Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

“Modern individuals are not merely ‘free to choose,’” Rose elaborates, following his colleague Anthony Giddens, “but obliged to be free, to understand and enact their lives in terms of choice.” As the psychologist Barry Schwartz points out, the pressure to sift through an “oppressive abundance” of choice can tyrannize and debilitate, increasing the potential for disappointment, regret, and guilt, and leaving individuals “feeling barely able to manage” their lives.

Bill Friedman and other experience-attentive casino designers advocate “a constant adjustment of the building,” as one put it, resulting in the production of “ergonomic labyrinths” that facilitate “happy imprisonment.”