This is why I must ask if your playing these emulators is some kind of retrospective self-flagellation, a kind of frequent reminder to scare yourself away from the consequences of AWP addiction, dampening down the old spark which you quite rightly dread reigniting. I suppose it's because my mindset and logic would eschew ANY contact with the machines, whether real or emulated, had I been through the wringer as you related to us in brutal honesty before.
I genuinely enjoy playing fruit machines in the emulator, even after over twenty years there's still something quite magical about being able to play real fruit machines on my PC. (Well, real apart form the money!)
You have to remember that I basically spent ten years as an addict, from 1991-2001, and then in 2001 I finally started to get some decent info about how to play them and from 2001 to the present day, I'm overall very much in profit in them. (Albeit still down on lifetime stats, I don't know exactly how much I lost between 1991-2001 but it must be knocking on the door of around £40-£50K.)
Ultimately it's impossible to entirely disentangle real fruit machines from emulated fruit machines in my head, so sometimes, such as when I made the Show Me The Mummy video, my mind still remembers what it was like to be stood in front of a real fruit machine, down to my last few quid and with no chance in the world of stopping until every last penny had gone, so despite the fact that the emulator is of course entirely 'safe', the memories are still there.
But no, it's not any sort of 'punishment' or 'atonement' to play the emulated machines, I really enjoy doing so, and do so nearly every single day.
Here's an article I wrote about emulation and addiction back in 2001 (some of my predictions have turned out to be pretty accurate.)
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EMULATION CURES ADDICTION?
The sad truth of the matter is that fruit machines largely depend on addicts plunging themselves into debt and misery to make their profit. Casual play is at an all time low, I did have the figures at one time but can't lay my hands on them at the moment, sufficed to say that the number of people playing the change from the round, or a spare fiver for a bit of fun has dropped dramatically. But that's hardly surprising, any machine out there will happily take £5, about the most that a casual player would think about spending, and not give a single win or feature. (In reality just about any machine can take £10 and give absolutely nothing, some can go to £15 and higher. Fruit machine manufacturers must be stupid or really stupid, and think that we're even stupider).
I'd like to feel some degree of sympathy for Barcrest or any of the other manufacturers but I can't. Unscrupulous operators and corrupt staff do have to carry their part of the blame for setting machines to low %ages, and staff often have profitable rackets in watching machines and tipping off resident players or playing themselves (it doesn't take a genius to work out when a machine's going to pay if you can watch it every moment that it's turned on). However, manufacturers have been insufferably lazy and complacent in the face of falling revenues. As the years have gone by they've gone along with the rest of the industry's attempts to get prizes and stakes increased, yet have never considered the fact that there are still club machines out there with £200 JPs and 20p stakes. The day machines went from 20p to 25p play is the day they lost a lot of casual players, 30p is absolutely laughable. "Hey, here's a good idea, let's introduce a price of play that demands that people play in £3 chunks or chuck 10p down the grid for every pound they put in one of our machines, that'll win them over!".
They've also ignored the fact that with a minimum payout guaranteed by law of just 72%, fruit machines represent quite the worst value for money of just about any form of gambling (for example, even the most amateur of players can achieve an overall payback of between 92% and 98% on casino games such as blackjack and roulette). As the years have gone by and profits have decreased, operators have actually *reduced* payout %ages in an effort to maintain their overall take, fleecing those players left even harder, and alienating casual players further.
So where are we now? There's a £25 jackpot just been introduced and a potential stake of 50p per game (although I refuse to believe that there's an operator in the land who would even consider charging someone 50p to watch 3 reels spin for a second). People do not want higher jackpots (they certainly don't want higher stakes), they want value for money and entertainment along with the chance to win a few quid. Of course, the one group of people who will play whatever the stake, jackpot or %age are the addicts, from whom fruit machines, now more than ever, make the vast majority of their money from.
