Marketing Slots to Millennials

It's time to talk again about skill-based slots and gambling and what the manufacturers and programmers hope will resonate with the younger players who find luck-oriented games boring. 

I picked up a magazine called Gambling Insider at G2E this fall that reported that Las Vegas welcomed 41 million visitors in 2014, although just 12% came to gamble. In fact, only 4% of first-time visitors came to gamble. The younger crowd comes to Vegas for the pool parties, restaurants, and nightclubs, not for the slots and table games. The big question at G2E this fall was, how can the casinos attract these younger players with games that appeal to the Candy Crush Crowd.

Eric Meyerhofer of Gamblit Gaming of Glendale, CA, is trying to do just that. You may have heard him speak at G2E. If not, Random $$ Slots has a channel of films from the Gaming Expo you can watch on YouTube. Eric Meyerhofer’s goal is twofold. He wants to bring real money wagering to mobile gaming. He also wants to put the company’s touch-controlled surface tables into casino bars and nightclubs offering social gambling games for gamers and their friends. “Gambling should be about entertainment,” he says, and the idea is to bring a product to players that they already know and understand as entertainment rather than expect them to shift their taste to a more passive experience. Skill gaming and Social gaming — that’s where we’re headed. 

One Gamblit game that attracted a lot of attention at G2E was the company’s Grab Poker game. HERE is a video of an interview with a representative of the company explaining the game which basically involves swiping a table-top screen to grab the best set of cards first.  The company expects the game to be a road-ready reality next year after final regulations are passed by the state and the games are tested.

For the big brands like Scientific Games, skill-based gaming mostly meant adding bonus rounds to their traditional slots, such as actually playing SPACE INVADERS.

For the SIMPSONS, it meant  physically scratching a lottery ticket or catching donut sprinkles during a virtual trip to the Kwik-E-Mart.

I’m sure all of you who attended G2E made a trip to Konami’s booth to see the historic favorite FROGGER.

IGT’s CENTIPEDE has been in the casinos for a while now. There’s a video you can see in the February 19  blog entry: Slots for a New Generation. I haven’t been able to find a slot for Guitar Hero yet, but G2 Game Design plans to come out with the game as a skill-based slot according to AP articles.

Nevada’s governor Brian Sandoval has signed Senate Bill 9 that paves the way for slot machines in Nevada to incorporate skill-based, arcade-like aspects into games. There may be variable payback to these slots. “The payback on a slot machine is currently around the 88% mark, but this could rise to 98% for a skill-based slot if a player is especially proficient at a game, ensuring the house still turns a profit. If a game is a pure skill game, only the most skillful will win and that’s not a mass-market product” says Meyerhofer. “Hybrid games have a blend of skill and chance in the way that poker does. You won’t win every single night, but you can win often enough to take a chance.” Maybe so, but 98% payback seems very high to me. Even if few players will have the skill to win these games.

Dyed in the wool casino players probably will not like the prospect of casinos eventually resembling an amusement arcade. They will need to achieve a balance between traditional and new.  Meyerhofer foresees chance and skill based games spread across the casino floor and into the bars and other areas designed for lounge style gaming. Some casinos may have e-sport zones where you can speculate and wager on various sports or players.  My question is, will there still be banks of slots for those of us depending on luck, not skill, to play?

Skill-based slots are expected to begin appearing in Nevada casinos sometime in 2016. That’s when we’ll get to see whether these machines do captivate the Playstation and mobile gaming generation. And whether the blue-haired ladies and the silver foxes can still find enough double/triple diamond games to entice them to play in their grandsons’ gaming houses.  I hope so. But you probably won’t see me there!