For characters in 3d, we create a visualization of the character’s model and work on texturing. A very effective way to convey the image of the hero is to create an illustration in a more narrative style. Reels spinning around and finally stopping on a symbol or a number, that's just a time-wasting simulation to make the game more exciting – and seductive. In fact, if you took the back off one of the modern video slot machines, you wouldn't see any spinning reels at all, jut a TV screen and some computer chips. Symbols are the unique icons that visually identify one slot machine from another. The theme of the slot machine dictates the major symbols that are available. It is common practice for most game developers to make sure that the two major symbols on their slot machine, the wild and scatter symbols, are strong characters that align with the theme.
Slot machines are more fun when you understand what’s going on with the game. If you don’t know what the slot machine symbols mean, and if you don’t know what it takes to get a winning combination, you might as well just play rocks scissors and paper with some stranger.
The purpose of this post is to take a detailed look at some of the inner workings of slot machines, especially as it relates to the slot machine symbols most commonly in use.
The traditions behind why slot machines use bar and fruit symbols are decades old, and the history of slot machines is fascinating all by itself.
In this post, I explain what the different slot machine icons mean and why it matters to the average player.
1-What Does the Bar Symbol Mean on a Slot Machine?
Slot machines have been around since the 1890s. You’d find these early slot machine games in bars and taverns in cities like New York and San Francisco. When gambling became illegal, these businesses started giving away candy and chewing gum instead of money.
Imagine going into a bar today and putting money into a slot machine with the opportunity to win a free drink or a cigar.
That’s what gambling in a tavern was like in the 1890s.
What does the bar symbol mean?
Think about what it looks like.
It’s a rectangle, right?
My first guess would be that the bar symbol on a slot machine symbolized a candy bar, but that would be too big. After all, keep in mind that the idea was to have prizes that were small, like coins.
The bar symbols on slot machines represent sticks of chewing gum — specifically, BAR chewing gum. (It was a popular brand of the Bell-Fruit Gum Company at the time.) They were in color in those days, and different colors meant different flavors of gum.
Slot machine makers still use bar symbols out of tradition, even though I’ve never seen a slot machine game that offers gum as a prize.
2- What Do the Fruit Symbols Mean on a Slot Machine?
Just as the bar symbol meant you were going to win chewing gum, the various flavors of fruit-inspired candy were prizes you could win. Cherry symbols meant winning cherry-flavored candy.
Apples meant winning apple-flavored candy. Oranges and plums, well… They meant you won dragonfruit and huckleberry flavored candy.
Just kidding.
Obviously, the picture of the fruit in question represented the flavor of candy you won.
And, again, the reason these symbols are still in use have more to do with tradition than anything else. People are just used to seeing these symbols on these games.
3- How Many Different Symbols Are There on a Slot Machine?
An average slot machine game might have about 20 symbols on each reel. This does NOT imply that each symbol has a 1/20 probability of coming up on a spin, though.
Modern slot machines use a random number generator to determine their results. These are actually random — they’re not fixed or rigged in any way.
The casino makes its money because the prize schedule for a slot machine game pays prizes in such a way that the game is inherently profitable.
Think about it this way:
Suppose you played a casino game where you had a 1 in 600 probability of winning, but when you won, you only got a payout of 500 to 1.
Do you see how that would be profitable for the casino?
You’d lose $1 on 599 spins, but you’d win $500 on the one spin, for a net loss of $99.
Such a game would have a house edge of around 17%, on average.
The payouts on a slot machine game are more complicated than that, but it’s the same principle.
4- What Are the Odds of Winning on a Slot Machine?
Here’s the thing about slot machines:
You don’t know what the odds of winning are.
And, to an extent, the odds of winning are irrelevant. What you’re really concerned about is the payback percentage.
That’s a ratio that compares the odds of winning with the amount you win. Over time, it represents the long-term average of how much money the casino will win from you on each bet.
Most slot machines have a hit ratio of about 1 in 3 or 1 in 4.
