f13.net

Guys. I know it's not PC or Console, but Iron Man is absolutely addiction in concentrate form. If you're ever in Vegas, go to Palazzo or Venetian and play the damn thing.

$5 a spin? Whatever. Worth it.

I want one for my home. The entire machine.

I was certain this was a spambot's post until I saw the author.

Don't make us Google a fucking SLOT. If you are not gonna post pictures, at least do a Radicalthon about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3IRzioE7uI

There were a few slots like that when I was in Vegas in December. Thankfully I'm missing the gambling gene or I'd be a poor man.  It's funny to have gone into a casino again after 5 years away. There's so many 35-50 geek nostalgia machines now.  Star Trek, Jurassic Park, Michael Jackson, Monty Python, Dungeons & Dragons are the ones I remember off the top of my head.  These have replaced the oldschool 'slutty woman' or 'wild west cowboy' machines it's obvious how the demographics have shifted.

Scarlett's ass, activate!

Negative ghost rider. As a fan of slot machine design, I can 100% say there are not a 'few" slots  like Iron Man. Typically, I'd allow some wiggle room for similarities (like, say, Demon's Souls and Legend of Zelda). But no, not this time. Iron Man fires on all cylinders and every other slot machine is shit.

Anyway, videos don't really do this thing justice. I was more secretly hoping someone here worked at Williams (looooooooooool).

I want to write a fucking paper on how good Iron Man is. I want to know the designer and harass him via email. I want to have chats about his upbringing. And then I want him to license the Magic the Gathering license.

I want a slot machine for pack opening.

Did you put your cock in the machine?

Because I'm sort of worried you did.

If by cock you mean $3200 including winnings, yes.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39720/F13/iron_man.png)

feelz good man

(Stark Industries repossessed that money 24 hours later)

Here, I'll tie it back to video gaming: Engineers of Addiction (http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machine-gambling-addiction-psychology-mobile-games)

(http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215482632_s2cGG/0/1050x10000/215482632_s2cGG-1050x10000.jpg)

I have literally no idea what's going on in that video.  I thought slot machines were where you pull a lever and then see if all the things come up the same.

Not anymore. Read the article I linked above.

tldr summary: "Too little reward and the animal becomes frustrated and stops trying; too much and it won’t push the lever as often."

From the video it looks like they've cross-bred slot machines with Bejeweled.  Which is a "duh" move for anyone who's ever played Bejeweled.

They did not. There are machines like that - and they're shit compared to Iron Man.

If you could describe it, maybe everyone would stop making bad comparisons.

He already has described it. What else do you need to know?  :why_so_serious:

I can think of a lot of entertaining ways to spend $3200 over the course of a weekend, let me tell you, and none of them require me to fly to goddamn Vegas.   :drill:

All slot machines are stupid.

You still play MMOGs, shut the fuck up.

I ate at least a pound of bone marrow and 8 ozs of Wagyu. So. Yeah. I can find other great ways to spend money too.

Do the machines still vomit coins on you when you win?

Some do but most don't these days.

They give you a ticket that you can feed into a casino ATM for cash.

This.

I was worried this thread would be about super fit people swimming, biking and running in desert heat which would only increase my self loathing.  It being about gambling is terrific.

One of my more-liked slots in Vegas are the Lord of the Rings machines.  Basically they steal your money until three rings come on the reels and you get Frodo on the bonus, at which point the machine goes apeshit throwing money at you for like two solid minutes, because the Frodo bonus is a bunch of free spins, and each time rings appear on the free spins you get another bonus, which could be another Frodo for MORE bonus spins, etc.  I've played them a fair bit whenever I've been in town, and more or less broken even, which is really the best that you can hope for in Vegas.  Some times I'd put in three bucks and get a hundred on one spin, some times I'd put in fifty and get zip, but usually I could hit a Frodo without denting my bankroll and make back what it took.

I've seen those Iron Man machines in a few places, and they're very slick, but they were usually being camped on by middle-aged women and I never saw one that was set to a low denomination.  If I recall correctly, all of the ones I saw had a minimum of forty lines and like a quarter per line, so ten bucks a pull.

Iron Man was $5 spins.

It was not cheap, not a bit.

But it was worth it.

