Causing a bit of a stir.

[thealteredemu]

I don’t blame anyone for my gambling addiction.  I had a blast in the early to later 90’s and had some great info and emptiers and I loved the lifestyle.  I got progressively worse early 2000’s but that’s no-one’s fault but my own.

J 

[MikeyMonster]

24 minutes ago, thealteredemu said:

I don’t blame anyone for my gambling addiction.  I had a blast in the early to later 90’s and had some great info and emptiers and I loved the lifestyle.  I got progressively worse early 2000’s but that’s no-one’s fault but my own.

J 

I could have written this.

[slotsmagic]

1 hour ago, thealteredemu said:

I don’t blame anyone for my gambling addiction.  I had a blast in the early to later 90’s and had some great info and emptiers and I loved the lifestyle.  I got progressively worse early 2000’s but that’s no-one’s fault but my own.

J 

I don't blame anyone for my gambling addiction, nor my alcohol addiction (now behind me), my food addiction (getting there!), my watch addiction (hopelessly addicted to shiny things), vaping (thankfully costs me eff all).

I still dislike 'the industry' in general, but I've outlined my opinions in my previous post on that.

But as for addictions, I knew damn well things were addictive (tobacco) when I started, the warnings were already on the packets back then. No excuse for me.

Perhaps what did surprise me was how quickly addiction can take hold, and how much of a grip it can have. People can be quite flippant with addictions. But even something daft like my food addictions - restless, feeling like you are going out of your mind, itching, all that... it is real, and only gets worse the longer you let it go on, it effs you up mentally. Until you become a secret eating mess who can't relax until they order a takeaway, or shove in an ungodly amount of carbs.

Gambling is similar. You might think you have it under control and set limits, but it's so bloody easy (if not inevitable) that you'll come unstuck.

Edited August 4 by slotsmagic

[Boulderdash]

2 hours ago, slotsmagic said:

OK it maybe, but what I was saying is that people will keep finding ways to break things, and come up with creative shortcuts. In a video game it saves time, or sets a high score. In fruit machines it saves time, or gives a quick (or bloody long winded) profit.

Sometimes these are intentionally left in, sometimes people find things out, through dedication, perseverance, or sheer fluke that they are then able to recreate.

There will be absolutely loads of dodgy shenanigans, but there will also be legit examples where certain things just weren't accounted for, or the player making certain decisions hadn't been considered.

As said before some people made a lot of money from machine info. You personally said machine exploits helped pay for your University education. Others on here have frequently said how well they did in certain eras. I know some people who became very wealthy from machines. I'm not talking a few grand. I'm talking paying for a house or more.

For me, machine playing cost me a bloody fortune, and resulted in me dropping out of college and giving up on any prospect of University education. I didn't have any methods or similar to help me. My machine addiction turned me into a shell of a person. If they had actually skinted me before I stopped, make no mistake I wouldn't have planned on still being here. It wouldn't be the financial loss alone, but the inescapable self hatred that would have done it.

I should be fuming at the industry. I am. It contributed to my downfall. But it also seems hypocritical when people here are blaming manufacturers for the very advice which gave them the upper hand over myself and many others. Like you are trying to blame an industry insider who may have industry insight and interesting stories to share. Making him a scapegoat for all the shady bollocks that went in over the past 40/50 years of microprocessor controlled fruit machines.

Quick conscience test - if you saw me balls deep into a machine you were clued up on, would you have :

a) Taken sympathy on my plight, charitably told me the method, and given me a chance to recover most of, if not all of my funds from the session.

Or b) Sat back, itching in anticipation of jumping on the machine as soon as that idiot fills it up. Stupid bastard doesn't realise you can trap that, it's got £140+ owing, just hurry up and lose your money so I can get it out.

 

 

Sorry, but I'm confident it's the latter. Probably down to addiction as I've seen in those with drink / drug dependency - good people who become total self-serving twats who would rob their own family.

So by all means give the industry a kicking, but at the same time you and plenty of others took advantage of the shenanigans yourself. Those who committed suicide e.t.c. - those ripping off the machines and leaving them for dead could also arguably be culpable in that. Laughing at the state machines could be left in when the next player is going to get eaten alive.

Or maybe exposing them to such bullshit helped them make the decision to quit.

We'll never know in either case unless the person leaves a note telling us.

