'It seriously slowed people down': Neil wants pokies machines to play 'losing sounds'. Here's why

During a Christmas lunch with mates, Neil Walshe reluctantly shuffled into a pokies room.

Nothing was amiss: Flashing lights and high-pitched slot machine jingles are a common backdrop to pub meals in Australia.

But then came a startling realisation.

"As they always do, my mates say, 'We're going to go and have a slap', and so I walked in the room with them," Walshe recalled to Nine.com.au.

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"They're gambling away and I'm just trying to entertain myself.

"And I realised then and there that I couldn't hear any losing sounds in the whole room."

He was right – there are hundreds of thousands of poker machines in operation in Australia.

Almost none of them have a specific sound to indicate when money is lost.

Instead, gamblers are injected with an artificial dopamine hit thanks to the sound of winning chimes at the end of a game. Or there is no sound at all.

It is something addiction experts have long described as "losses disguised as wins".

"I might bet a dollar, win back 20 cents. But nonetheless, the machine plays a sound effect, a positive sound effect," Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, Dan Myles, explained.

"It also plays the kinds of animations that you would typically see following a genuine win.

"The research has shown us that people do tend to overestimate how often they think they're winning when we include these events in a gambling session, relative to when we remove them."

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Walshe was determined to prove that the absence of loss sounds was stirring up addiction inside even casual gamblers.

He took the matter into his own hands and conducted research into the impact of losing sounds.

He bought a poker machine, rigged it to play a specific sound when players lost, and tested it on a group of casual players.

A sound engineer created the losing "bleep" in a descending minor key, similar to the sound you hear if you die in a video game.

Tampering with a poker machine is technically illegal in most states and territories.

Walshe risked a hefty fine or jail but he said it was for a "good cause".

"I wanted to take away this dopamine hit that seems to be dished out no matter whether you win or lose," he explained.

Walshe is no addiction expert but he said the results speak for themselves.

"The small-scale test proved when I tested it on these gamblers was that they didn't actually like hearing the losing sound," he said.

"And every time it went off, they would reassess how much money they had, and they would think twice about putting more money in.

"From what I saw with our experiment, it seriously slowed people down."

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Myles agrees that the addition of losing sounds would "balance the scales" for players who might mistakenly inflate their wins.

He said animations and sounds contribute to a deep state of psychological immersion in gaming machines, which can lead to addiction.

"We are doing research that's looking into what manipulating these features might do, and how we could maybe better regulate these machines to make them less misleading," Myles added.

Australians lose $31.5 billion to the gambling industry each year, according to a 2025 report released by Equity Economics.

The average loss on a pokies machine amounts to more than $1950 per person.

How one family was left devastated by pokies addiction

Brad* was blindsided years ago when his wife secretly gambled away $150,000 on the pokies.

He told Nine.com.au his world came crashing down when he applied for a home loan.

"I should have had about $60,000 [in a term deposit]. They told me there was only an account with $4.21 in it," Brad said.

"Initially I thought... we've been scammed."

"But there had been an ongoing addiction unknown to me for probably five or six years."

His relationship ended and his family was left irreparably broken by the pokies addiction.

"The kids' inheritance had gone... The Mastercard had been maxed out," he said.

"I just never bounced back financially."

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The fight to change the law

Brad said he passionately supported Walshe's ambitious attempt at changing the law.

And Walshe knows he is facing a David versus Goliath battle by squaring up against a billion-dollar industry.

He hopes that one small law change like adding losing sounds will make a big difference.

A Change.org petition has been set up to call on gaming authorities to change the design of machines.

There is some progress being made in gambling law reform after the federal government announced sweeping changes to betting advertising would come into effect.

And other anti-gambling advocates have called for loss limits on pokies machines to be enforced in Australia.

"Laws can change overnight if they want it to happen," Walshe said.

"We saw it during COVID.

"Even if it takes years pushing this ... the losing sound might just be another little lever that helps more gambling reform happen."

*Not his real name.

There are many different ways to get help and information about gambling.

You can visit the National Gambling Helpline or call on 1800 858 858.Readers seeking support can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyond blue on 1300 22 4636.

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