Building an Online Casino Game – for science!

I have teamed up with a renowned German research institute to better understand gambling addiction and validate possible strategies to reduce gambling addiction. The project involved building an online casino clone (in python) with additional data collection capabilities and the development of the study’s website.

“Mr. Trippensee's way of working was characterized by the highest degree of utmost care and outstanding commitment. Particularly noteworthy are his constructive approach at all times to changing demands on the programming content as well as his flexibility and creativity, with which he always solved arising, unforeseeable challenges quickly and in a target-oriented manner.” – Dr. Larissa Schwarzkopf, Research Group Leader, IFT,  2021-11-30

The IFT (Institut für Therapieforschung, Munich) is one of the leading research institutes in the field of addiction disorders in Germany. Ther main areas of interest are alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, medication and gambling. The experimental TESSA study (Timeout: effects on spending, stress, arousal) investigates the effect of mandatory timeouts in simulated online gaming on stakes, subjectively perceived stress, craving, and physiologically measurable arousal. In other words: Do timeouts in an online casino game change the behavior of the player?

I was responsible for the planning, implementation and development of the simulated online casino software as well as the website. The website provides potential participants with information about the study and includes a tool for scheduling appointments. The project took approx. 3 months to plan and build. After agreeing on the scope and requirements, we decided on an agile project management approach based on Scrum in order to identify possible hidden requirements early on and to preserve flexibility.

The Features

The following features were incorporated into the final product:

• “Online Casino” type game (Slot machine)
• Ability to dynamically generate different timeout screens
• Ability to gather relevant player data (losses per round, stakes, etc.) and should output it into a defined manner
• Animations, sound and a design and feel that encourages players to keep playing
• Since the participants are paid real money, the probabilities of the game were correct and dynamically adjustable (The probability of losing over time but without causing frustration to the player)
• Contains dynamically customizable questionnaires that can be displayed at different times.
• A variety of “Standard”-applications like settings menu, randomizing using seeds, Introduction Screens, etc.

The Implementation

I used the open source game engine godot (https://godotengine.org/) to accelerate the development, especially to allow multi-platform exports (the game needed to run on tablets and computers).

Godot itself is very well documented and uses the programming language GDScript, which is a derivative of Python. Given that I have extensive experience with Python and Java, Godot was the perfect choice for this project.

As I was still studying full time, the actual implementation of the project took about a month, during which I delivered two releases each week for review. Thanks to this very close communication, we were able to make quick progress and incorporate the feedback very easily. Despite the tight schedule, we were able to deliver the software on time, thanks to my wonderful project partners at the IFT.  Overall, the project was a great success and I would like to thank the IFT team again for their constructive cooperation. First results of the study will be available in Fall of 2022. You can visit the IFT website for more information.

Would you like to know what the IFT thinks about our collaboration? I can send you the complete customer review, just contact me!

For ethical reasons, I will not publish the code. However, if you are interested, please feel free to contact me!

Lennard