AAA<\/p>\n
The idea came to Neil Walshe in the neon-lit aisles of a pokies room on a night out with mates.<\/p>\n
Watching the whir of symbols and numbers, Walshe, who recalls a brief curiosity with poker machines when he was 18, suddenly felt bewildered by the mechanics of the games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realised that there\u2019s no losing sounds,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
It gnawed at Walshe, an advertising creative director, so much so that he decided to create a poker machine with a distinct losing sound on every spin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf poker machines actually played what\u2019s going on, you\u2019d know before you sat down that you\u2019re probably going to lose money here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1365c185e8493a8e3e1f34f14a6567fd142f2e32ac3b6a065349f8d56a53d5ab.jpeg\")
The campaign takes into account the potential dopamine effect of winning sounds on pokies. Milos Mlynarik<\/p>\n
There are more pokies than ATMs in Australia, a country that loses between $13 billion and $16 billion every year on the machines.<\/p>\n
NSW accounts for the bulk of those losses, with $9.3 billion<\/a> gambled in that state last year. The latest data for Queensland shows $3.43 billion lost in 2023-24, from $39 billion spent. <\/p>\n Walshe is attuned to consumer behaviour through his line of work, but his stance on pokies is more than just a side quest into the human psyche.<\/p>\n Related Article About a decade ago, a relative lost $150,000 in a year gambling on the machines.<\/p>\n \u201cIt busted their family up, and it was devastating,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been very angry at them for a long time, but now I start to see the evil in the machines rather than the people.\u201d<\/p>\n Poker machines are curated to hook players, explains Monash University gambling policy researcher Charles Livingstone.<\/p>\n The combination of lights, sounds and colours stimulate the brain, conditioning it to associate winning with pleasure.<\/p>\n \u201cIn front of a machine, what you\u2019re doing is subjecting yourself to a couple of types of \u2018reinforcement\u2019 \u2026 something that conditions your behaviour so that you become habituated,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cOne is called operant conditioning, developed by B.F. Skinner in the 1950s. He discovered that if you reward an animal, including a human, with an intermittent, unpredictable reward in response to a certain task \u2026 they are much more consistent at the task.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you sit in front of a poker machine, you see exactly that happening to you.\u201d<\/p>\n Livingstone says the visual and aural stimuli<\/a>, alongside the promise of reward, affect the flow of neurochemicals into the brain.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat these stimuli do on the poker machine is they stimulate the flow of dopamine. In well-designed slot machines \u2026 that flow of dopamine becomes effectively constant.<\/p>\n \u201cThat has the capacity to effectively addict you. You become very conditioned to keep doing this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n To compose the losing sounds, Walshe partnered with sound designers from Rumble Studios, producing six options based on psychology.<\/p>\n \u201cStudies show that a descending minor key heightens unease in people,\u201d sound engineer Jeremy Richard explains in a video promoting the project.<\/p>\n \u201cWhich is why we took inspiration from video games, especially the sound you hear when you die.\u201d<\/p>\n The real hurdle was finding a machine that could be rigged for the experiment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was impossible to find one,\u201d Walshe says.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to reach out to people who, I thought, were dodgy, and they got me in touch with someone who could get hold of a poker machine.<\/p>\n \u201cIt did rock up in an alley on the back of a ute, and I had to shuffle it into the garage really quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n Players to test the machine were sourced from a post in his local Facebook community group. They were warned the algorithm had been modified \u201cto be less addictive but just as fun\u201d, but were not told losing sounds had been added to the game.<\/p>\n Of the participants surveyed after the test, 80 per cent said they felt happy before the sound was turned on; 20 per cent excited. <\/p>\n While playing with the losing sound, 60 per cent said they felt bored; the remaining irritated or anxious. All respondents said the sounds made them more aware of their losses compared with regular machines.<\/p>\n \u201cI could not enjoy or have the same fun or hope to win the next game due to so many losing sounds,\u201d one participant said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels like the next one [is] going to be another loss and I did not want that, so this why I wanted to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n Another wrote that they \u201ctended to \u2018block out\u2019 the losing sounds\u201d after a while, but conceded they were \u201ceffective at making me realise that I had a losing spin that would cost me $$$\u201d.<\/p>\n Gambling reform advocate Kate Seselja<\/a> lost half a million dollars to pokies over 15 years, an addiction that nearly cost her her life.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what parameters you set, what mindset you go into a venue with. As soon as you\u2019re in front of that product, you are absolutely captured and hijacked in a way that doesn\u2019t make sense to how you were before that encounter,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe life before sitting in front of a machine and the life that emerges after \u2026 changes in an instant.\u201d<\/p>\n Seselja was 18 years old when she wandered into the gaming room of a club and played the pokies for the first time.<\/p>\n \u201cI stayed away from drugs because I didn\u2019t want to accidentally die from a drug overdose \u2026 not realising that poker machines were way more addictive than any drug,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re five times more likely to take your life from gambling harm than any other addiction. That\u2019s where I think the real crime is, that the industry is allowed to say that it is harmless entertainment. It\u2019s the furthest thing from that.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article Queensland has nearly 41,000 poker machines spread across more than 1000 sites, with research showing<\/a> these tended to be concentrated in the most disadvantaged communities.<\/p>\n While governments publicly express disdain for the harm caused by gambling \u2013 the Crisafulli government is investing more than $17 million in harm-reduction services \u2013 actions can be contradictory. The Queensland government makes more than a billion dollars in revenue on pokies each year. When planning for Brisbane\u2019s Queen\u2019s Wharf<\/a>, the former Labor government made special provisions to allow more machines.<\/p>\n Through her work with Gambling Harm Lived Experience Experts (GHLEE), Seselja says she hears from people daily considering taking their own lives as a result of gambling.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to talk two 70-year-old women out of taking their lives last week. I talked to a 57-year-old woman today. [There are also] young men, old men. It doesn\u2019t discriminate.\u201d<\/p>\n Human suffering and the well-researched nature of gambling\u2019s addictiveness has kept Seselja close to the industry.<\/p>\n Where Walshe has launched a campaign calling for losing sounds to be added to pokies, Seselja<\/a> wants each state and territory to introduce loss limits on machines of $100 a day, $500 a month and $5000 a year.<\/p>\n![\"More](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/369bade41cb2e09a819e2a5774c8812bf3c383d5.jpeg\")
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By design, poker machines are curated to hook players. Virginia Star<\/p>\n![\"Walshe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/34f5dea254edf16001c78cd0a78cf506d5e36ae3af4bf9cf30b7218640c0a839.jpeg\")
Walshe obtained a real poker machine for the experiment. Milos Mlynarik<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/e5b295e9c1f67f923aa405782efd32d241cf2d91e02b6737a52eae77de299ffc.jpeg\")
A player tests Walshe\u2019s poker machine, with a losing sound on bets that don\u2019t win.Milos Mlynarik<\/p>\n![\"Kate](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/95047f5c76b7dd462fb5361e0254f5d3e1c62346.jpeg\")
Kate Seselja is leading a campaign calling on all states to enforce spending limits on pokies.James Brickwood<\/p>\n![\"Reforms](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/381410e979c4494f0c9e94c49ecf57c2b8d51d92.jpeg\")
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