A formative experience of mine was having a breakdown while working in Vegas. I was broke AF, had no ride, and was stuck off the Strip from Friday afternoon until Tuesday morning. Which meant a lot of walking in Vegas on a weekend in September.

The tables make money, yeah, but there are senior citizens plugged into the nickel and penny slots like something out of the Matrix. And once you buy the machines, the only thing they cost you is electricity and floor space.

I've done design work for casinos. Yeah, the tables are nice, but...

I designed this marvelous Mondrian-style video wall for the Playboy Club at the top of the Palms. Had like 80 screens, landscape and portrait. Was an 80-head video server that showed nothing but pictorial from 50 years of Playboy. And we went through this whole process, and they bought the panels (back when they were expensive), and they bought the servers, and they paid the licensing fees, and then the Nevada Gaming Commission showed up the day before we opened and the guy looked left and the guy looked right and he said

"You boys aren't seriously thinkin' of putting slots within 50 feet of PORNOGRAPHY, are ya?"

Eight slot machines vs. a half million dollar porn wall. And thus the directive came down:

Filter all pictorial so that there was no content beyond PG.

Playboy Club.

Top of The Palms.

Eight slot machines.

Day before opening.

The Palms would rather have had their half million dollar wall show flying toasters than lose the revenue from eight slot machines.