Graphic design in the ‘pokie room’

It’s a Saturday night. I go down to the local pub for a few quiet drinks with my brother who I haven’t seen for a couple of months because we live in different states. We’re sitting back, a cold drink in hand, talking about those things that begin to become important in the mid 20s; Employment, Real Estate, Finance – grown-up things. Me being the first one in my family to move out of the family home meant I hit a steep learning curve in the lessons of life; the stuff that school should be teaching children but doesn’t. When is the best time to buy a house? How much of the household budget needs to go towards savings? How much contingency does one need for insurance? Mum and Dad had to manage those important things, not me. But 3 years on I’ve got a wife, a house and a cat – life’s different and I can see how one needs to constantly manage all the pieces of one big jigsaw puzzle in order to make ends meet.

Sitting down together with a drink, I begin to try to educate my younger brother, whose been out of work now for 6 months thanks to the Global Financial Crisis and still living at home, on how much money one needs to survive; the day-to-day expenses. 25-30% of income goes towards the mortgage, another 25% on weekly bills and utilities; the rest of the income gets divided between savings and spendings. He seems to take notice until his friends arrive at our table and lure him away with the dream of winning $10,000 instantly on the same poker machine on which they won $300 last week for an outlay of only $10. He tells me he’ll be back soon but I know he won’t be. I sigh, and sit there alone, watching the condensation on the outside of my glass run on to the vinyl-covered chipboard table.

They’re called slot machines in America, fruits machines in Britain, and poker machines in Australia. I don’t play them but I know plenty of people that do. From the young ones, who have just turned 18 and are excited by the opportunity to now legally toss their money away; to the old ones who, despite a meager pension as their only source of income, still manage to save $10 for their Wednesday lunchtime at the R.S.L club where they can try their old, withered hands at finally cashing in on the big time. If they did win the jackpot, at least their sons and daughters wouldn’t have to pay for their funeral, right?

Pokies are an everyday part of life in Australian pubs and clubs across the nation. You can’t walk in to a leagues club or RSL without hearing the ever familiar tone of the poker machine pied piper; the one-armed bandit. Everyone knows the chances of winning on one of these machines and in Australia, it’s law to print those odds on the machine as an attempt to remind people that indeed, 999 999 times out of 1 million, the house will win.

There are of course dozens of reasons why people play these machines. Some call it fun and others simply can’t help it, it’s an addiction. I don’t know the exact stats on problem gambling but the fact that “Problem Gambling” is a common place phrase suggests to me that it’s a big issue – too big for me to fix anyway. Or is it? It got me thinking – how much of a role could design play in repelling people from the false hopes these machines provide?

When I went to check on my brother after finishing my drink I stepped in to the dimly lit ‘pokie room’ and my eyes did a quick scan. There were about 30 machines, 25 of them occupied. Not a bad turnover for a local, suburban Sydney pub. My brother is playing a machine called Queen of the Nile which I later found out is the most popular machine in Australia at the moment. It’s been in pubs and clubs for over 1 decade (since 1997) and is still top of the list! Why? Because it pays out more? I doubt it. Because it’s easier to use? It doesn’t appear to be any different from all the others – it has the same number and arrangement of buttons. Maybe it’s the sexy vector graphic of Cleopatra luring you towards her with the promise of fame and fortune. Could that be it? Her eyes are practically saying that all you have to do is pay her, push her buttons and you’ll be rewarded, kind of like a sex worker if you think about it.  Well, if you know the story of Cleopatra and how it ends for her, you probably wouldn’t be so easily lured.

What I found interesting about the poker machine room as I glanced around is how happy every machine looked and how unhappy every human-being looked. Not only was sexy Cleopatra bathing in the Egyptian sun by the Nile but next to her, her husband, the King of the Nile, was giving me an equally sexy smile from his own machine. A little further to the left there’s cartoon constructs like Mr. Cashman. Oh, you can trust him, a smiling gold coin wearing a top hat and immaculately clean white gloves, he won’t take your money. And animals?! What are the penguins of Penguin Pays or the lions 50 Lions going to do with your money? Penguins and Lions don’t need human money so they must be machines that do nothing but give it back to you right? I can’t understand the psychology here on face-value.