 

At no point am I placing blame on @Projectgilda. 

Nothing I have said could even be construed as such. 

[Boulderdash]

2 hours ago, stevedude2 said:

 

Where in his post does Projectgilda say that individual developers put those things in themselves to profit directly from them?  He's talking about stuff that manufacturers introduced into their games to try and give their games an edge over the competition and increase VTP, stuff that the Gambling Commission eventually banned because they weren't in the spirit of the Gambling Act and the Technical Standards of the time.  Things like spinning 2 feature symbols on the line on your last credit to induce further play and so on.

 

Yes, but now everyone is directing their anger at losing money on fruit machines over the years at one person.  People are hooking onto certain phrases and trying to work an angle to bang the 'corruption' drum at every turn.  It's incessant.  Who the fuck would come here and want to put up with that shit when all they wanted to do was share a bit of chat about the games they worked on over the years?

Besides, I think the point of this thread in particular was to participate in some dialogue with an ex-industry employee and hear some stories.  There are a million threads on here that Chopley has hijacked with his 'the industry is bent and corrupt' narrative.  I was hoping that this wouldn't be one of them but alas, here we are yet a-fucking-gain.

He's so utterly deranged and hysterical with it that at this point I think the only solution that might work for him is to see a shrink about it, and I'm being completely straight-faced and sincere when I say that.  It's like he's preparing a dossier of evidence so he can go to 10 Downing Street, present it to Keir Starmer and demand answers as to why not every single fruit machine that has been produced in the last 40 years played a completely fair game for everyone.

I'm aware some people have suffered greatly from fruit machine addiction and I've certainly had my own trials and tribulations over the years but can we at least have one thread that doesn't get ruined by anti-industry rhetoric?  Maybe Chopley should start his own website up to keep all of this in one place?

 

 

Where is the anger being directed at @Projectgilda? 

None of this is his fault, and no one has said it was!

[stevedude2]

2 hours ago, thealteredemu said:

I don’t blame anyone for my gambling addiction.  I had a blast in the early to later 90’s and had some great info and emptiers and I loved the lifestyle.  I got progressively worse early 2000’s but that’s no-one’s fault but my own.

J 

Pretty much the same here

The trick is being able to identify when to get out at the right time, and having the willpower to do it.

Edited August 4 by stevedude2

[Chopaholic]

5 hours ago, slotsmagic said:

Quick conscience test - if you saw me balls deep into a machine you were clued up on, would you have :

a) Taken sympathy on my plight, charitably told me the method, and given me a chance to recover most of, if not all of my funds from the session.

Or b) Sat back, itching in anticipation of jumping on the machine as soon as that idiot fills it up. Stupid bastard doesn't realise you can trap that, it's got £140+ owing, just hurry up and lose your money so I can get it out

Sorry, but I'm confident it's the latter. Probably down to addiction as I've seen in those with drink / drug dependency - good people who become total self-serving twats who would rob their own family.

So by all means give the industry a kicking, but at the same time you and plenty of others took advantage of the shenanigans yourself. Those who committed suicide e.t.c. - those ripping off the machines and leaving them for dead could also arguably be culpable in that. Laughing at the state machines could be left in when the next player is going to get eaten alive.

 

I've covered this exact point more than once in my videos, and very recently too. I appreciate there are a lot of videos and people may very well have not seen some or all of them.

At no point have I ever pointed at the industry and said 'it's their fault', right back to the original Gambling Low Ebbs video which went up in May 2018, that even had a specific text section on screen at the end to that effect!

However it's also reasonable to point out there was a problem, and lots of them, for a very long time. (I mean, AW himself has said that exact same thing just a few posts back.)

Most recently I said that I ultimately hated what being a winner on fruit machines made me as much as being as a loser, because the only way to win is to fuck over other human beings. Every time I made out like a bandit on a Psycho Cash Beast or an Alien or whatever, some other poor bastard was getting mugged after me.

It's got its own section!

I have been unpicking this stuff on my channel for nearly seven years now, ten years of addiction and ten years of 'winning', there was the video where I pinched the summary from the end of the Wargames, 'A strange game, the only winning move is not to play'. This is not an ambiguous message.

I have been absolutely explicit about this, the world of compensated fruit machines was corrupted and corrupting, the only way to 'get on top' was to become part of the problem, part of the cycle of misery.

