Indeed! As has been previously documented by ourselves and many others back in the day at Fruit Forums and other haunts, there's something unusually pernicious about the way fruit machines managed to get under our skins and just make us want to play them and play them.
It wasn't just the
illusion of player control, it was that there was
actual player control, at least to an extent, even for numpties like us. So if you could hit a skill stop or a reel skill, or understood how certain features worked, you felt that your ability was affecting your ability to win (or lose.....), and the knowledge that the machines were compensated (i.e. they'd always pay out something eventually) made them ever more enticing.
(I remember a very long thread at Fruit Forums ('The real price of fruit machines' or something like that) where tens upon tens of people chronicled their own misfortune with fruit machines, the stories were remarkably similar in many regards, and what struck me is that none of us were idiots, in fact a common factor seemed to be that we were a pretty smart bunch of young chaps, who somehow had been sucked into this incredibly destructive vortex of addiction. As I recall none of us were much interested in any other form of gambling, even other slot machines which were random as opposed to compensated, there was something unique about AWPs and their nature that sucker-punched us all.)
Of course what none of us knew at the time is that we were onto the ultimate losing gamble, because through a dreadful combination of incompetence and corruption the fruit machine manufacturers were selling fundamentally broken machines, and a relatively small band of professional players were making out like bandits (usually two-armed), whilst the rest of us lined their pockets.
Fruit machines very nearly finished me off, I remember being left feeling suicidal on more than occasion, losing friendships, relationships, fucking up jobs, my degree (twice...), being left with piles of debt and my entire life basically being a fucking bomb site for many years. Yes the drink and drugs didn't help but I honestly think they were a by-product of the fruit machine addiction.
So yes, in the final analysis, like you Cavey, I'm just grateful to have emerged on the other side in (mostly!) one piece