I ran an image search for the word "panopticon", looking for a good thumbnail for this post. This picture looks great, but I have no idea what it is, and it's not sourced. Is it an artificially intelligent big data brain? A neutrino chamber? Does it have anything to do with panopticon design (think Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia)? No.
It's a building, called L’Hemisfèric, in the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava circa 2015. The reflection in the water makes it look like one big eye, and it does. So maybe it's partially related here.
Back on track -- Commercials for online gambling end with a disclaimer about where to call if you have a gambling problem.
I always thought it was strange that you could have a commercial for addictive things. If they're already addictive, why do we need to advertise them? Or better yet, if something is addictive, shouldn't we not be allowed to advertise for them? Especially in today's world of targeted advertising; we're literally using the word "targeted".
In China, they call video games "electronic drugs", and they have new regulations against private companies targeting their citizens with addictive algorithms (governments not so much).
Ten years ago, this book was written about slot machines, and today it will blow your mind. That is, if you can handle some basic ideas of statistics, probability, and randomness:
- Machine gambling as an example of flipping the workplace organizational psychology of the 1900's factory back on the "new product" (you) -- the user, and analysing them, the new worker, to get them to "work" longer, better, faster (by getting sucked-in to the machine and controlled by it), for you! (the employer or the owner). (p57, Foucault, Marx)
- "The gambler not only can't win but isn't playing to win, while the gambling industry is playing to win all along." (p75)
- Random number generators (RNGs) are at the heart of every slot machine.
- From hardware to software - Between the actual reel that you see spinning and stopping in front of you, and the automated RNG that actually decides your fate, there is now a virtual reel, which weights the outcome by mapping a pre-planned algorithm ahead of your actual reels, so that it's no longer about the machine, the reels, the lever, the hardware. It's about crafting a perfect probability for both the industry and for the gambler.
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| The Virtual Reel Map - Figure 3.2a - Educational illustration of virtual reel mapping for a machine containing 32 virtual stops and 22 actual stops. The first 11 positions on the 32-stop virtual reel are mapped to the 11 symbols on the actual reel, but the rest are mapped to blanks, such that the odds of hitting a winning symbol are less than they appear to be. In addition, via a disproportionate number of virtual stops are mapped to blank spaces just above or below the jackpot symbols. This ensures that they will appear more often above or below the payline than they would by chance alone, enhancing the "near miss" sensation among players. Courtesy of Game Planit, Inc. (p88) |
- Note that in the image above, which represents an actual reel map, positions 1,3,5,7 are "real", whereas 2,4,6 are not; they're blanks. Yet they're doubled by the map loading, so you "almost" get it more often than chance (out of the actual 11 symbols). AKA Phantom Symbols, AKA Loading the Dice (p92)
- On the new machines (which are designed to hack your nervous system to bits and then feed it back to you as a dopamine drip) - "They love them; They can literally play all day." (p126) -IGT Game Developer
- "Tracked gamblers are treated less as individual subjects than as "dividuals" in the Deleuzian sense -- bundles of traits and habits (associated with pin numbers, codes, passwords and personal algorithms) that can be systematically compared with those of others, allowing casinos to more precisely identify and market to distinct customer niches (ft 15). Casinos also can triangulate any given gambler's player data with her demographic data, piecing together a profile that can be used to customize game offerings and marketing appeals specifically for her; although she has been broken down into discrete data points in the process of tracking in the moment of marketing she is reassembled as a distinct individual who can be examined form every angle." -The Rise of Player Tracking, Chapter 5 Matching the Market
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| From the book, Addicted by Design |
"I am watching everything. I see it all."
-Executive at Harrah's
This quote feels like it could be the introduction to this book on marketing and advertising:
The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information
Oscar H. Gandy Jr., 1993
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