Editorial

Monday, 11 May 2009 04:22 Last Updated on Monday, 11 May 2009 04:25

Slot machines have been with is for over a century and grace the halls of big casinos and line the walls of bingo halls everywhere. They feature prominently in almost every bar you’re likely to ever visit as well as in shopping malls, small fast food takeaway shops, large and small restaurants.

You’ll find them in many cab offices, airports, railway stations, seaside entertainment and leisure areas and petrol (gas) stations. They’re also found on just about every cruise liner and passenger ship that sails the oceans waves. Ever since their creation in the 1890s by Charles Fey, slot machines have remained similar to the original.

The huge success of slot machines has always been their simplicity, which is attractive to gamblers because they require very little real thought. Most just need a bucket full of coins, press the start button or pull the lever and away you go! Unfortunately, it is their very simplicity that may cause their downfall.

A whole new generation of young adults that are gambling have grown up on complex computer games that require a high level of hand to eye coordination, skill plus the ability to solve complex puzzles. To them, the simple pulling of a lever and watching some reels spin holds far less appeal than more complex gambling options such as poker, blackjack and craps. This has seen a shift in numbers of players moving away from the traditional slots and towards more skilful table games. However, casino owners are looking at ways to keep the newer generation of gamblers happy and returning to their games.

The current figures paint a dismal picture for the future or slots machines in casinos, where they were traditionally the biggest attraction and the biggest money spinner for casino owners. In the United States, there are approximately a million slot machines sited in all kinds of places, not least of all the big casinos and those slot machines relieve their players of around $1 billion daily. Although the main bulk of that revenue is paid out again in winnings to players, the casinos and bar owners retain anywhere between five and ten percent of the takings depending upon the machine and its payout schedule as well as the jackpot structure and size. This means that slot machines alone earn their owners almost three quarters of all the gambling revenue generated in the United States, estimated at around $60 billion a year. These statistics are much the same for every other country in the world.

The industry has dubbed slot machines “beautiful vaults” because of their incredible revenue earning capacity. Casino owners are keen to find ways to reignite that spark of attractiveness that the slot machine holds with this newer breed of gamblers, before they lose that lucrative revenue stream as the years go by.

So the question that is keeping casino owners awake at night is, “How do you convince a huge group of gamblers that who grew up not on books, drive-in movies and juke boxes, but World of Warcraft, Tomb Raider or Grand Theft Auto that slot machines are cool to play?” Even many of the early video games of the early 1980s such as Space Invaders, Pac Man and Asteroids required far more skill than feeding a coin in a slot and pulling a lever. It seems that experts within the industry have found a possible solution to the problem.

Software and game developers have been working on ideas for introducing the skill element into a new wave of slot machines that are set to feature in casinos. One of the first prototypes of the Skill Series line of slot machines was created by Bally Technologies, a Las Vegas based company best known for making pinball tables and is known as Pong. This is a skill slot game that has the added feature of bonus rounds that last around 45 seconds where the player has to use skill and hand to eye coordination using a paddle control to navigate through the round in order to win more money.

Other Skill Series slots have followed, including a Breakout game and these are swinging the pendulum back in favour of slots games for our younger generation of players. Slot machines fitted with joysticks and a range of video game controllers to bring them up to date with the video game aficionados are finding their way into casinos and bars and are attracting plenty of attention.

Further innovations such as flat panel video displays, state of the art surround sound and high level graphics are all aimed at competing with the video game generation. But the march forward in technology isn’t stopping there. The introduction of slot machines that can be integrated with team action and competition is on its way in an attempt to capture the excitement generated by interactive video games by enabling players to go up against each other competitively in real time. All this advancement will surely ensure the survival of the not so humble any more slot machine and keep casino owners and their accountants happy for many years to come.