So it’s fair to see that on most slot machines, your odds of winning something are 3 to 1 or 2 to 1.
The problem is that the payouts aren’t commensurate with these odds of winning.
Also, slot machines pay off bets on an X for Y basis rather than an X to Y basis.
In blackjack, your payouts are in addition to what you risked. Bet $5 on a blackjack hand and win, and you get a 1 to 1 payout, or even money. You get your $5 bet back with $5 in winnings.
Gambling machines, though, pay back with odds on a 1 “for” 1 basis. Bet $5 on a spin of the slot machine reels, and you get $5 in winning in exchange for your $5 bet.
The machine acts like it’s a win, but the reality is that it’s a push.
This is also one of the reasons slot machines measure their odds using payback percentage rather than house edge.
When a slot machine game has a 90% payback percentage, it means that on average you get back 90% of each bet. Place a $5 bet, and you’ll get an average of $4.50 back over time — which means you’ll lose 50 cents per bet on average.
And that’s just the average including any jackpots you win. If you play in the short-term and don’t see a jackpot, you’ll usually see a lower payback percentage until you get some winnings and catch up.
5- Which Slot Machine Has the Best Payout?
How do you know which slot machine has the best payout?
The short answer to this question is easy enough:
You don’t.
You have NO WAY of knowing which machine has better payouts than the other machines. In fact, you can play an identical slot machine next to the one you started on and be facing a different payback percentage.
The casinos have no rhyme or reason in terms of where they place the higher and lower payout machines.
In the long run, it doesn’t even really matter. If you play a negative expectation game long enough — and slots are ALWAYS a negative expectation game — you’ll eventually lose all your money.
Stop worrying about which slot machine has the best payout.
Worry instead about how much fun you’re having — or not. If you don’t enjoy a specific game, move on to another game.
Slot Machine Symbols
6- Why Are They Called “Slot” Machines?
They’re called slot machines because you put your money into a slot to play.
When they were first invented, slot machines only worked on a literal coin-in and coin-out basis.
Now, of course, most slot machines work by accepting bills and spitting out a piece of paper with the amount you’re owed on it.
But we haven’t changed the name of the games.
Also, it’s not called a slot machine in other countries, always. In the United Kingdom, they’re called fruit machines. In Australia, they’re called “pokies,” which is short for poker machines.
That last nomenclature comes from their original nature — the first slot machines, which predated the machines that gave away candy — used playing cards to produce random results instead of symbols on metal reels.
7- Who Invented the Slot Machine?
According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, as well as many other legitimate sources, Charles Fey invented the first slot machines.
He born in Bavaria but was making his living as a mechanic in San Francisco when he invented slot machines in 1894. It didn’t take long for him to be doing so well that he started a factor to produce more slot machines.
The first 3-reel slot machine with machine-generated payouts in real money was invented in 1898, also by Charles Fey. The Liberty Bell, which most modern slot players would recognize as a real slot machine, came along in 1899 — another Fey invention.
There are only 4 Liberty Bell machines still extant.
Also, it didn’t take long for other companies, like the Mills Novelty Company, to steal Fey’s invention and start making money from their own versions of it.
Finally
Slot Machine Symbol Meanings
Those are the most accurate and concise answers to some of the most common questions about slot machines and their symbols on the internet.
What other questions do you have besides what do the symbols mean?
Leave me a note in the comments, and I’ll respond with an answer if I can.
As we’ve discussed in our previous article about the history of slot machines, where we learned about the invention, evolution and the future of the machines. Now we’ll dig a little deeper and be focusing more on the slot machine symbolsand icons.
The difference between them are that the symbols appear on the game’s reels and paytable. From the paytable is where you can learn about the different symbols for a specific game as well as what they represent, and of course the combinations you need to be able to trigger from them an actual payout.
