And casinos have devised a dizzying array of strategies to make these machines as addictive as possible, from the elaborate algorithms beneath the hood to the position of the armrests. Slot machines and video gambling were once marginal to the success of casinos - but nowadays, they account for up to 85 percent of the gaming industry's profits. 'They want to curve you gently to where they want you to go.'īut as Schüll discovered, almost nothing in a modern-day casino is more carefully engineered than its slot machines. 'Casinos don't want that,' Schüll told me. As Natasha Dow Schüll explains in her fascinating book, Addiction By Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, a right-angle turn forces people to call upon the decision-making parts of their brain - to stop and reflect on what they're doing.
Many casinos try to avoid making you ever have to turn at a 90° angle. One surprising example are the curving hallways around the property. The layout of the tables, the patterns on the carpet, the lighting - they're all explicitly engineered to make gambling more seductive and get you to spend more money.
The next time you find yourself in a casino, pause for a second to appreciate the architecture.Ĭasinos put an enormous amount of thought into their designs.
