View the Project on GitHub cse110-sp26-group08/one-arm-slot-machine-2
Designers will tweak how volatile the rewards are of the game, meaning that they might small hits to give you a sense that you are winning
A low-volatility game –> more frequent modest wins;
high-volatility game –> longer dry spells but bigger occasional payouts.
RTP: the expected return of the player when playing the game.
Only need a 98% or 99% RTP (corresponds to 1-2% house edge) to become profitable in long run!
RTP=(probability of each outcome)*payout of that outcome
We can manipulate the probability of each outcome by weighing different symbols to appear more together or individually and then designing payouts for different outcomes.
Surprisingly, the phenomenon that we all experience when we open loot boxes, where we get a near miss, is calculated by the house
Research has shown that near misses can increase motivation to continue, speed up the next spin, and sometimes increase later betting.
Mechanically, casinos can program near misses as so: use a rng to select a stop from a large set of virtual real positions
Virtual reel position is basically a position in a list that can be mapped to symbols that will appear on the screen when you roll
Virtual reel positions are chosen as sort of a hashmap: Where each virtual reel position corresponds to a symbol placed on the screen. The magic is that we can manipulate the weightings of the vritual reel positions as these are in the software. This will have a direct effect on the combinations of symbols the slot machines will display to the user.
One study demonstrates that gamers misremember the number of wins when playing with sounds switched on, compared to playing on mute, good for gambling!
The paper entitled “The Impact of Sound in Modern Multiline Video Slot Machine Play” (Dixon et al., 2013,) showed a tendency to focus on successes rather than losses, making players feel better overall.
Winning sounds are designed so they could be heard over any loud ambient sounds.
It draws attention to the machine and raises the self-esteem of the player
Use of loud sounds serves to create feelings of excitement that distract the player by increasing cognitive load
This gives the impression that winning is much more common than losing.
Important: The sound design should fit the theme.
We want to otpimize the near misses and the rtp to maximize player return and house edge.
We also want to optimize the sound and atmosphere to have people forget about their losses.
Keep people coming back with new themes, seasonal events, missions, collections, achievement tracks, and “come back tomorrow” style reasons to return.
Rewards help retention: VIP tiers, streaks for logins, missions, non-cash cosmetics, and occasional low-complexity bonuses.
Users complain that cash out is not very reliable, this is lesss applicable to us but still worth noting.
Having some kind of “bank” that accumulates as more ppl play, giving a higher payout and creates the impression that eventually someone would win