November 2026 · 4 min read
Design in gaming and casinos
I’ve designed for large casino and sportsbook products, and I came away with a lot of respect for game design. Games have some of the best feedback design there is. They’re also a reminder that the tools that make something exciting can just as easily make it unfair.
Everything answers
Press a button in a good game and something happens straight away. A sound, a flash, a number ticking up. You never wonder whether the game heard you, and that certainty is a big part of why it feels good to play.
Most software is quieter than it should be. A form that submits with no sign it’s working, a switch that waits a beat before it moves, a save you have to take on trust. A game would treat that silence as a bug. I think interfaces should too.
Good games answer in proportion, too. A footstep gets a soft sound, and a goal gets the whole crowd. The size of the response tells you the size of what happened, before you’ve read anything.
Anticipation is timing
A slot is a good place to see how much timing does. On a modern machine, the result is decided the moment you press spin. Everything after that is presentation.
So the reels could all stop together. They don’t, because stopping them one after another turns one result into three small moments. Each one gives your eye time to land, and gives you something to hope for from the next.
That’s the lesson I take into everything else: a sequence reads better than a pile. Rows that arrive one after another, a total that lands after its parts, a step that waits for the one before it. Stagger things, and people can follow them.
It’s also where the line starts. Plenty of slots spin the last reels for longer when a bonus is one symbol away. That’s still timing, but it’s timing used to tease, and I’d leave it out.
A win has to be a win
Picture a spin that costs a dollar and pays back forty cents. The lights go, the coins pour, a number counts up. It looks like a win. You’ve lost sixty cents.
Researchers call this a loss disguised as a win. The presentation says one thing, the balance says another, and the presentation is louder. That isn’t a failing in the player. Anyone reads the celebration first, because that’s what celebrations are for.
Shown as a win of $0.40.
In 2021, the UK Gambling Commission changed the rules for online slots in Great Britain. Among other things, a game can’t celebrate a return that’s equal to or less than the stake, can’t offer autoplay or anything that speeds play up, and has to take at least 2.5 seconds a spin. It also has to show players what they’ve won or lost, and how long they’ve been playing.
I like rules like that, because good design was already most of the way there. A result should say what it is. If the player came out ahead, celebrate it, in proportion. If they didn’t, say so plainly, and don’t make them work it out. The balance should never be the only honest thing on the screen.
Don’t hurry the player
Speed is usually a compliment in software. In a casino, it can be a problem. Faster play means more spins an hour, and with a house edge, more spins means more lost on average. A design that strips out every pause isn’t neutral.
So the pace belongs to the player. Limits, breaks and the balance should be easy to find, not three screens deep. A session reminder shouldn’t look like an ad to swipe away. None of that makes a game less fun. It makes it something a player can trust.
Friction isn’t always the enemy, either. A pause before a big deposit, a clear way to take a break, a limit that’s quick to lower and slow to raise: that’s the design doing its job.
What I took from it
Most interfaces could do with a bit more of the game in them: things that answer, sequences that build, moments that feel like moments. And most games could do with what good interfaces have, which is honesty about where you stand. Both questions are worth asking of anything you make: does it answer, and is it honest about what happened?
The craft is the same either way. What changes is who it’s working for.