Ka-Ching! Pokie Nation

The pokies. They’re rigged, they’re addictive, and they’re everywhere. And most of the machines are in the poorest postcodes across the nation. They’ve got almost half a million Australians hooked. And that’s exactly what they’re designed to do. Produced by Neil Lawrence and Mitzi Goldman and directed by Jane Manning, Ka-Ching! Pokie Nation exposes how the seemingly innocuous pokie machines at your local pub are programmed for addiction. For the first time, industry insiders go on the record to explain how these sophisticated machines combine graphics and musical elements with complex mathematical algorithms to keep punters hooked. Hear from game designers, mathematicians and composers who’ve designed hundreds of machines, as they break the silence around this highly secretive industry. Their testimonies are supported by world-leading neuroscientists, who take us into the lab to show how these machines work on our brains, leading some researchers to call them “the crack cocaine of gambling” and “electronic morphine”.