I'm all for having a grown up conversation about stuff but please let's keep it in the realms of what's actually been said. I get that there's stuff in my videos I haven't typed up on the forums, but honestly, it's all out there on my channel already.

The best day of my entire gambling 'career' was the day the very last compensated fruit machine disappeared from the last pub on the Isle of Man that had one.

[stevedude2]

44 minutes ago, Boulderdash said:

Where is the anger being directed at @Projectgilda? 

None of this is his fault, and no one has said it was!

My apologies - I meant to say 'accusations about the industry being bent' rather than 'anger'.  My point was that I'm sure Projectgilda didn't join the site to be the spokesperson for the industry and how it has conducted itself over the last 40 years 

[Chopaholic]

37 minutes ago, stevedude2 said:

My apologies - I meant to say 'accusations about the industry being bent' rather than 'anger'.  My point was that I'm sure Projectgilda didn't join the site to be the spokesperson for the industry and how it has conducted itself over the last 40 years 

The industry was bent, that's no personal slight against AW or anyone else who worked in it. Enron was bent but the vast majority of people who worked there weren't, still didn't stop Enron finishing up as one of the biggest corporate scandals in history.

When I say the industry was 'institutionally incompetent and corrupt' it means that there was a sufficient level of nonsense going on (either by accident or design or both) to render the whole edifice suspect.

AW says he never knowingly put any nonsense into any of his machines and I believe him, but it also turns out that numbering was put into games he made after the fact and he wasn't aware of it, so stuff can happen, y'know?

Or talk to players who knew, and they'll tell you that every single DOND that BFM pushed out had something on it at some point. (And AW himself has said that BFM used illegal code, that it was reported to the regulator, and nothing was done.)

There are loads of videos on my channel enthusiastically extolling the virtues of many AWPs as games, including many that AW himself designed. But they can also have been produced by an industry that was bent. Both of those things can be true at the same time.

I love playing fruit machines in the emulator, and still regularly do so, it's possible to admire the skill and passion and craft and creativity that went into making them, whilst also acknowledging that the industry as a whole and its epically useless regulator were seriously shady.

[pbb]

47 minutes ago, stevedude2 said:

Pretty much the same here

The trick is being able to identify when to get out at the right time, and having the willpower to do it.

To be fair, willpower maybe isn't enough, everyone is different, compulsive disorders and addiction  are very dangerous, gamblers, drug addicts, alcoholics, hoarders, compulsive shoppers, smokers all have a strange connection, 80% can give up to will power, but there are the rest that cannot and it can result in illness, which is why charity's exist for gamblers, drug use, alcohol etc , so for some people 'will power' does not cut it.

 

I am guestimating the stats here

[stevedude2]

Hello @Projectgilda and welcome to the site

In order to get this thread back on track, I have a few questions for you about games...

Back in the 90s when JPM started doing games in the Vogue cabinet, the first game I ever saw in that cab was some sort of Robin Hood-themed game with gold and silver arrows on the reels.  Do you remember it?  It was in my local arcade (that used to get a lot of new machines on test from various distributors) next to a Big Banker, both on £6 tokens.

Also, the same arcade some time later got a game called Don't Forget Your Toothbrush on test.  I remember very little about it other than I guess it was licensed from the popular TV show with Chris Evans.  I think someone once told me it was a clone of Money Talks.  Do you remember that game?

Might be before your time but do you remember a System 5 game in the same cabinet as Fairground that had parrots on the reels as feature symbols, and you moved around some sort of pirate ship in the feature?  Only ever saw one of them.

Do you remember a Barcrest £15 Jackpot machine called Boogie Nights?  It was very similar to Psycho cash Beast except I think you could save your nudges or gamble them in the base game.  Theme was 60s disco...

Lastly, did you have anything to do with a Project machine called Balls of Steel, which reminded me a lot of Caesar's Palace?  It was in a weird cabinet and I only remember one more game Project did in that cab - some sort of Treasure Island-type game, both were in Carousel Amusements in Newport I think.

Best regards!

 

[stevedude2]

2 minutes ago, pbb said:

To be fair, willpower maybe isn't enough, everyone is different, compulsive disorders and addiction  are very dangerous, gamblers, drug addicts, alcoholics, hoarders, compulsive shoppers, smokers all have a strange connection, 80% can give up to will power, but there are the rest that cannot and it can result in illness, which is why charity's exist for gamblers, drug use, alcohol etc , so for some people 'will power' does not cut it.

