Slotomaniacs

That's me.  I have been driven to drink by Slotomania.  It wasn't always this way.

I have been playing Sloto for a while.  It is a free casino style slot game by Playtika.  Download the app and instant entertainment after a long day.  Mindless spinning and leveling up.  Just spinning and winning.  If your friends were playing, you could send and receive gifts.  I started spinning from the first days of Sloto.  At that time, they had just a few games and you had to level up to be able to play.  It was my guilty pleasure.

Then, it started to change.  I understood.  Playtika wanted to make money.  It is understandable.  Everyone wants to make money.  So, they devised little games within the games in order to get players to buy packages of coins to spin. 

They started with the club.  Get in the club, get more benefits.  Buy packages, get more benefits.  Then status points.  The higher your status the more your bonuses.  Then albums.  Then, daily dashes.  Heroes required you to play several times a day to get the maximum benefits.  Believe it or not, when I started, 10,000 coins could get me spinning for hours.  Now, a billion lasts me only a few minutes.  We started trading little tricks with our friends. 

When you get to know someone online, it is a weird thing.  Somehow, you develop an intimacy that wouldn't exist in person.  Somehow, over the last year, I have developed a strong friendship with a friend of a friend that I have only met in person once.  But, we talk everyday online.  Sharing our sloto woes and wins.  Not only her, but, her mother that I love dearly.  We often chat while we spin.  I laugh out loud while we chat.  Not only have we shared our sloto experiences, we have shared our life experiences.  We have cheered our personal victories and been there for each other in times of challenges.  My friend has some serious health issues.  We usually check in with each first thing in the morning.  If I don't hear from her, I really worry. 

I have to tell you that when I was a child, my mother used to drag me with her to play bingo.  I would be in the bathroom with wet paper towels over my eyes because the smoke bothered me so much.  Of all my vices, bingo has not been one of them.  I can't stand bingo but I have seriously thought of driving to their town, an hour and a half away, just to play bingo with these ladies.  That is how tight our bond is. 

Slotomania has always provided superior customer service.  When you contact them with an issues, they address is quickly and professionally. 

December 25, 2017 gave me some serious perspective on my sloto experience.  I was staying in a hotel visiting out of province family.  Sloto was not working.  This happens occasionally so I went on the game facebook page to see if it was really not working or if there was something wrong with my wifi connection.  It turns out, the game was down.  There were thousands of comments and I read them all and they were really funny.  It was Christmas Day and people were literally foaming at the mouth with anger that they were not able to play their precious game.  In all of these comments, one particularly struck a chord with me.  The gentleman said, "damn it, now I guess I have to spend time with my family at Christmas." 

That told me there were serious addicts and that was good for sloto.  The more you are addicted, the more you spend to reach the daily dashes, the quests, snakes and ladders.  More and more games within the games. 

And, now the latest thing.  Clans.  You have to join a clan to get points and bonuses and the more your clan members win, you win as well.  I think Sloto realized that we already had small clans.  My "sister", her mom, my partner, and one of her mom's friends were already a clan that helped each other with trading cards.  I suspect there were a lot of clans operating clandestinely all over the world. 

Playtika knew what they were doing when they started Clans officially.  They were turning the game into a game of Survivor.  You have to spin a lot to help your clan achieve success.  Each clan member, one of ten, can see other clan members progress.  Essentially, we can see how the dead weight in.  Clans are also set up not to be communal because they have a leader.  The leader can remove non-performing members of the clan without any consultation with the rest of the group.   I have been in many leadership positions in my professional life and I can tell you that a leader who acts without consultation is not much of a leader.  The group will split.  Just like on Survivor.  There will be factions against each other.  It is just human nature.  The only winner will be Playtika.  Deleted players will find new clans and make every effort not to be deleted again.  We all have things called life that may interfere with our ability to spin.  Jobs.  Sick relatives.  Hospitalization.  Family emergencies.  Just wanting to go outside and enjoy nature and have a walk.  Just wanting to take a take off to support a friend.  Lots of things, but, now, people will be scared that they will be deleted for non-performance.  The Clan thing is a dangerous social experiment that will only benefit Playtika. 

I saw a funny post yesterday.  It was from a man saying good-bye to the group because his wife was tired of him spending his whole day spinning.  She asked him to choose between her and Sloto.  The man said he would be gone for a while.  He was going to pack her bags and call her a taxi.  He expected to be back within two hours.  Ha ha.  Yes, it was funny, and also sad.  I wonder how much truth was in this funny post. 

I know I am no better.  As I was typing, I got the notification that my bonus was ready, so I stopped to collect it. 

No one is holding a gun to my head or anyone else's head to play.  I freely decide to play.  Playtika mines my data to make the dashes just beyond my reach.  I accept that I still wage a losing battle to try.  They are going to continue to come up with new and innovative ways to try and get us to spend money.  I accept that, too.  They need to make money and that is what free enterprise is all about. 

We aren't out to make money.  We are out to have an escape from everyday life and some mindless entertainment while we procrastinate from doing household chores or taking a mini-break from reality at our jobs.  Let's remember that.  To us, sloto is just a game.  A game we enjoy, but just a game.  A game which will never love us back or give us a hug.  I have won over a trillion coins on one spin.  It was pretty exciting and intoxicating.  But, the high didn't last long.  I was over it very quickly.  If I had to choose a cuddle from my grandson or twenty minutes of sloto, believe me, it wouldn't be a hard choice and it wouldn't be slot. 

Casinos have to have literature available for problem gamblers.  Maybe Slotomania may need to have some warnings as well. 

Basically, let's return to what brought us to sloto in the first place.  Mindless entertainment.  Let's not make this clan thing what Playtika wants it to be. A divider.  A splitter of alliances.  Hard feelings against each other.  Let's show ethical behavior within our clans.  A time to cheer us all on. 

I just hope I haven't been kicked out of my clan for not spinning this morning.