Actually I have nothing against poker machine per se; I just didn’t like our implementation of them in the pre-release version of PQ, since there was a clear optimal path to victory, and once you learned it (which didn’t take too much effort) the game felt very lacklustre, and just pure RNG.
I wouldn’t rule out a fun poker-machine style game in Gems of War at some stage… I think it’d be pretty cool.
But, I just want to squish any rumors about a betting mini game for the pirate kingdom coming in the near future… the reason we implemented an AI vs. AI mode was for internally testing the new console AI, so we could sit and watch it, which is faster than playing it!