The fundamental problem with higher jackpot machines is the speed with which they need to kill the player on the feature or hi/lo gamble before they offer more than they can afford, and the regularity with which they can offer the feature is also decreased. Take the old classic "Indiana Jones" (a JPM machine), this was originally released with a £6 jackpot, and the feature took the form of a long start to finish trail. Along the way were many imaginative features in addition to the usual cash, nudges and mystery squares. The machine could allow the player to enter the feature regularly, and to progress a good way around the trail without offering more than £3. (It also used an "Escape" on the mystery square to give £2 or so when near the end of the trail). On a full streak it would pay out £50 or more, this would take the form of constant features and wins over an extended period of time.
Indiana Jones was fairly typical of its era, high feature and win frequency, along with involving and entertaining gameplay, and the chance of getting "the big streak". Compare and contrast it with pretty much any modern pub machine. These will regularly take £5 to £10 before offering any win or feature board, and will think nothing of losing on good numbers, or killing the player quickly on the feature. Why? Because, by design, higher jackpot machines offer higher wins early on. If one trail begins at nothing and ends at £6, and if another trail starts at nothing and ends at £25 - short of making the trail four times longer (not a practical proposition) - the £25 trail machine is going to let you enter the trail much less often and/or inflict a much hastier death on the player.
This is the main reason why start to finish trail machines have now all but vanished, to be replaced by frustrating wraparound trails and depressingly nasty hi/lo climb features. These style of machines are plagued by the same problem, they need to kill quickly and regularly, or too high a win will be on offer. Going back to the comparison with Indiana Jones, modern machines will very rarely streak for more than £50, and it's generally all over with a jackpot and a couple of repeats.
In short, modern fruit machines will take a lot more money, much more quickly, give a far less involving gameplay experience and still not offer significantly improved profit potential than their stable mates did a few years ago. Tempted yet?
So where does MPU3/4 come into this equation? Like most addicts, fruit machine addicts (and the terrible hold that they can place on someone's life should not be underestimated) are looking for a compelling reason to quit. They realise the destructive nature of their illness, the negative impact it has upon their lives, and the lives of those around them - but that realisation is often insufficient motivation for them to break away from the cause of their misery.
MPU3/4 serves many useful purposes in this respect:
First and foremost, it lays out the workings a fruit machine for all to see. Playing a real machine at a single stretch with hundreds of pounds to spare and analysing every nuance and internal function is simply not possible. Now it is possible, and what people might have suspected all along is now made clear. Fruit machines cannot be beaten, "just another tenner" is never enough, the %age is immovable, the odds against the player are too great. Moreover, the way that fruit machines achieve their single goal of taking the players' money is insidious and exploitative. Near misses (known in the business as "heart stoppers") come up with suspicious regularity, just another nudge, just another move, just another gamble and the jackpot would have been yours..... Maybe next time, maybe if I play some more..... Hi/Lo gambles will lose on the best numbers when they need to, offering a tempting 2/3 or 10/11 on a pivotal gamble and then losing is commonplace. Features that give the minimum they have to (reel roulette and reel blasts spring immediately to mind), "skill" features that aren't, "random" awards that are fixed; name a dirty trick, and you can be sure that your average fruit machine has it in spades. MPU3/4's function here is clear, it debunks the myth, is unmasks the villain, now anyone can, and will, see what they're really up against - the clear, clinical realisation that the odds are insurmountable, separated for the first time from the emotional investment that the real machine demands, can be nothing short of a revelation.
Secondly, MPU3/4 allows you to play fruit machines for nothing. The truth of the matter is that for all their bad habits, fruit machines *are* fun to play, the basic structure of the games is simple and addictive, it's just a shame that it costs so much them to play them these days (hence the loss of many casual players). MPU3/4 separates out the fun from the financial commitment, it takes the entertainment and leaves the agony. Undoubtedly it's lacking the "kick" of the real thing, but when that kick can cost tens and hundreds of pounds, most people will be happy to leave it behind.
Thirdly, MPU3/4 allows you to play machines from years gone by, when they really were much better than they are today. The fundamentals (taking the players' money in any and every way possible) remain the same, but at least they had the decency to give you a bit of a run for it. Why spend £10 down the local to get on a feature that kills you in two spins when you can get much more for nothing sat in front of your PC at home?
