January 22, 2008

Attorney General Gary King

408 Galisteo St.

Santa Fe, NM  87501

 AG King,

 The New Mexico Coalition Against Gambling believes the following evidence illustrates the growing need for consumer protection from the outrageous behavior of gambling profiteers.

 Herein is our formal complaint about some practices of slot machine manufacturers that violate US consumer protection standards and deceive New Mexico gamblers.  Our complaints have application to gambling machines allowed at both tribal and non-tribal operations.

In February of 2007, Ontario Lottery and Gaming pulled the plug on 87 video lottery machines because the machines had been programmed to produce a winning jackpot image of 0.2 seconds duration every two seconds of play. These machines were made by the same manufacturer which supplies machines to US casinos.  Research reported in the New Scientist magazine, 28 April 2006, presents very strong evidence that subliminal messages of this sort can have a strong effect in altering behavior. Though the efficacy of subliminal messaging has been hotly debated for years, the audacity of the gambling industry in this issue is flagrant. This is not an attempt to sell more popcorn at the movies, as was the case when this subliminal messaging issue first emerged in the late 1950s. This is an attempt to lure, cheat and steal from unsuspecting customers.

 Although the VLT manufacturer, Konami Corp. responded that it was a simple programming accident that led to the winning jackpot image, Kevin Carrigan, a mathematics and computer professor at the University of Waterloo indicated that such an accident would have less than a 1 in 100,000 chance of occurring.  Logic and common sense makes it impossible to believe Konami’s excuses.

 NMCAG did some research and found that Konami supplies video slot machines to the Route 66 tribal casino, and probably supplies many other New Mexico racinos and casinos as well.  Prudence would dictate that all Konami machines should be pulled out of play until their programming can be checked and the machines determined to be free from such manipulation. 

 Other fraudulent processes used by slot machine manufacturers are called “mapping” and “virtual unbalanced reels.”  We have been shown overwhelming evidence that both Class II and Class III gambling machines approved by state gaming control boards across the US and by the National Indian Gaming Commission use a "conversion" process where a random outcome from a fixed prize pool, like a bingo game (Class II) or complex paytables (Class III) are converted and displayed as game outcomes on what appears to be real slot machines.

 Both classes of gambling machines may use mapping and virtual unbalanced reels that are intended to distort players’ perceptions of the true probabilities of winning. It is our understanding that the NIGC testing labs do not check and scrutinize these concealed processes or features to see if they can distort players’ perceptions or if they contravene US federal fraud laws or consumer protections laws.  Since the federal labs are remiss in this responsibility, the New Mexico Attorney General’s office should work with the New Mexico Gaming Control Board to accomplish this testing.

 We call for a new technical standard to be introduced that bans any process or feature that has the potential to mislead players by distorting the players perceptions in any manner. The use of subliminal “near jackpot” messages, mapping, and unbalanced reels should be outlawed because their intended purpose is to give the player the perception the odds are better than they actually are by displaying game outcomes, using subliminal messages and mapping to "weight" various outcomes that deliberately "distort" the true odds of winning.  This appears to us to violate consumer protection standards that the federal government and New Mexico apply to almost every other industry in the country. 

In her report “Digital Gambling: The Coincidence of Desire and Design,” Professor Natasha Dow Schull of MIT, who spoke on this topic in Santa Fe during the last New Mexico legislative session, indicates that slot manufacturers accomplish “addiction by design” in their efforts to increase number of games per unit time and increase length of time played on their machines.  Advanced psychological, physiological and technological sophistication are employed by machine manufacturers to inextricably bind the gambler to their product.  Schull describes technology that attempts to place the player in a “zoning rhythm,” where “conventional spatial, bodily, monetary, and temporal parameters are suspended.”  It is a sort of hypnotic state where “clock time” is suspended, money is transformed into merely “credit” to continue play, and where “the game-fitted phenomenal world of the zone, human and machine seem to merge.”  This is why,  Dr. Schull says, that several gambling industry representatives use the phrase, “playing to extinction,” when describing a slot machine’s hold on some players.

 Whether or not the gambling giants initially intended to send gamblers into the “zone,” having recognized their lucrative achievement, they continue to refine the processes to increase the strength of the relationship between the gambler and the slot machine.  It is conspicuous from Professor Schull’s work that the gambling machine manufacturers have developed and the casinos employ the nearly perfect addiction machine. But when applied to the portion of the population that may already be predisposed to addiction, it is  exploitation in truest form…an exploitation that is sanctioned and promoted by our own government.

 Can anyone of you name another product that has been made widely available to the public that is allowed to do this without facing criminal prosecution?

 The exploitation of our fellow citizens has occurred in large part because most of our leaders and our media don't play the machines and have no understanding how they are designed and operate.  If most of them examined these machines with the same level of scrutiny that they would apply to any other consumer product, I am confident that they too would agree that our state and our country has gone too far.

 The time has come for the New Mexico Attorney General’s office to launch a full scale investigation into the design and technology of the gambling machines in this state which will help put a stop to exploitive gambling…something which completely goes against our country’s principles of freedom, fairness and opportunity.

 Please contact me regarding your response to our complaint.

 Cordially,

 Dr. Guy C. Clark, executive director

New Mexico Coalition Against Gambling

3613 HWY 528, suite G

Albuquerque, NM 87114

(w)    505-898-8011

(c)    505-259-7541