Of the items you might expect to see in the workplace of a professor of public health, a poker machine is probably not one. The Dolphin Treasure pokie sits on a bench in Charles Livingstone’s office at Monash University in Melbourne, too heavy for even two people to move and emblazoned with gaudy dolphins swimming merrily over a treasure chest. Despite its location in the furthermost corner of the room, it’s impossible to miss.

“From my observations of gaming floors I notice a lot of middle-aged and older women playing it, patting the dolphins and their little fins,” says Livingstone, who has dedicated his career to studying the harms of pokie addiction.

“They seem to be attracted to the cute icons and graphics. One time late at night at a bar in regional Victoria, I saw a lady who was hugging the machine in a very affectionate manner. Research has shown there are some people who tend to anthropomorphise poker machines.”

The Dolphin Treasure poker machine, with its brightly coloured sea creatures, is the focus of a landmark legal case brought by Shonica Guy against Crown Casino and the poker machine manufacturer Aristocrat Technologies. Guy started playing the pokies when she was 17 and she says she lost thousands of dollars over 14 years.

She is being represented pro bono by Maurice Blackburn lawyers. The case has been unfolding in the federal court in Melbourne over the past two-and-a-half weeks before Justice Debra Mortimer, with Guy’s lawyers arguing that Aristocrat and Crown are engaging in deceptive, misleading and unconscionable conduct by providing Dolphin Treasure poker machines to the public.

The Dolphin Treasure machine is the focus of a case brought against Crown Casino and Aristocrat Technologies by Shonica Guy (pictured). Photograph: Joe Castro/AAP

The case hinges on the Dolphin Treasure machine because researchers such as Livingstone know more about how, Guy argues, it sets up people for addiction than any other machine on gaming floors in Australia. Guy’s lawyers are not seeking damages – rather, they want poker machines to be designed fairly and for players to be genuinely informed about their prospects of winning.

Lawyers for Crown Casino have strongly rejected the allegations of misleading and deceptive conduct, telling the court that they were doing nothing more than making authorised machines available. They also said the lights, sounds and machine icons were regulated and were not elements Crown could control.

Aristocrat’s lawyers said that company, too, had “followed the standards to a tee and nobody has said that we haven’t”. The company had never had a licence withdrawn, lawyers said, adding that the way the machines worked was no secret.

But according to researchers, the only way to understand how poker machines work – and if and how they are addictive – is through access to design documents called Par sheets – detailed probability and accounting reports that show a machine’s configuration, including the amount of money the machine takes, the number of symbols per reel, and probability formulas.



In Canada the gambling industry is operated by provincial governments, and researchers there have been able to access Par sheets through freedom of information requests. In Australia the testing of machines is outsourced by government regulators, which means the sheets can’t be obtained through freedom of information. Par sheets are not directly scrutinised or retained by Australian regulators.

Casinos and poker machine manufacturers are unwilling to hand the information over, especially to researchers investigating gambling-related harm. The closest Livingstone and his colleagues came to accessing Par sheets was an offer from the industry to view some sheets and memorise them, including complex formulas. They would not have been allowed to take photos or even notes.

“It was a meaningless gesture,” Livingstone says. “So I got a licence from regulators in Victoria to acquire a machine for research purposes, though we are not allowed to use real money to play it, and I bought one on the secondhand market in 2010.”

It cost him $5,000. Australians lose more than $11bn on pokies each year.

The formula for pleasure

Livingstone and Kevin Harrigan from the University of Waterloo’s Gambling Research Lab in Canada discovered the chances of winning the maximum $10,000 prize on the Dolphin Treasure was one in 35,640,000.

“So it’s a pretty crappy bet,” he says.

Their research identified some key design elements used in the Dolphin Treasure game that can also be found in the design of many poker machines.

“If you look at this machine it incorporates a random reinforcement schedule; that is, an unpredictable schedule of rewards,” Livingstone says. “It also incorporates many bells and whistles, so lights, sounds, flashing and illuminated animations, a whole bunch of stuff constantly going off.

“If you go into a big gambling venue, like Crown or one of the larger clubs in Sydney, there is constant cacophony of reinforcement going off. I think that’s why so many gamblers say the mere fact of hearing the sound makes them want to go and use the machines.”

For some people, even contemplating gambling triggered the release of dopamine. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

Scans of people’s brains while playing poker machines show that for some, even contemplating gambling triggered the release of dopamine, an organic chemical that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centres and can induce feelings of pleasure and euphoria.

“When we started speaking to gamblers we found that regular gamblers talked about getting into the zone, and the zone is this space which they describe as being impermeable to the cares of the world. Nothing else matters, nothing at all, including sometimes whether you pick your kids up from school or, sadly, in some cases whether you’ve left the kids in the car in 40C heat while you gamble.”

“That has happened sadly in Australia a couple of times and children have died. It’s not because [their parents are] bad people; its not because they lack will; it’s because they have succumbed to this addictive process which is very, very powerful. Clearly.

“Those who become addicted don’t care as much about the money as they do about feeling that sense of happiness,” he says.

“Just like someone who has an addiction to a drug: they don’t care about the money, they get the money and the money has an end which is getting the drug. In this case the money is the means to getting into the zone, where all their problems fade away.”

