Earlier this week, the CBC broke a disturbing story: three Konami video slots are briefly flashing winning combinations as players spin the virtual reels. Programming bug or subliminal ploy? You be the judge. From CBC:
Ontario’s provincial gambling operator has pulled 87 video slot machines out of service or physically removed them from its casinos after a CBC investigation found what appear to be subliminal messages flashing at players.
Ontario Lottery and Gaming, the recently rebranded Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., is concerned about three games on video slots made by a company called Konami. It shut them down as a precaution on Friday, and is looking into the issue.
The games flash winning jackpot symbols at players for a fifth of a second, long enough for the brain to detect even if the players are not aware of the message, some psychologists told CBC News.
It’s not clear if messages are influencing gambler’s behaviour. That would take further testing, experts said.
But players who stick to a machine are seeing a winning image every two seconds, the time it takes for one spin, and that concerns Roger Horbay, an electronic gaming specialist who has treated hundreds of problem gamblers.
“I think it’s part of them trying to make their games more attractive to the players to keep them at the game longer so their machines are more profitable,” he said.
However, Konami, the company behind the games, said the jackpot symbols are a technical problem that it is fixing.
OLG pulled 25 Billionaires, 37 Most Wanted and 25 Sergeant Fritter games from casino slot parlours at race tracks, as well as Casino Rama, Casino Niagara, and Fallsview Casino in Niagara. The province has a total of 1,373 Konami machines.
Not Sergeant Fritter! I don’t think I’ve seen that game before, but it seems to be a ripoff of “Cops and Donuts,’ or vice versa.
I don’t know how effective subliminal messages are. Cecil at The Straight Dope thinks they’ve been debunked, but according to his article it is still is illegal in Canada, for whatever that’s worth.