Slot machine pulled from Canadian casinos remains in Boonville

Controversy surrounding a number of video slot machines manufactured by Konami Gaming has found its way to mid-Missouri.

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission pulled 87 machines out of the Canadian province’s casinos for investigation late last month after it was determined that a winning combination of five identical symbols were displayed in a line at the beginning of a two-second spin cycle. A machine identical to one of those in question, titled “The Billionaires,” is also operated at the Isle of Capri Casino in Boonville, which refused to comment on the story.

The Ontario casino operator pulled the machines over concerns about subliminal messages, words or images that could possibly influence behavior without the viewer being aware.

The occurrence was initially discovered by a slow-motion videotape of the spin cycle taken by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. The duration of the images, at 200 milliseconds, or one-fifth of a second, is not enough time to “see” the symbols with the naked eye. However, that doesn’t mean the images aren’t processed by the brain, according to Jeff Rouder, director of the Perception and Cognition Lab at the MU Department of Psychological Sciences.

“Showing images for 200 milliseconds influences all sorts of behavior,” he said, although “even if they were expecting it, they wouldn’t be aware of what they saw.”

Rouder has conducted experiments at 200 milliseconds in which subjects identified a number as higher or lower than 5 with 85 percent accuracy in a laboratory environment, but the surrounding visual noise of a casino would impair a person’s ability to process symbols on a slot line. It is not clear if the symbols displayed on “The Billionaires” machine are influencing gambler behavior.

Todd Nelson, electronic gaming device coordinator for the Missouri Gaming Commission, says the commission will allow Konami to resolve the issue with casinos unless it receives a complaint from the public.

“We do not feel (displaying the images for) 200 milliseconds is an issue,” he said.

The machines, which Konami says are some of its oldest and least profitable titles, suffer from a “software anomaly,” according to Steve Sutherland, chief operating officer of Konami Gaming.

Sutherland’s claim is backed up by Gaming Laboratories International, the New Jersey-based firm that tests slot machines for 450 jurisdictions in North America. While James Maida, president of the firm, couldn’t offer specifics until the investigation was over, he thinks the faulty code “was not deliberately placed there.”

Konami is offering free software conversions to casinos with the affected games. If the Isle of Capri were to accept the software, the game would have to be taken out of service until the new program code was approved by the MGC.

“Anytime they change anything in the code, it has to be reapproved,” said Nelson.