I’ve been lucky enough to visit Egypt and it’s not exactly a well-off city. People seem to work 24/7 just to have enough money to survive. Sometimes even that isn’t enough; and that’s no exaggeration. While I was there I saw a husband and wife team on the streets of Cairo change shifts in a tag team fashion at 2am. This was just so they could continue selling pirated DVDs in the off chance that a tourist or resident feels like picking up Transformers 4, six years before it’s even made in Hollywood, at the convenient time of 2 in the morning. What’s ironic is that such a poor nation is used as a marketing tool in 1st world countries with the intention of making the well-off poor! The Egypt I see in the poker machine room doesn’t nearly reflect the reality of the country but we as consumers, never really second guess that. I know my brother doesn’t. It’s just a pokie graphic right?

So is it OK for designers to create these happy, bouncy, mood-lifting graphics for a cause aimed at robbing the rich as well as the poor? When I began my design career I worked for a company that was responsible for creating the graphics for the poker machine giant Aristocrat. It sounded really fun; being able to create happy images – exciting, positive, cute illustrations in my first ever design studio. What I didn’t consider back then is how completely removed I would be from the reality of the context in which they’d be used. I look back at that time, a not very ancient 5 years ago and I’m now so happy that I had a falling out with the Director over a pay dispute within the first few weeks before I got the chance to contribute to the Aristocrat empire by way of my illustration skills. I’m sure back then, as my first design job, I would’ve been more than happy to get a few nice, professionally art-directed illustrations in to my portfolio.

In my opinion, the graphics used on poker machines to create a sense of hope, happiness and security are simply unethical; they’re lies. Humans though seem to be like moths to a light when it comes to poker machines. Why do we not see the reality of the affects of problem gambling plastered all over these fluorescent machines, these bug catchers. Why doesn’t Mr. Cashman have a frown instead of a smile? Maybe it could be renamed Mr. Trashman and feature a photograph of a homeless bum? Why isn’t the Queen of the Nile sitting on the sidewalk of a Cairo street, one arm missing, begging for a slice of bread? And Penguins?! The only thing a penguin should be paying from a poker machine is its respects to the player’s family who can’t afford to eat because their mum keeps giving the shifty-eyed animals her pay cheque every week.

It sounds preachy I know, and in a perfect world designers would mill about on the fringes of culturally significant, sustainable design projects never needing to contribute to the business of adding to an already significant problem in society. I understand those designers for Aristocrat still need money in their bank – and if Aristocrat designers are OK with trading their design skills for some problem gambler’s pay cheque, I have nothing against it; I was almost, unknowingly at the time, one of those designers.

I don’t pretend to have the solution to this. Designers need to design, even for poker machine giants (see “Design is dangerous in the hands of the unskilled”), and problem gamblers need as much assistance as they can to kick their addiction – maybe it can’t be a win:win for designers on this one. I don’t think Mr. Trashman would sit to well with the Aristocrat board as a new design concept. Perhaps it isn’t the graphics at all that make a person feel more comfortable spending their night dropping 20c coins in to a small slot? I know I’m repelled when I see the beckoning call of poker machine – but then again I’m quite cynical and perhaps my training as a designer has made me aware of its motives.

There’s no doubt in my mind that a more repellant, less welcoming approach to the graphics on these machines could at least be part of a multi-pronged attack to rid problem gambling from society. Stripping back colour, communicating the more likely scenario of loss rather than gain in a way that actually gets one’s attention in the same way that Cleopatra does would be a start.  Every now and again the issue of problem gambling rears its head in the Australian media and discussions arise. These discussions usually involve a government representative, a not-for-profit organization like Gambling Help online and pub or club owners across Australia. In fact, our recently hung Australian parliament came one step closer to being resolved because of a deal made between MPs to reduce problem gambling in our culture. But, if design can make even the smallest difference, which I’m convinced it can, then it should be our responsibility as designers (and the responsibility of the key decision-makers in our society) to be involved in this process of a public forum on problem gambling. We can use our training for the betterment of society and provide guidance on how to achieve the balancing act that keeps the Aristocrats in business, the publicans pouring ale and most importantly, food on the table for designers and their out of work, 20-something gambling brothers.