Losing Sound - A Project To Make Pokies Less Addictive

Aussies lose $12 billion a year on pokies. Why? Because machines are psychologically rigged to keep players in a trance - they deliberately don't have losing sounds.

After watching a relative lose $150k, I decided to expose this. I bought a black-market pokie machine - risking 12 months in prison - and hacked it. We engineered a psychological "losing sound" using 8-bit game-over cues and secretly tested it on real punters.

The result? Their urge to keep playing halved.

We're now pushing for legislation to force this feature on all machines. Sign the petition here:

change.org/p/enforce-losing-sounds-in-australian-poker-machines

The full project can be seen here: losingsound.com

Credits

Project by: Neil Walshe

Project for: The Truth About Addiction & Stories of Hope Australia

Losing SFX by: Jeremy Richmond

Directed by: Milos Mlynarik

In partnership with:

Rumble Studios

Milos Photography

Sure Studios

Optika

Cast 

Trevor Jones

Mayra Nascimento

Paul Presdee

Roslyn Lynch

Paul Amaral

Dr Anastasia Hronis

Jeremy Richmond

Assistant Director: Kota Sato

Voice Over: Daniel William  

Stylist: Emma Cotterill  

Gaffer: Steve Schofield, Alan Fraser  

Sound: Dexter Cave

Data Wrangler: Woodsee  

Editor: James Tyrrell  

Score: Jeremy Richmond  

Effects: John Agapitos

Thanks to so many people along the way:

Alex Booker, Antony Aston, Ant Melder, Benn Sutton, Ben Rae, Dave Anlezark, Felix Bornholdt, Jade Manning, Justin Solomons, Kelly Walshe, Kerrie Atherton, Kiara Watson, Mariah Ferrer, Michael Harris, Nick Polovineo, Nick Wilkinson, Nils Eberhardt, Parisa Rezaei-Abyaneh, Peter Kanellopoulos, Rino Darusman, Ron Isherwood, Ryan Greves, Tequila Isherwood, Tommy Cehak, Vincent Osmond