Part 1- Diagnosing a slot machine based on data

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Now that the thunderous applesauce (not a typo) from my previous article has died down, I thought I should also write about the other end of the spectrum which is, how does one evaluate the performance of a game. I've seen the numbers and the only thing that comes to mind is the intro spiel from the Six Million $ man which goes something like "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man."

 All jokes aside, I do feel like taking a successful game apart with my bare hands just to see what it is, that makes a good slot machine tick and make changes to it to see what reactions different changes provoke from the user base. For ex: Uproar from the userbase forced IGT to redo cosmetic changes to their venerable Cleopatra game. Not changes to the paytable, the reels or the maths, but just changes to the graphics had fans of the games going Planet of the apes on IGT. I am of course digressing into what MAKES a successful slot machine and hence shall apply prompt course correction to come back to the topic at hand. Numbers. Dry, unchanging, black and white numbers. Yeah.

That was a lie. You failed the test if you nodded along to that sentiment. Numbers aren't boring or dry! Numbers tell me everything(almost) I need to know about how a slot machine is performing. The only reason I cannot diagnose a slot machine is if I do not have the required depth of information or a good range of data to slice and dice like so much Swiss cheese. Lots of data is a Gouda thing. Thats the last pun in this article. Hopefully.

Now, what are the main influencing factors that I consider when I am thinking of a slot machine?
- The paytable
- The user experience
- The curiosity (explained in a previous article)
- The satisfaction (ditto)
- The intangiables (another way of saying I've got squat)

And what are the main data parameters that are influenced by the above factors?
- The number of people playing the game
- The number of times they came back to play the game
- The number of times they spun the ole one armed bandit
- The total wager they put on the machine
- The total winnings from the machine
- The revenue from that machine (Wager-win)

In the next article, if there is one, I shall talk about how I diagnose  a slot based on the above parameters and  what should be, in my humble opinion, the action to be taken. 

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