The icons on the other hand are more like the slot machine’s logo and what the game represents as a whole. For example, the icon from the Wheel of Fortune machine in Vegas is represented by their famous wheel, followed by the name of the game, which is Wheel of Fortune. If you’re familiar with casino games online, you’ll be able to see all the different game’s icons, which we’ll go into more detail about later. In addition to all of this, we’ll be taking a look at the famous Fruit Slot Machines that you may or may not be familiar with.
Slot Machine Symbols
Believe it or not, slot machine symbols have come a long way since they’re very beginning. The first one was invented by Charles Fey around 1895. However, after looking back even further, we’ve learned that there was another gambling machine invented, which was actually more like a poker machine and used playing cards as their symbols.
With that said, many people believe that the first known symbols to appear on these machines were playing cards. In fact, even today you can see that there’s still a lot of them that use these symbols, mainly only the 10 card through the Ace. From the card symbols is where one of the most famous casino symbols comes from, which is the lucky number seven.
From the card symbols being used on the first gambling machine, Charles Fey used the suit of the cards as well as horseshoes and liberty bell symbols. Just like the first card symbols, you can still find these symbols being used on machines. As slots continued to grow and were even banned at one point, the machines had to come up with other forms of payouts besides using real money. One good example are the famous fruit symbols that would payout different types of fruit flavored gum based on the symbols that landed on a winning line, such as the cherry symbols. These payout rewards also attracted many young people, therefore these machines had to come up with other payout forms to appeal to the older crowds, such as money.
Types of Slot Symbols
There are a lot slot symbols out there, and they’re all unique in offering different kind of bonus games and features. In that case, let’s go over some of the common types of slot symbols.
How To Create Slot Machine Character Symbols
- Standard Reel Symbols are more of the classic ones we’ve just discussed, such as fruit symbols (cherries, grapes, oranges, melons and lemons) and the playing card symbols (Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks and Tens). These are still seen on some of the classic slots, however you will find a ton of different symbols on the newer video slots.
- Scatter Symbols can award both regular winning payouts and trigger bonus rounds
- Bonus Symbols trigger bonus rounds, however they’re different from the Scatter symbols as you have to land a certain amount of them on specific lines.
- Wild Symbols have many types; however, the most common Wild symbol will replace any of the other symbols on the reels to help create a winning combination.
Slot Machine Icons
Slot Machine Icons are very important in representing all the thousands of types of slot machines out there. They are the branding behind the machines, or sort of like the book cover for them. The images and the names usually found on the icons can tell someone a lot about the game. From the colors you can find on them, the animations, characters, text styles, etc. As little importance as they may seem, especially online, a lot of careful designing goes into making them. All this detail is important when trying to target a specific or broad audience. If you’ve ever played online before, you can click here to see an example of what all our video slot game icons look like at Caesars Casino online.
Fruit Slot Machine
Taking a look back in time, some of the first symbols on the slot machines in the U.S. all had fruit on them, such as (cherries, grapes, oranges, melons and lemons). These were called Fruit Slot Machines. The first one to come out in the States was from the 20th century. The original payouts back in the day were in the forms of fruit gum. Originally, you would win a certain flavor of gum depending on which fruit symbols would land on the reels. For example, if you landed three grape symbols on the reels, you would be rewarded with some grape flavored gum, and if three oranges landed, you would be walking home with some orange flavored gum in pocket.
The reason why these machines were rewarding chewing gum in the first place was because gambling was entirely illegal at that time, and this was one of the creative forms of payouts at that time. With popularity growing around the machines, some people were actually calling them chewing gum dispensers, rather than slot machines.
With so many new symbols being represented now, it’s not easy for these classic symbols to keep up with these new ones. Regardless, there’s still a ton of people out there that stay true to their roots and stick with the classic style games which can create a nostalgic feeling. There’s just something about these cherries and liberty bells that can bring you back down memory lane. Just seeing one of these symbols makes most people think right away about what they represent. Simply put, it’s a classic. And it will never go out of style. In fact, you can start playing some of these classic slots here at Caesars Casino online for free, 24/7.