ABSTRACT
Any visitor to a contemporary casino would be surprised if they found that there were no slot machines available to play, even if they were a member of the more traditional casino clubs in London where there is a limit of four machines per casino. As there has been growth in the international casino business, so also has there been a parallel growth in the market for slots. They are available in casinos throughout Europe, with growth particularly in Spain and Holland, around the Pacific from New Zealand and Australia to Japan, in the American continent from Bolivia to Canada, throughout resorts in the Caribbean, and finally many hundreds of machines afloat aboard a variety of cruise ships operating out of Europe, the United States and Australasia. Recent growth in the United States has been stimulated by the development of casinos on Indian reservations and on river boats. The dominant concern of the following discussion is whether these ubiquitous machines have the same characteristics from Las Vegas to Wagga Waggathat is, do the machines have to be specially designed to suit each particular national or cultural context and do they require modification whether the player is a visitor on vacation or is a resident with over 1,000 hours’ playing experience? It is argued below that machine characteristics are essentially the same for all countries and players and therefore that the psychological processes that underlie player attraction to, and persistence at, machine play may be common to all players regardless of culture or nationality.