Fourthly, and perhaps most significantly for the addicts, MPU3/4 offers enough of the real thing to sate the desire to play. It is the heroin addict's morphine, not quite the same as the real deal, but close enough to get through another day without giving in to the temptation.
So where does this leave us, and surely it's not a particularly good idea to post a piece of writing such as this on a fruit machine emulation site. Why not just post a message headed "Barcrest, I fart in your face" and be done with it?
Fruit machine manufacturers need to (and it pains me to steal a Tory slogan but here goes anyway) - "Get back to basics". I'm sure that, if challenged, Barcrest, or any other manufacturer would insist that they have no wish to make their profits from helpless addicts. Asked if they were happy with the fact that their balance book is made as healthy as it is by human misery, they would undoubtedly point to the fact that their machines are intended to be a form of entertainment for the masses. Of course, there may be some addicts, but they would encourage such people to seek professional help, they most certainly wouldn't like to think that their machines were taking a bankrupt's dole money again, or a single mother's pitiful wage, or a student's loan, or an old woman's pension.
The reality is that these are increasingly the sort of people on whom fruit machines rely to make money, in addition to a whole army of "average" people who are spending far more than they can reasonably afford feeding their addiction. As casual players continue to stop playing (known as "lapsed players"), it's left to the addicts to keep the money coming in. Seaside arcades have training camps for the next wave of victims, 5p play £5 jackpot machines introduce youngsters to the fruit machine fix, ready for the day that they can move into the bright lights and big jackpots of the "Adults only" area. Can you imagine a "Junior Betting Shop" opening up in your local high street?
The appeal of fruit machines to the casual player has all but disappeared, however, there's no good reason why it can't be restored. Rumblings within the industry suggest that video fruit machines are set to be the next big thing, historically, these have not found favour with players, but this has more to do with the fact that they have simply been video incarnations of their traditional reel-based counterparts than any fundamental lack of viability with the format itself. The "video screen fruit machine" (it even sounds quite snappy) offers a world of opportunity to get back the idea of entertainment first, profit second - it's only when this is achieved that the part-time players will come back on board. The novelty value alone would draw a wave of new and lapsed players into having a punt.
As one example, overlaid numbers on the reels, instead of an all or nothing "feature entry or not", could climb a long trail and offer regular feature drop-off points with a range of simple but enjoyable games on offer, similar to those found on the old Crystal Maze SWPs (Skill With Prizes). The higher up the trail you got, the better the games and higher the prizes, but the small stake player would always have the opportunity to get something back. A simple idea that could make the crossover from SWP to AWP (Amusement With Prizes) machines is a "take it now or risk it and carry on", therefore getting a couple of pounds back from a fiver would be easy, and sufficient to keep the "change from the round" brigade coming back for more, those who wish to play for more and knowingly risk their winnings (rather than never having been given the opportunity to get anything at all) could do so.
What is absolutely clear is that the model on which fruit machines are based has to change. It cannot be proper that an entire industry is dependent on the suffering of a relatively small number of miserable addicts for its very survival. Moreover, this immoral dependence is becoming more pronounced as time goes by, not less.
We can only hope that fruit machine manufacturers such as Barcrest have the desire, the ability, and the courage to wean themselves off the guaranteed cash flow from addicts' pockets into their bank accounts and move fruit machines forward to a time when they will become mainstream entertainment. It is true to say that all freedoms come with a price; alcohol, a bit of fun at the weekend for the majority, is a life-destroying curse for the few. A flutter on the horses, an occasional indulgence for the majority, is a consuming menace for the few.
The inequable reality of the fruit machine industry is that without the hard core of the few, it would not be sustained by the majority.
Some might see MPU3/4 as Barcrest's enemy, especially if it helps a number of that few break free from the pernicious hold of addiction. The truth is rather different, the fruit machine industry as it stands is destined for failure. People cannot be taken for a ride indefinitely, sooner or later they will come to terms with their addiction, as it cannot be sustained forever. MPU3/4 may bring that realisation about sooner rather than later, but with or without MPU3/4, it will come regardless.
MPU3/4 helps to highlight what is already no secret, the time for change is now. The question is, are the manufacturers ready and willing to face that challenge?
20th October 2001.