not mind hard puzzles, I liked solving hard puzzles, but the temptation of the lollipop hammer being always there and me having to constantly use willpower to avoid clicking on those hammers made the whole experience miserable. So quit and deleted the game, but I can proudly say that I never paid for a single lollipop hammer and I left 8 of the 10 hammers you get for free unused. I hope some random King employee looked at my cancelled account with so many puzzles solved and yet so few lollipop hammers used and felt a little pang of defeat. But I doubt it.

chucky_z 3y ago
Apple Arcade allows these types of games and removes all monetization like this. The games are still kinda predatory in their frustrations, however there’s no coin to spend. You just randomly get items and that’s it.

kioleanu 3y ago

Many years ago I worked for a company that offers a very popular in-browser game. The company branched and expanded and had more than 10 games with various levels of profitability, but this game, which was bringing in about 30 millions EURO per month, was the only thing keeping the company alive. Then they decided they want to try to sell the company to a fund and wanted to increase the revenue this golden goose was bringing, so they implemented a wheel of fortune. You could spin the wheel for free once per day and get some sort of in-game resource, but you had unlimited spins if you paid coins, which, you guessed it, costed real moneyz. There was a huge uproar from the community stating that the game was now pay-to-win and virtually unplayable otherwise and they had to reverse the change. The company didn’t get sold in the end, but they’re doing fine still

fbdab103 3y ago
>...which was bringing in about 30 millions EURO per month, was the only thing keeping the company alive. I am curious what were the expenses. Few things are as simple as they appear, but from the mobile games I have seen, they look like they could be put together by tiny development teams: simplistic (+recyclable) art and rules. Once the foundational app is created, feels like the further development could happen on a shoe string budget: artist to make new cosmetics and/or someone to develop additional puzzles. Presumably minimal server load from the whales to handle converting dollars into tokens. I suppose the trick is in getting lucky with the one app that happens to hit it big due to some unknowable pattern of the universe. How many $0 flops preceded the blockbuster hit?
- fer 3y ago
  I know for a fact that there's at least one company (that I can't name) that offers what I would call "Addiction as a Service". Their system allows to create n-dimensional currency systems (coins, diamonds, etc), currency conversion rules, collectible management, in-game stores with their schedules, crafting/merging logic, probability distributions (including "dark distributions" like OP's link) and even prices (for profitability hints/warnings). Basically everything a fleecing game needs. They even offer templates inspired in famous games to get you started and tune as you go. They charge quite a bit, but the "foundational app" upfront cost is much lower: it's limited to UI and a relatively thin business logic that targets their API endpoint (mostly mapping API ids to in-game assets and use or server-side logic).

otikik 3y ago

Any game that offers a virtual currency purchaseable with real currency (be it coins, diamonds or energy rays) should be avoided. Especially if you have children.

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
Don’t most games have those now?
- otikik 3y ago
  Not at all. It's just that they have reached high visibility in some markets - mobile, concretely. It's a combination of marketing engineering and tacit complicity on the part of Apple/Google.
- bakugo 3y ago
  99% of mobile games do. If you want to keep your children away from these things, you don't really have much of a choice beyond not letting them have a phone at all.
  - otikik 3y ago
    One possible alternative to banning the phone or total surrender could be finding proper games for them, instead of these slot-machines-in-disguise. One would need alternative App browsers for that, the default ones don't allow filtering out apps with in-app purchases since they are too lucrative. Here's one: https://appapp.io/us/genre=Games;has_iap=false;supported_devices=iPhone;price=Paid/search https://appapp.io/us/genre=Games;has_iap=false;supported_dev...
    - ychnd 3y ago
      Thanks for this! I've been searching for this simple filter (no in app purchases) for a long time. Unfortunately, this particular site is Apple only, so I'll have to keep searching for Android counterpart...
    - 3y ago

tomwojcik 3y ago

I was working in mobile gamedev and igaming. Coming from Europe, I was not that familiar with the real gambling, the one we can see in movies. But I was familiar with mobile games. Let me tell you, mobile games are much more addictive than casino games. There's more mechanisms to make you addicted, to squeeze the money out of you and everything is sugar coated. I felt terrible when starting a job in igaming, as I always considered it to be a "dirty" sector. I was surprised to see how many things are regulated. Examples: ID age verification, sometime you need to ping the government API to let them now, there are casino level limits, country/global level limits (can't be exceeded), daily/weekly loss limits, num of tabs opened in the browser limited to 1, max spin time etc. It's surreal that kids play on an unregulated casino without any winning ods.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Yes, in addition to traditional casino tactics, they also employ false community/social manipulation/ group psychology (aka guilds/clans), bullying/targeting, abuser/savior bait and switch, resource devaluation treadmills, and others

yosito 3y ago

I would love to see this analysis applied to mainstream dating apps, which I'm convinced are rigged exactly like casino games. You win often enough to feel lucky, but infrequently enough to keep you paying and pushing buttons hoping to win more.

