Las Vegas Global Gaming Exposition (G2E)

Last week there were three back-to-back gaming conferences in Las Vegas; the biggest being the Global Gaming Exposition or G2E. There were some things, that we in the industry have heard about for a while, that are now coming to fruition.

Where one-armed bandits have always been standalone devices with a single game hard-wired into their circuitry and rotors, the industry is getting set to unroll a new generation of machines in which the games will be stored on back-office servers and downloaded at the whim of gamblers. Most importantly, the odds are downloaded from a central server location, not determined by internal machine algorithm any more.

Essentially, slot machines and video poker machines will become simple screens with no internal guts that may be changed on the fly at any time by casino officials looking to put the more in-demand games on casino floors when players want them. So if the Pamela Anderson version of slots is getting more play than the Monopoly version, the floor boss simply switches on more versions of Pam. This is much easier than physically rolling out different machines every day.

For casinos that currently have to devote significant man hours to maintaining individual slot machines suffering from broken or jammed rotors or to change out games during slow periods late at night, server based games are likely to be a boon for efficiency.

RFID chips finally started to make sense, beyond security aspects.

For those not in the know, Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is a method of storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID tag is a small object that can be attached to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person. RFID tags contain antennas to enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver. Passive tags require no internal power source, whereas active tags require a power source. (Source – Wikipedia)

What this means is that casino chips can have RFID tags embedded inside them in order to track dollar amounts bet.

Instead of depending on the Pit Boss to watch how much people bet, the chips can monitor a person’s betting habits, win or loss. This information can be integrated with a person’s ‘player card’ and with the casino’s proprietary CRM software tools. This in turn allows the casino to ‘mine’ their player databases better, and award players based on actual dollars spent rather than a Pit Boss’ eyeball version (There are times when I know the Pit Boss has missed my bets).

And of course, RFID chips make counterfeiting very difficult and extremely hard for dishonest casino employees to pilfer.

Seven years ago I sat with a group of my team whose job it was to develop marketing strategies for online casinos. One of the biggest things going against us was that people had a Luddite view of online gaming. Only now, technology has made the game in Vegas more of a technocrat’s paradise.

Patrick Smyth is the CEO of Gaming Transactions Inc. (NASD GGTS.PK), and has been involved in the online skill gaming, and online casino industries since the mid-nineties. He is a featured speaker at gaming conferences, and is also a contributing author to the International Game Developers Association. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only.