Modern ones still are, in a way.  It is just that now they have 40 odd lines of "things" that have about a bajillion ways to "match" across all lines, on top off all sorts off crazy wild cards / special tiles that trigger various flashy and fun special effects as they take your money.   Just Imagine a skinners box that had crazy drunken sex with a disco ball, and you sort of get the idea.

There's a lot more to it then that. But yes, that.

Iron Man is the first slot machine where there was clearly someone with some design skills approaching "steering the wheel."

It is an excellent box. And I demand more like it.

From watching the videos, this thing looks like a modern pinball machine that spits out money.  I can't make any sense out of all of the payout lines, but it sure does make lots of bings and boops. 

(http://barfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/hospital_administrator_monty_python.jpg)

Yay, rigged money games. Let's celebrate.

While I don't play slot machines, I tend to think of them as entertainment.  If you play them with the expectation that you're going to spend a little to have some fun, then you're doing it right.  If you happen to walk away ahead, then that's just a bonus.

This machine looks like fun.  If it pays out ~90% like many machines in LV, then it's not so terrible for entertainment.  

This game pays out well, I just enjoyed the game while I was there more than I enjoyed the money. In fact, this game may have paid out well better than any slot machine I've ever seen, but that didn't even matter to me.

What is the game like? What do you do?

Put money in. Press button. Watch pretty lights. Get some dingratz. Repeat.


I assume

I am the 5 percent apparently.   :awesome_for_real:

And yes, can you please describe what you do with the game schild?  With your excitement, I'm assuming it's more than hitting a button and then seeing if you managed to get some sort of crazy diagonal match up where you have no idea why you won, like most of the video slot machines I've seen in the past.

Well I am trying to figure out what "good design" means in this context, but I am having no luck.

It's a slot machine, all it can really mean is it triggers the right buttons in people predisposed to liking gambling of this sort.

The difference between Iron Man and other slot machines, as best I can describe, is the difference between Diablo 3 and Fate.

The people who made Iron Man knew how to make it FEEL right.

It isn't more than pressing a button, but really, what is in most games? This is the best implementation of "pressing a button." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Insert five dollars and press a button isn't the best implementation of anything. I realize there aren't a lot of games coming out at the moment but I can't believe we're on page 2 of a thread about a fucking slot machine.

Yep, we should move the discussion to Blackjack: I love Blackjack  :why_so_serious:

Blackjack is too hardcore. Iron Man Slots are going to do really well, focusing on the casual market.

I'll be keeping my craps, but wouldn't be opposed to dropping a few bucks in this to check it out.

Craps is my favorite game, but it can be really hard to find a table that isn't in the dumps.

 :uhrr:

wat? Can't you just go to a respectable casino?

The problem with craps at a respectable Casino is they seem to love putting $25 minimums on the table. That pretty much puts me out. I'm not going to be laying a $25 pass with 3x odds and have $100 out on a roll. No thanks.

When you think about it, though, it makes sense for them to do that. Vegas has to become a high-roller destination due to competition from states that have legalized casino gambling and indian casinos. If I get the same action in a 10 minute to one hour drive, why go to Vegas?

Because it's Vegas and not Arundel Mills, MD?

But here's the problem, those $25 tables are empty at 2PM on a Saturday. They would have full tables with people like me if they'd lower the limit to $10. But they won't because they are trying to dissuade my type of player.

Also, don't assume that casinos are making the right choices. Caesar's Entertainment filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of the year.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102535714

From a business perspective, casinos have been very stupid lately. They got caught in a bad Chinese crackdown, and they've run off a lot of smaller time players that make up a large percentage of the their book. The tables limits are part of that. I haven't been in years because I know I can't get a limit I can play, and I know there's closer options with very low limits nearer to me.

That is why I stay at the nice hotels with good poker rooms, but do my dis-advantage gambling at shitholes.

Sorry, by dumps I meant no one is winning (except the house). Plenty of tables around, but either no one is at them (empty) which makes for boring craps, or there's a few people who've never played before losing money on each roll. Sometimes you find a packed table that is having fun, but it can be hard to squeeze in there.