enlyth 3y ago
Funny you say that, Tinder has the exact mechanic described in the article, if you're on the free version once every while it will show you 4 hidden cards to reveal one secret match, but it's the same trick, doesn't matter which card you pick, the API has already predetermined which person it reveals.

vintermann 3y ago

> In a casino, any rational adult expects this. Whoa, no way we don't. I do expect that while the game has a house edge in a casino, if something seems random (roll of dice, draw of cards) then it's random in the way it seems, e.g. that there's a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a 6. I'm pretty sure that's regulated in most places. That online casinos and casino-like games rampantly cheat is another matter, I do expect that but I also think the people making those things are the scum of the earth.

kyteland 3y ago
It is regulated. If it looks like a die in a game of chance then it is a fair die. If it looks like a deck of cards, it is a fair deck of cards. This is written into the gambling laws of each regulated gaming jurisdiction. And like most regulations, these rules exist precisely because someone tried exactly this scheme at some point. And the regulators saw it and said "Oh hell no" and made a rule. As the saying goes, regulations are written in blood. Source: Casino game developer and mathematician for 20+ years.
- bluesign 3y ago
  normally it is something like: it looks like poker (single player) but with some bonus side game/bet added to add more edge to casino, where it tries to give you an illusion that you have more chance.
- notpushkin 3y ago
  Does it apply to video slot machines as well? Is there some leeway?
  - kyteland 3y ago
    It applies to all regulated gambling devices in a jurisdiction that has that rule. Virtual dice/card decks must behave like a fair version of their physical counterpart. And they basically all have that rule because Nevada has it. Every manufacturer wants to sell in Nevada and they only want to make one version of their software, so even if some places doesn't have that rule it's highly likely that the game still behaves that way anyway.

doctorhandshake 3y ago

This article employs a common tautological use of ‘algorithm’ I see more often than I’d like. It explains that there is an underlying method to something, explains how the method works, then further clarifies by explaining that it’s an algorithm, with a link to the Wikipedia entry for the word. It’s framed almost as a reveal, as though the rest of the article hadn’t already explained the same thing in other words. There’s some magic to this word that gives it some kind of recursive emphasis - you can provide a completely sufficient explanation for an algorithm without naming it one, and somehow up the stakes by invoking the word all the same. Another comment, more on-topic: it may surprise some to learn that the ‘crane’ or ‘claw’ games in arcades and rest stops are also games of chance, not games of skill. They are programmed with the value of their prizes, the cost to play, and the operating margin the operator would like to have. The machine handles the decision of who wins, when.

kikokikokiko 3y ago
"Another comment, more on-topic: it may surprise some to learn that the ‘crane’ or ‘claw’ games in arcades and rest stops are also games of chance, not games of skill. They are programmed with the value of their prizes, the cost to play, and the operating margin the operator would like to have. The machine handles the decision of who wins, when." It wouldn't surprise me a little bit if it was true, since it's almost impossible to get any prize using those cranes, but if it is in fact true, it should definitely be illegal. When I see a game in the style of these crane games, I and pretty much everyone believes it is a "game of skill", and if you just get the crane in the right position, it would be able to get your prize. Down here in Brazil those machines are everywhere.
- doctorhandshake 3y ago
  I’m sure there are some ‘dumb’ machines out there but on p8 you can see the basics of how a ‘smart’ machine works [pdf]: https://www.betson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/E-Claw-Service-Manual-10.3-Copy.pdf https://www.betson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/E-Claw-Ser...
  - 3y ago

underdeserver 3y ago

This reminds me of the claw machines you see in malls. They look like something you can be good at - place the claw more accurately, choose a toy placed at a cleaner angle - but what they actually do internally is randomly give you a (say) 10% chance, if you hit it you will grab the toy (unless you're REALLY far from one), if not you won't. The illusion is there, but the profit is stable and guaranteed.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
Is there a source for that? Has anyone ever reverse engineered the code driving one of these machines? Would be interesting to read about it.
- dddddaviddddd 3y ago
  You can just read the machine's manual: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37658844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37658844
AlexandrB 3y ago
Also applies to other supposedly skill based games at arcades, like "Cyclone"[1]. Interesting to contrast this to how pinball machines were considered gambling for a while, even though they were not[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXBfwgwT1nQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXBfwgwT1nQ [2] https://www.history.com/news/that-time-america-outlawed-pinball https://www.history.com/news/that-time-america-outlawed-pinb...
musicale 3y ago
Prize game machines (crane games, stacker, etc.) are scams (though technically not gambling since they are predictable?) but they seem to be the last arcade machines standing in many venues. I was encouraged recently to find that Mountain Mike's chain pizza restaurants seem to have mini-arcades with emulated retro cabinets from Arcade1Up.