 

I am guestimating the stats here

Good point 

I guess you needed to realise very quickly that random machines cannot be beaten, nor some of the lo-techs that were starting to creep into the all-cash areas and push the hi-tech stuff out.  The biggest issue I have is finding things to do other than gambling that feel as exciting and interesting, something to replace the buzz of it.  I think a lot of people can't do that and lapse as a result, or find the same buzz in drugs or alcohol which isn't very good.

[dondplayer]

35 minutes ago, Chopaholic said:

The best day of my entire gambling 'career' was the day the very last compensated fruit machine disappeared from the last pub on the Isle of Man that had one.

Not having a go here it's just that I have read the last few posts but you were still playing the randoms (tongue in cheek on that description lol) up until recently where you did a vid saying enough was enough.

7 minutes ago, Chopaholic said:

Talk to players who knew, and they'll tell you that every single DOND that BFM pushed out had something on it.

Not every one AFAIK and even then it depends on the level of advantage anyway.

[Graham the goldfish]

24 minutes ago, stevedude2 said:

Hello @Projectgilda and welcome to the site

In order to get this thread back on track, I have a few questions for you about games...

Back in the 90s when JPM started doing games in the Vogue cabinet, the first game I ever saw in that cab was some sort of Robin Hood-themed game with gold and silver arrows on the reels.  Do you remember it?  It was in my local arcade (that used to get a lot of new machines on test from various distributors) next to a Big Banker, both on £6 tokens.

Also, the same arcade some time later got a game called Don't Forget Your Toothbrush on test.  I remember very little about it other than I guess it was licensed from the popular TV show with Chris Evans.  I think someone once told me it was a clone of Money Talks.  Do you remember that game?

Might be before your time but do you remember a System 5 game in the same cabinet as Fairground that had parrots on the reels as feature symbols, and you moved around some sort of pirate ship in the feature?  Only ever saw one of them.

Do you remember a Barcrest £15 Jackpot machine called Boogie Nights?  It was very similar to Psycho cash Beast except I think you could save your nudges or gamble them in the base game.  Theme was 60s disco...

Lastly, did you have anything to do with a Project machine called Balls of Steel, which reminded me a lot of Caesar's Palace?  It was in a weird cabinet and I only remember one more game Project did in that cab - some sort of Treasure Island-type game, both were in Carousel Amusements in Newport I think.

Best regards!

 

The Robin hood game was an ace machine called Robin hood, it was a clone of pot of gold. 

I also remember the system 5 pirate game. I only saw one, it was in a kebab shop on 5p.

Edited August 4 by Graham the goldfish

[Chopaholic]

22 minutes ago, dondplayer said:

Not having a go here it's just that I have read the last few posts but you were still playing the randoms (tongue in cheek on that description lol) up until recently where you did a vid saying enough was enough.

It's not on the channel yet but the next video up (already 'in the can' as the phrase goes) is basically sticking the entire concept of compensation as a game control mechanism into the great dustbin of history and finding a better alternative.

The games in the pub can fuck off because 90% RTP for random games is a pisstake and I don't trust the compensated games.

I still enjoy a gamble, I was playing online over the weekend.

[stevedude2]

7 minutes ago, Graham the goldfish said:

The Robin hood game was an ace machine called Robin hood, it was a clone of pot of gold. 

Nah it wasn't that.  It was a £6 token game, came out around the time of Big Banker.  Failed test most likely 

[Projectgilda]

21 minutes ago, stevedude2 said:

Hello @Projectgilda and welcome to the site

In order to get this thread back on track, I have a few questions for you about games...

Back in the 90s when JPM started doing games in the Vogue cabinet, the first game I ever saw in that cab was some sort of Robin Hood-themed game with gold and silver arrows on the reels.  Do you remember it?  It was in my local arcade (that used to get a lot of new machines on test from various distributors) next to a Big Banker, both on £6 tokens.

Also, the same arcade some time later got a game called Don't Forget Your Toothbrush on test.  I remember very little about it other than I guess it was licensed from the popular TV show with Chris Evans.  I think someone once told me it was a clone of Money Talks.  Do you remember that game?

