Addiction by Design Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

There's a tremendous book, Addiction by Design. And I'm afraid I'm going to mispronounce the name of the person who wrote it. I think it's Shull, but I'm not sure, but I know the title, Addiction by Design, about gambling.

It's called Addiction by Design.

Natasha Dow Schll, Addiction by Design.

She did an extraordinary book on video poker machines, gambling machines in Vegas. It's a kind of a presmartphone book about the engineering of addiction by the folks who designed those gambling machines and the environments in which they sit.

We had Natasha Dow Scholl who studied casino design. She wrote a 700 page book on how casinos are designed.

I think her book is called Addiction by Design, is when you start losing, like if you start losing money or you're about to leave, you're about to walk away from the machine, I think someone will come up to you and give you a coupon that's like, get the free buffet at the...

My name is Natasha Dow Schull and I'm an associate professor at MIT and the title of my book is Addiction by Design. All about machine gambling in Las Vegas.

So there's lots of little tricks by which designers try to get us to feel that we are still playing an analog mechanical device.

One gambler in my book rose who said you know I became a slot machine technician to understand more about these machines and I thought it would be a good part of my recovery from the addiction because I thought if I understand how these machines work the spell will be broken and she said you know even after I was putting these machines together and designing them at work on my lunch breaks I would just go down the street and play the exact same machines. Because that is how addiction work.

We'll have more info about Shul's really great book Addiction by Design and her film about all you can eat Vegas buffets.