If you’re living a comfortable life, it’s hard to imagine the circumstances that would lead to a poker addiction Charles Livingstone, Monash University

Those addicted or close to addiction to pokies often have wider problems. The highest concentration of poker machines can be found in blue-collar or low socioeconomic areas – areas that harbour the greatest disadvantage, including economic and social stress.

“People living in those circumstances are much more likely to take up the option of using those devices; and if they take up that option, they’re likely to get into trouble,” Livingstone says.

One in three people who use the machines weekly will succumb to an addiction. For each one of those, an average of six other people will be directly affected, including family members, employers and friends. In all jurisdictions in Australia where more restrictive rules governing machines have been liberalised, the rate of utilisation of poker machines has gone down. In Victoria for example, only 16% of the population use poker machines at all in any given year. But among that group, problem gambling rates have not decreased and are in fact at the same level as they were in 2008, when more than twice as many people used pokies.

Livingstone says: “There are a lot of people who do believe personal responsibility has a role to play in this, and I can understand their point of view because I don’t think most people understand how addictive these devices can be, and explaining why they are addictive takes some time.

“But they are essentially addictive devices and they’re designed to maximise the amount of time and money that people put into them. People living in reasonably settled circumstances don’t have the urge to gamble, they often don’t have the urge to drink too much or take drugs. If you’re living a settled comfortable life, it’s hard to imagine the circumstances that would lead someone to developing a poker addiction.”

The court case is highlighting design elements of the Dolphin Treasure machine that deceive players, such as the oversized reel. When playing the machine it looks as though all five reels are the same size. In reality, the fifth reel is larger. It means there are 30 symbols on the first four reels but 44 symbols on the fifth reel, making it harder to land on the winning symbols.

The case also focuses on the starving of the reel – that is, the appearance to the player that there is some regularity in the distribution of the symbols on the reel when in fact the configurations are not even. It also examines information provided to players on display screens, which lawyers representing Guy argue do not tell players what they need to know, including how much they stand to lose per spin or session. The case has also focused on losses disguised as wins through flashing lights and playing of sounds.

These are the key elements that keep people playing. The Productivity Commission estimates that 42% of revenue that goes through poker machines in pubs and clubs comes from people with serious gambling problems, and 20% from those on the tier below at a moderate risk of addiction.

“In casinos, because casinos are much more intense environments, it’s more,” Livingstone says. “I don’t doubt that for a second.”

‘He says he will pay her back’

Ellie MacGregor (a pseudonym) says her brother ticks all the boxes of those prone to addiction. She and her siblings were “born into poverty”, she says, and their father was not present in their difficult home life. Her brother is also incredibly shy and lacks social skills because of this.

“He was never taught about money and when he left home he didn’t know how to survive,” she says. “Poker machines were in the pub next door to him and the lottery was on the TV. He thought if you spend money you can win money, and he went in with a hope to win something to get him out of his financial mess. He’s now 40, he began gambling 16 years ago and it’s never led to anything positive.”

MacGregor has given her brother thousands of dollars of her own money to help him pay for food and rent. Her mother, “who can barely rub two coins together”, does the same.

“It will go on her credit card,” MacGregor says. “He says he will pay her back, but he never does.

“The sad thing is you see the addiction being bigger than the person you love. He’s a genuine soul who would never want to do this to Mum, but the addiction has overridden him. It’s heartbreaking.”

She has helped her brother through psychological breakdowns and suicide risk, but she is starting to believe tough love might be the only way forward. This is especially difficult for her, given her brother is about to become homeless. Her family did try to support him to get specialist treatment at an anxiety clinic in Sydney to help with his panic attacks, but the consultant doctor told him he did not qualify for treatment.

“He was married and two months into the marriage she had paid off all of his debt for him,” MacGregor says. “But he starting gambling again and the marriage has failed.

“Gambling is just a disgraceful industry. And it causes harm to people far beyond the person with the addiction.”

Guy’s lawyers are arguing that Aristocrat and Crown are engaging in deceptive, misleading and unconscionable conduct. Photograph: David Crosling/AAP

‘The design had to be loud and bright’

Fifteen years ago Liz Grant, the national president of the Australian Graphic Design Association, took on short-term work on a project for Aristocrat, an ASX 100-listed company and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of poker machines. She worked on the project for all of four weeks, enough time to make her realise she never wanted to work for a gaming manufacturer again.

Grant was the only designer the Guardian found who had worked with a gambling game manufacturer and was willing to talk about the experience.

“At the time I had young kids and I needed work, and it was very, very hard to get jobs in the industry as a young woman,” she says. “A friend of mine worked at a creative agency and he asked me to work on this brief for Aristocrat.”



She was to design the graphics for a machine with a circus theme.

“The important thing was the design had to be loud and bright, as I was briefed to aim the design to an audience with only a primary school level education,” she says. “Anything that I designed that looked too classy was rejected. I designed to be attractive to very low-educated people, which was a challenge as designers aim to design beautiful things. I swore I would never, ever work on a campaign brief like that again.”

She was also told to use colours such as bright yellow and red, which Grant says psychological studies have shown people associate with feeling warm and happy. The colours are often used by the food industry to market fatty and sugary substances.

“They’re colours used when you’re designing things you want people to keep coming back to and when you want to give them a dopamine rush. And they will remember those colours.

“From the Australian Graphic Design Association’s point of view, we can’t tell people what they can and can’t work on. The moral stance designers take comes down to their personal choice. But my brief experience with gaming many years ago was when I personally drew a line in the sand.”