Might be before your time but do you remember a System 5 game in the same cabinet as Fairground that had parrots on the reels as feature symbols, and you moved around some sort of pirate ship in the feature?  Only ever saw one of them.

Do you remember a Barcrest £15 Jackpot machine called Boogie Nights?  It was very similar to Psycho cash Beast except I think you could save your nudges or gamble them in the base game.  Theme was 60s disco...

Lastly, did you have anything to do with a Project machine called Balls of Steel, which reminded me a lot of Caesar's Palace?  It was in a weird cabinet and I only remember one more game Project did in that cab - some sort of Treasure Island-type game, both were in Carousel Amusements in Newport I think.

Best regards!

 

The Robin Hood game you remember was called, wait for it... Robin Hood! I tested that game but didn't design it. I started as a tester before going into design.

I designed 'Don't Forget Your Toothbrush'. I even went down to Canary Wharf to Chris Evan's office (Ginger Productions) to record the sound bits I'd made for him. Really nice guy (the office was just full of beautiful women, a man barely in sight). We asked him his fee for the recordings (the licence agreement was with Channel 4) and he asked for a table top Space Invader as payment. We bought him one. 

I remembered playing Boogie Nights but only as a player. It was before my time at Barcrest. 

As for Balls of Steel (I'd forgotten about it until I read your post), it failed test. So 75 started it but none were sold. It was my JPM game style under project coin. Shame 'cause as I remember it was a great game. Project never had a base in pubs and it proved difficult to squeeze into that space fought by so many bigger manufacturers. 

✌

[Projectgilda]

12 minutes ago, Graham the goldfish said:

The Robin hood game was an ace machine called Robin hood, it was a clone of pot of gold. 

I also remember the system 5 pirate game. I only saw one, it was in a kebab shop on 5p.

Nah, Robin Hood was JPM. The pirate game (can't remember it's name) but it has a pirate ship with values in the cannon bays, and you died by being Castaway it Ship Wrecked. Damn! I can't remember the machines name but it was a Popeye rip.

[Boulderdash]

43 minutes ago, stevedude2 said:

Good point 

I guess you needed to realise very quickly that random machines cannot be beaten, nor some of the lo-techs that were starting to creep into the all-cash areas and push the hi-tech stuff out.  The biggest issue I have is finding things to do other than gambling that feel as exciting and interesting, something to replace the buzz of it.  I think a lot of people can't do that and lapse as a result, or find the same buzz in drugs or alcohol which isn't very good.

I'd been kicking around on the digital slots for a couple of years, trying to quit as I could see I was always losing, but not really understanding why and kept going back. 

Thanks to @slotsmagic's recommendation of the Allen Carr method, I've not had more than the faintest interest in playing one since January, and I have no reason to suppose that'll change. 

I don't need to replace the 'buzz', because it was the machines that created the need. I don't play them so don't suffer the withdrawal. 

I'd recommend it to everyone

[vectra666]

14 minutes ago, Projectgilda said:

Nah, Robin Hood was JPM. The pirate game (can't remember it's name) but it has a pirate ship with values in the cannon bays, and you died by being Castaway it Ship Wrecked. Damn! I can't remember the machines name but it was a Popeye rip.

Not Hagar 

[slotsmagic]

36 minutes ago, Boulderdash said:

I'd been kicking around on the digital slots for a couple of years, trying to quit as I could see I was always losing, but not really understanding why and kept going back. 

Thanks to @slotsmagic's recommendation of the Allen Carr method, I've not had more than the faintest interest in playing one since January, and I have no reason to suppose that'll change. 

I don't need to replace the 'buzz', because it was the machines that created the need. I don't play them so don't suffer the withdrawal. 

I'd recommend it to everyone

Works great for sorting your diet out too. Maybe a bit too well. Surprising how one book can undo a lifetime of what is basically self sabotage, convincing yourself you need to gamble, that giving up is difficult.

Not had a single desire about random slots at all. Can't see the appeal in them. I've mentioned that a few times I've had some stupid thoughts about my old vices - the Electrocoins mainly - standing outside arcades and wondering what they are like, what the machines feel like, smell like, play like. But it's still bollocks when you stand back and think about it. It would be more interesting to go to a car showroom and just look at some proper machinery. Or in my case probably a train or two!