It looks like Caesar's filed to bluff some bad positions and create a winning and a losing Caesar's.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/caesars-unit-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy-1421306807
http://www.wsj.com/articles/caesars-wins-fight-over-venue-for-casino-unit-in-bankruptcy-1422463133

You're right, though, the choices they're making aren't good ones but they're about the only ones left.  Flight + hotel + gambling money vs. gas/ bus faire to the local casino is an easy choice for frequent gamblers.  Yeah, you'll make a Vegas trip once in a while but not as often. I work with 4 guys who used to be once-a-year Vegas goers for Poker/ Blackjack. They don't make those trips anymore, they just go to Indiana or the casino downtown. They are the ones who cited the above costs.


If you live in Baltimore that trip to Arundel is a lot more manageable than buying a trip to Vegas. 

This is true, but I've seen early evening tables for $10 or $15 at Caeser's in Vegas. Then again, I play with the mentality that it's an extremely expensive night out and intend to lose significant money, so it's a bonus when I don't - for instance, my last trip to Vegas I pretty much broke even between the lodging, the craps table, the spa, and everything else we did. I may have even been able to pay for my car rental, which was not cheap since it was a one-way rental that began two weeks prior in Portland, OR.

At least for me, I've found that I tend to actually do better on those $25 tables when I can stomach it - that's $25 on the pass line, buying the 10 for $26, and usually playing 5 through 9. If the point is not a 4, I'm probably playing odds as well (though generally not max on 6/8, and practically never on 4) - I tend to be able to take better advantage of upswings this way.

What I find to be particularly obnoxious is when there's folks on a somewhat-cold table, it's not full...and they raise the minimums. In those cases I will normally walk.

Most of the ones that dispense coins tend to be the really low money slots like the nickel or dime slots.

15 years ago, when I was in Vegas, I won $60 on nickel slots.

It was a nightmare.

Funny for literally the first 3 seconds.

About 10 years ago I won so many quarters from a Jackpot Party machine at the Venetian that I had to sit there like a dumbass for 20 minutes while an attendant came and re-filled the hopper (it was like $300 in quarters). Thankfully it was a slow time so the cocktail waitress kept me company every 5 minutes or so  :awesome_for_real:

Now I wouldn't piss on the Venetian if it was on fire because of their owner/CEO and his bullshit crusade against online poker. What a fucking hypocritical shitstain.

I don't think $60 is enough to entice me to carry away and change 1200 nickels.  I'd have just fled the scene of the crime.

I'd take the nickels. It's $60 in 15 minutes. Plus free drinks. Good hourly rate there.

That's like the only appeal of a slot machine in my mind. The machine vomiting coins all over you so you can swim around in them like Scrooge McDuck.

None of the machines in the strip casinos deal in coins anymore.  Some of the off-strip places still do; the D over in the Fremont area has a section of coin machines on the second floor.

When it comes to table games, I prefer three-card poker.  It has a decently low house advantage, and while you can squeeze more advantage out of playing perfect blackjack hands, having to remember the spreadsheets for what the optimum play is for any given setup of blackjack is entirely too much like work for me when I'm trying to relax.  In three-card poker you need to remember just two things: 1. Never take the side bet.  2. Raise on a hand of Q/6/4 or better, otherwise fold.  I have yet to have had enough free casino liquor to lose my grip on those two rules.

This is a game I don't fully understand - in theory or practice. Its strikes me as flipping a coin, and eventually raising when the odds have to swing from head to tails and what have you. I mean, I guess I can understand a casino offering it because the average person is genuinely stupid, but as someone who is pretty logic-based - if I had a casino, it would seem like a waste.

2nd to last time I was at a casino I won $200 playing Casino War.  Now that's coin flipping

If you want a card game that's essentially just flipping a coin, baccarat is a better example.  A better analogy for three card poker is both you and the dealer rolling a die, with you raising if your die comes up 6 or if you think the dealer will roll a lower number.  The win conditions for three card poker are either getting a strong hand or beating the dealer's hand.  If you wind up with something like three of a kind or a flush there's a bonus payout regardless of the dealer's hand, sort of like the blackjack bonus for getting dealt a blackjack.  If you don't get that good of a hand you're betting on whether it's good enough to beat the dealer, which is where the 'raise on Q/6/4' part comes from.

My go to is Kitty Glitter, because it always seems to be in the cheap casinos I stay at.

(http://i.imgur.com/hOD7SEO.jpg)

Also, Kitty Glitter. C'mon.

