What is a Slot?
A slot is a passage through an object or a container. The term is also used for a gap between parts of an aircraft, especially in connection with high-lift or control devices; the air is blown into the gap by a flap called an “airfoil” (or wing) to provide lift. A slot is also a place on a device to insert a card or similar item.
A casino’s slot machines once had a reputation as arcade devices for old ladies, but they now drive the gambling industry and account for up to 85 percent of the industry’s profits. This is partly because, as MIT cultural anthropologist Nancy Schull explains, casinos have come up with a dizzying array of strategies that are explicitly engineered to make gambling more addictive.
Schull’s book, titled Addiction by Design, is about how casinos and their vendors draw on psychological insights to manipulate our behavior and encourage us to spend more money than we intend to. She describes how the machines use a combination of features to seduce players, including elaborate algorithms that keep them playing. She argues that although some people play for the thrill of winning big, most of the gamblers she interviewed played simply because they enjoyed the feeling of being in the zone and losing themselves in their game.
While there is little doubt that slot machines create some type of conditionally reinforcing function, researchers have struggled to define precisely what they are. A few experimental studies have suggested that near miss feedback has a positive reinforcement value, but these results are inconsistent with the notion that a player’s overall response to a slot machine is influenced by the frequency of her actual wins and losses.
Some of the research suggests that near-miss feedback exploits learning processes that evolved to detect contingent (i.e., non-random) outcomes. For example, in a basketball free throw experiment, participants who were shown an image of a three-cherry near-miss performed better than those who saw a three-lemon near-miss.
One problem with this theory is that it assumes that all players learn from the same data. This is unlikely, however, given the many variations in how a slot machine works. In fact, the behavior of each player is probably influenced by the type and quantity of coins he or she puts in, the machine’s payout rules, and the symbols that appear on the screen.
It is important to note, however, that a simple Felgo game can be transformed into a much more sophisticated slot machine with additional features such as free spins and the ability to change real cash into credits. In addition, the Soomla Felgo Plugin for Felgo can be used to implement in-app purchases for players to use in their games.