I still reckon randoms are bent and the more we learn the about the industry I still maintain it is entirely possible, despite what others claim, it is entirely possible for them to be bent. They shouldn't need to be, but then they didn't need to have some blatant bollocks done with the compensated slots either, and that didn't stop them.

Randoms are still programmed by humans, and humans aren't perfect. Either intentionally or otherwise things can and will be left in. Random slots will have had, and will continue to have 'critical updates' issued. Sometimes because they play too well (emptier found), sometimes because they play too badly (I'm thinking one of the RR games, was it Drops of Gold maybe?).

My main concern in this thread was that a new member, who could provide valuable insight, might be getting forced out, in which case nobody wins. But that's a choice for him to make. I'm just here for the knowledge at this point. My playing days are behind me, I came out of it (massively down, but still alive and with a roof over my head, and thankfully some savings left).

Just need to learn to stop buying watches now. But at least (as I've joked with people in the collecting community about), when I impulse buy watches I still have tangiable assets left at the end of the experience, an ownership experience and try new things. I don't feel like a dirty failure of a human being and hate myself like I did with machines. Just an idiot with too many watches!

 

[stevedude2]

4 minutes ago, slotsmagic said:

Just need to learn to stop buying watches now. But at least (as I've joked with people in the collecting community about), when I impulse buy watches I still have tangiable assets left at the end of the experience, an ownership experience and try new things. I don't feel like a dirty failure of a human being and hate myself like I did with machines. Just an idiot with too many watches!

You can't beat a nice watch!  Check out this bad-boy...

[Graham the goldfish]

4 minutes ago, slotsmagic said:

Works great for sorting your diet out too. Maybe a bit too well. Surprising how one book can undo a lifetime of what is basically self sabotage, convincing yourself you need to gamble, that giving up is difficult.

Not had a single desire about random slots at all. Can't see the appeal in them. I've mentioned that a few times I've had some stupid thoughts about my old vices - the Electrocoins mainly - standing outside arcades and wondering what they are like, what the machines feel like, smell like, play like. But it's still bollocks when you stand back and think about it. It would be more interesting to go to a car showroom and just look at some proper machinery. Or in my case probably a train or two!

I still reckon randoms are bent and the more we learn the about the industry I still maintain it is entirely possible, despite what others claim, it is entirely possible for them to be bent. They shouldn't need to be, but then they didn't need to have some blatant bollocks done with the compensated slots either, and that didn't stop them.

Randoms are still programmed by humans, and humans aren't perfect. Either intentionally or otherwise things can and will be left in. Random slots will have had, and will continue to have 'critical updates' issued. Sometimes because they play too well (emptier found), sometimes because they play too badly (I'm thinking one of the RR games, was it Drops of Gold maybe?).

My main concern in this thread was that a new member, who could provide valuable insight, might be getting forced out, in which case nobody wins. But that's a choice for him to make. I'm just here for the knowledge at this point. My playing days are behind me, I came out of it (massively down, but still alive and with a roof over my head, and thankfully some savings left).

Just need to learn to stop buying watches now. But at least (as I've joked with people in the collecting community about), when I impulse buy watches I still have tangiable assets left at the end of the experience, an ownership experience and try new things. I don't feel like a dirty failure of a human being and hate myself like I did with machines. Just an idiot with too many watches!

 

I know it has been debated to death, but I agree on the randoms. They just don't seem random to me. By that I dont might the light and sound show, I mean the win distribution on some of the land based slots I've played just doesn't add up for me. Things like 150 of no wins at all -- not one. Then it springs to life and amongst perhaps an elusive bonus or two there's dozens of small wins in short succession. I understand that the win distribution would be non uniform, but it is quite extreme and I wonder what the odds are of placing those wins randomly on a timeline and they all end up in such a small window.

If it were picking random lines from a spreadsheet would it ever go like that? Yeah maybe once in a while. Would it do it frequently? I don't believe so. So if it's 'random' it's not the form of random in would recognise and expect.

[slotsmagic]

26 minutes ago, stevedude2 said:

You can't beat a nice watch!  Check out this bad-boy...

Legendary watch that. Everyone should own one. Cheap, dependable, and massive modding potential. My work watch is a 7 year old G-Shock Wave Ceptor with solar. It's insanely accurate, recharges itself, and hasn't missed a beat. Makes me question why I have some other, fancier watches when there is nothing wrong with that. It tells the time, is accurate, and doesn't need servicing and / or overhaul of the movement!!