3 card was one of the most boring games to deal. I'd put it below Casino War because the people playing War were usually chatty socialites and fun to interact with. Not a bad game for the player, though, I suppose.

Just... wanted to get that off my chest.

(Most fun games as dealer: craps -> roulette -> four card poker -> variety of shit -> baccarat -> stud poker -> 3 card poker -> the fucking wheel)

Oh god, that fucking wheel.  Other than keno that's the most retarded game ever.  Treasure Island had one of those wheel games set up at an automated table.  I've never understood why people play the digital versions of table games when they could play the real thing like five feet away, but whatever.  Anyways, two guys were at the table, and one of them was flipping out while it took his money.  Cursing, hitting the table, clearly having a bad time of it.  The guy next to him was probably at least buzzed, because he was just chilling there with a drink betting seemingly at random as far as I could tell and just didn't seem to give a fuck whether he was winning or losing.  In neither case did either of them look to be having any sort of good time.

Last time I was in Vegas I got to watch my father win about 400 bucks at video poker while making absolutely every wrong move. (He'd toss away a winning hand, but get dealt cards that gave him a BETTER winning hand. He basically flipped statistics the bird for about 45 minutes).

Admittedly my dad was a wee bit drunk at the time. One of the few times I've seen him that way. The waitress apparently thought it was the funniest damn thing she'd seen that day, a cheerfully drunk man somehow winning as his kids tried desperately to keep him from tossing away winning hands.

The way we encouraged digital was to lower the minimums. It's been pretty popular amongst the low-money Chinese gamblers, which was win-win for us as it's cheaper to run than a table with a croupier. You can also get fantastic data as they will always be logged in with a trackable ID, allowing gains and losses per player, per table and per game to be measured very accurately.

There is a huge segment of the population that seem to actively dislike human interaction in their table games, along with those themes of paranoia and dealer vs player mentality.

Sad thing about the wheel is that not only is it dead boring, the odds are some of the worst in the casino (well, for our wheel anyway).

House advantage on 3-card even without stupid side bets is over 3 percent.  That's not ridiculous but it is worse than single 0 roulette (which you can't find in the U.S. anyways, but just for comparison).  If you want to have fun gambling without getting completely fucked find a low-min craps table and go pass/come with odds all night long. 

On the 95 percent return on machines, remember that it is 95 percent return on total bets, not your buy-in/bankroll.  That 100 bucks you put in will be run through as bets after 20 spins on that type of machine. The machine will give you back 95 percent, so you will have (statistically) 95 bucks. After the next 19 spins you will have (statistically) 90 bucks. Rinse, repeat until you are broke. The machine has still returned 95 percent of your wagers.

To show you how a casino is a no-win deal, here is a back-off when they figure out you have an actual shot at winning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HjwzJyCQlQ

Fed this machine $20 dollars upon seeing it at a local casino, remembering this thread. Maybe I missed out on some sort of super awesome bonus mode stuff or my expectations were falsely inflated, but it was underwhelming.

Apparently legislation was just signed allowing for skill based games in casinos (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/skills-based-video-game-playing-gambling-coming-to-vegas-casinos/).  Not sure if any real skilled games will be developed and put in casinos (since you know, when you have skill at counting cards at BJ they usher you away) but could be interesting to see.

It won't matter. No casino in the world will offer a game that isn't rigged in its favor. Unless they make it PvP and rake it, like poker. Still, might be a fun way to lose money  :grin:

Carnival/ theme park games like "throw the ring on a bottle" are "games of skill."  How many guys do you walking around with those giant stuffed animals when at 6-flags/ Ceder Point owned parks?

Yeah.

It's possible skill-based refers to Japanese pachislo machines.

Woo, more slots.  :awesome_for_real:

If it were a Pachinko machine, THEN you'd have my attention.  Dad brought one home from Vietnam and I played it for hours as a kid.

17 years ago I crawled away from Vegas (after living there for 6 years) with my tail between my legs.  One of the many things I learned while there, other than Vegas is a bad place to live for anyone who gets addicted to games, is that the coin counting and sorting capabilities of the average coin booth in a Vegas Casino works like it was designed by like the original six sigma black belt efficiency expert.  Once you are done gathering and hauling your 30 pounds of nickles to the nearest booth it will be converted to folding money in no time flat.