redka 3y ago

Couple years back I joined a paid accelerator program to write a mobile game under the wings of some company. My eyes were opened after having a fun time creating my game when the time came to publishing and tweaking. My mentors from the company explained to me the _requirements_ for it to succeed. Basically every change from that point was about manipulation. In order for the game to be high on the charts it needs to meet very specific metrics so subsequently the game was dumbed down so as much people can "have fun" as possible, levels were tweaked to control exactly how much time people spend on their "sessions". Mechanisms were introduced to limit how fast the game can be played and for how long (without paying). Certain tresholds were introduced where difficulty would be unfairly raised in order to create frustration and at the calculated times fake "promotions" of in-game purchases were supposed to be introduced. Updating the game exactly after getting a positive google review with game rating option - click 5 stars to get a reward and be forwarded to game page to post a review ; or click less than 5 stars and just have the pop-up closed without forwarding. Even thogh my game wasn't a simple clicking and getting rewarded and I put a lot of work into making it fun, challenging, dynamic and generally _mine_ I was sucked into the same situation as everyone else on the mobile games market. My game lost all the appeal to me and I couldn't keep it up. Creating another exploitation machine takes all the fun out of gamedev.

nwellinghoff 3y ago
Why doesn’t anyone who tells such stories also reference the game and the company that made it? Wouldn’t it be good to call out the actors explicitly?
- pauldenton 3y ago
  It's a small industry and the walls have ears. Don't want to reduce your ability to get another job in the industry I guess
grotorea 3y ago
Reminds me of this must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4 Sometimes I wonder what is is about specifically mobile gaming that makes this sort of thing so much more prevalent. Like it is very far from absent from PC or consoles, but it's still a bit different.

cj 3y ago

If it’s at all comforting, I remember these sort of mechanisms deployed in Neopets (was it Neopoints?) a couple decades ago when I was a teenager. I remember going on some crazy feats in the chase of neopet points. Perhaps it wasn’t as damaging because it was limited to a computer and not literally in our pockets.

a13o 3y ago

Having worked in the f2p games industry for a decade, nothing is as you perceive. Your entire reward stream is scheduled down to the coin, in spreadsheets written by people like me. I know how much you have today and how much you will have tomorrow. Any reward presentation, assume there is a loot table behind it. You see 4 cards on the screen, but there may as well be 1 big slot lever; cuz no matter where you tap you're doing a single prng rand and getting what the loot table says. The loot tables aren't at all what you expect, they skew heavily towards 'booby' prizes cuz that makes it easy to predict your progression. The screen might show you 4 cool things you can get alongside 1 lame prize, implying 20% odds; but the sum odds of those 4 cool things will be <5% and most of the time you're getting a predictable lame drip. The one thing working in your favor is a 'pity' counter. Every time you get a booby prize the pity counter goes up and leads to another rand call. If you succeed at beating the pity counter, it'll give you a good prize and reset the pity counter. The net effect is that I can program the reward stream such that you're guaranteed a good item every 50 pulls or whatever. Some games are just straight with you about this, others aren't. During the onboarding flow, which could be designed to last months depending on the game's age, your entire reward schedule will be painstakingly controlled down to the coin. Not a single rand call in sight. My advice is to play these games if you understand all this and have friends to play it with. They've got good hobby value, on a per dollar basis. I mean, have you seen the cost of golf? If you don't get how the monetization works, and you're alone, there's healthier hobbies to spend your money on.

artursapek 3y ago
Do you ever regret working on this kind of software?
- dannyw 3y ago
  I played F2P games for a number of years and spent probably thousands of dollars on one. I don't regret it. I made a lot of friends, one of whom I still hang out in real life, learned leadership skills, and it was a pleasurable pasttime. I don't think it should be demonised.
  - 3y ago

earthboundkid 3y ago

This reminds me of when I got an emulator and found out that Toad was cheating us in the Mario 3 power up houses!

howmayiannoyyou 3y ago

Some in the WSOP (World Series of Poker) iPad game world (non-cash, just tokens) wonder if the game is rigged to manipulate token purchases, or if the variance is standard.

luxuryballs 3y ago

laughs in programmer

micromacrofoot 3y ago

I think there's a major player here that most adults overlook because it's a bunch of kid-created nonsense: Roblox. This platform is absolutely rife with gambling and scammy currency-spending mechanics, and all of this is directed towards children. You're constantly bombarded with pay-to-win, pay-to-cheat, pay-to-play, one-arm bandit, "donation" requests, "invite your friends to unlock", literally every dark pattern you can imagine... all on top of near-constant copyright and trademark violations. I'm entirely convinced that this platform only exists because it's too annoying for adults to even scrutinize too closely but they pull in huge amounts of money from this stuff.

grotorea 3y ago

Must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4