 

22 minutes ago, Graham the goldfish said:

I know it has been debated to death, but I agree on the randoms. They just don't seem random to me. By that I dont might the light and sound show, I mean the win distribution on some of the land based slots I've played just doesn't add up for me. Things like 150 of no wins at all -- not one. Then it springs to life and amongst perhaps an elusive bonus or two there's dozens of small wins in short succession. I understand that the win distribution would be non uniform, but it is quite extreme and I wonder what the odds are of placing those wins randomly on a timeline and they all end up in such a small window.

If it were picking random lines from a spreadsheet would it ever go like that? Yeah maybe once in a while. Would it do it frequently? I don't believe so. So if it's 'random' it's not the form of random in would recognise and expect.

I'd always been pessimistic of the randoms - but especially the nerfed pub versions. When they are emulated we'll know for sure of some of the crap they pull, but until then we'll just have to speculate. I've had them in my collection, some have been absolutely spot on percentage after a sensible number of plays and maintained that.

Some however have been so far off that they can't possibly reach percentage unless they do what Electrocoin apparently did with their compensated slots - chuck in a massive streak at the end of a cycle to make up for a shortfall.

I don't know what causes it - nerfed paytables, or perhaps the win cap, but something was buggering the maths up.

I'm talking 90% RTP random pub games being stuck at say 60% payout  over ten thousand £1 spins. How is it going to make that up - throw in 30 jackpots back-to-back?

'it's fine, the maths model means that over 1,000,000 spins it should have reached 90% RTP'.

Yeah, that is assuming that the machine is played enough to reach that. We aren't talking a Vegas slot with 1c denomination and a $1,000,000+ progressive jackpot with a massive amount of wins in between. We are talking about pub slots with a max win of 100x (or sat 400x at min stake). 

It shouldn't be that hard to get the maths to balance within a reasonable time frame.

But this probably isn't the thread for that, is based on a sample size of 1, and I binned all my machines from my collection so can't possibly recreate it. If someone else wants to buy one and try it then feel free. 

Edited August 4 by slotsmagic

[stevedude2]

 

32 minutes ago, Graham the goldfish said:

I know it has been debated to death, but I agree on the randoms. They just don't seem random to me. By that I dont might the light and sound show, I mean the win distribution on some of the land based slots I've played just doesn't add up for me. Things like 150 of no wins at all -- not one. Then it springs to life and amongst perhaps an elusive bonus or two there's dozens of small wins in short succession. I understand that the win distribution would be non uniform, but it is quite extreme and I wonder what the odds are of placing those wins randomly on a timeline and they all end up in such a small window.

If it were picking random lines from a spreadsheet would it ever go like that? Yeah maybe once in a while. Would it do it frequently? I don't believe so. So if it's 'random' it's not the form of random in would recognise and expect.

This is what gap testing is for on random games.  It's a count of the number of losing spins before a winning one.  For example, a run of 6 losing spins should be less frequent than a run of 5 losing spins but more frequent than a run of 7 losing spins.

You can work out the average expected gaps and how often they will occur by using the overall hit rate of the game.  The gap test results from a sample of random spins have to fall within this range or something is amiss and the game will fail at the Test House.  Obviously the shorter the sample of spins the more it can deviate.

For me random games, especially Cat C, are really toxic.  The reason people lose money in them so quickly is because of the lack of holds, nudges and features to break up the rhythm of the game, and the resulting short minimum game time.  Plus the fact that some of the RTP% options, especially in pubs and service stations, are fucking dire.

Games for zombies basically, with no break in play until some 1 in 100-150 spin event (like free spins) occurs, which can often be over in less than a minute.  Compare this experience to a lapper board on a £15 jackpot AWP like Psycho Cash Beast that comes in once every few quid and can involve a few laps and then some thinking time while you try and set the reels up for Nearest Win or whatever.

At least with compensated games you can meticulously curate a specific experience for the player to ensure they get a bit of interaction for their money.  On random games you're extremely limited in what you can do other than tweaking the maths to improve the hit rate of the bonus, at the expense of the average value of the bonus itself, or the quality of the base game.

Edited August 4 by stevedude2