I worked for several gaming tech companies and I am fairly sure that I recall skill being a mandatory component for gaming to be legal in many regions of the world (IIRC Europe). 

Slot machines go twitch?

In reality I would think all this means is more trivia based slots. You see them already in any place where a skill based component is required to dodge gambling restrictions. They maintain the intended payout rates by adjusting the difficulty of question.

Vegas exists to take your money.  They don't have all those pretty buildings covered in lights because they're giving the money away.  I treat the bankroll as my entertainment expense and anticipate losing it, because gambling in anticipation of winning is for suckers.  I've actually left Vegas ahead more often than behind, but most times I pretty much just break even and consider myself fortunate in that.  If you're careful in how you flirt with the casinos you can lose a fairly insignificant amount of money and in exchange walk away with free drinks, food, and rooms.  If you aren't careful, they'll have all of your money within twenty four hours.  It's just how things go.

If I'm just churning money to snag drinks and build up points to comps, I'll poke video poker machines until I find one that isn't trying to just take my money and then camp on it for an hour or until it goes cold.  As long as you're playing at the right payout and don't make bad plays, you can get the house edge to somewhere around one percent if I'm recalling right.  I'd be unpopular at craps, because I'd have no compunctions about betting on don't pass for the better edge.

Don't pass has the same edge as pass, actually. Absolutely agree with you on everything else (save for the fact I don't touch the pokies at all, I find them boring).

There used to be some progressive video poker machines that, when played optimally, actually had a player advantage when the jackpot was big enough. I am sure most of them are gone now, or hidden away in the shitty locals hangout casinos. If they still exist, they probably $5+ per spin machines only. Can't have the plebes winning any money.

Don't pass actually does have a slighter better edge.  It's very small (.05 percent) and the only time you are winning is when the table is losing so you look like a schmuck. And when you are losing the table is usually having a blast making it that much worse, so the small statistical edge just isn't worth it to me (plus laying odds requires a bigger bankroll).

It's virtually impossible to even find a full pay 9/6 machine these days.

The D on Fremont has like three of them on the second floor by the escalators.  It actually has a big sign over them advertising that they have a greater than 100% payout.  What it doesn't mention is that the player must make the perfect play on every hand to get that outcome, and most random people wandering around Vegas haven't read up on what those optimal plays are.  I'm sure they're not losing money on those machines at the end of the day.

There were linked progressive reel machines where this was the case as well.  Used to see teams come in and tie up every linked progressive until the jackpot was hit (yes 24x7 until they hit it). I was a peon though so for all I know these "professional" slot players just worked for the dirt bag casino owner.

If it was a networked one, that is the strategy. You only go for royal straight flush basically.

I love bumping dead threads.

Was just in Vegas, staying at the Venetian for a conference. Since Schild was so keen on this machine I made a point to hunt it down. They've scaled back to only one machine on the floor, in a back corner.  Well worth the playing time. So many little effects and interactive parts beyond just the button-pushing. I see the appeal now as I lost a good two hours playing just this game. (Turned $8.00 into $60.00 though so that's a win.)

One at the Venetian but two at the Palazzo unless that's changed in 2 months.

The Palazzo, somehow, has a worse return across nearly the entire floor though and I never gamble there anymore.

Also I'm in the Northeast now, so if anyone ever wants to hit up Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods or Twin River, uhhh PM me?

It's changed or there's a corner of the Venetian I missed. We looked at every machine there and not one.  The lone double-stack unit in the Palazzo was on the opposite wall of CarneVino, near the back entrance.  Same wall as the bank of fishing slots.

Yea, between Batman and  fishing horseshit.

The Venetian one used to be on the walkway along the right side of the main casinos left walkway coming off the shoppes. You know, now that I think about it, I didn't see it on my last trip.

Like, as in, you finally escaped the hell hole that is Texas, or your just visiting at this moment?

I love and miss Austin.

I moved to Rhode Island for my wife's work since I can work from anywhere.

Offices are for assholes.

I was in Providence Rhode Island once for a national sales meeting. One of the salesman got shot the first night inside the hotel.

That's some shitty luck. I lived on the cusp of PG County, MD for 5 years and never got a punch thrown at me.