For 26 years I have been in Las Vegas, directly involved with players of casino games and slots. For 20 of those years I have provided consulting and research services to the gaming industry, casinos and gaming equipment manufacturers. Through thousands of interviews with slot players and more than a hundred reports, I have glimpsed many varying perspectives of players, casinos and gaming equipment manufacturers.
From all of this research, I have noticed a glaringly obvious lack of focus on the casino players, from sloppy service, poor quality customer service and a misunderstanding of the importance of the casino player—the gambler—to the overreliance on industry buzzwords in dealing with the players and the kinds of games and slots that are being ordered or designed. All of this contributes directly to attrition in revenue, and thus prolongs economic recovery for casino operators as well as gaming manufacturers. In the world of slots, this lack seems obvious to the players, but is apparently not so obvious to casino operators, slot directors or game manufacturers.
Similarly, what may be obvious to the manufacturers of gaming machines may be entirely lost upon the players themselves. And in between all of this, of course, are the casino operators. They have agendas entirely their own, and these agendas usually do not involve those that are represented by the players or the desires of equipment manufacturers. One glaring and ongoing example is the continuing misunderstanding of what exactly is the meaning of “hit frequency,” specifically when it is applied to the actual players of slots.
In general terms, manufacturers tend to think of hit frequency as “a machine that hits some kind of a pay almost every spin.” The player, on the other hand, almost always thinks of hit frequency as, “How frequently do I hit something that is meaningfully valuable?”
While it is true that there are many players who play multiline slots purely for entertainment, and as a result are very happy to get the kind of frequent pays that manufacturers identify by their concept of hit frequency, the purpose behind these players’ enjoyment is almost always longevity at the device, which is directly related to investing as little money as possible. These are not the players who drive profitability for the manufacturer, or for the casino, and they are certainly not the players that the slot director expects to receive from purchasing or licensing these games.
The players who drive the majority of revenue from slots, for both the manufacturer and the casino, usually comprise only about 20 percent of all slot players, but they drive more than 80 percent of all revenue. These players can be collectively described as “gamblers,” and they view hit frequency entirely differently. To them, a device that gives small, meaningless pays is nothing more than a frustrating exercise in wasting time and money. These players are interested in “valuably meaningful pays,” and this means real dollars—the kind of “let me tell you about my win” pays that they can never experience on a machine that awards them tiny amounts, no matter how frequently they occur. On a multiline video slot in penny denominations, where the maximum bet is 300 credits ($3), even a win of 1,000 credits is just 10 bucks. And a win of 5,000 credits is a mere $50. These are not the kind of wins that inspire such players.
What the manufacturers are missing in the overall appreciation of who their players actually are has come to be missing in the casino experience overall. And that is the ability to understand, recognize, cater to and market to gamblers.
Making machines that are cute and entertaining is perfectly fine, and clearly it fits a fairly stable market of players seeking to pay premium dollars for a little bit of entertainment. But the price for that entertainment is quickly waning, as can clearly be seen in many recent research tabulations, including those that have appeared in recent issues of gaming magazines, as well as the annual LVCVA survey. While there continue to be plenty of first-time players, many of whom will return several times to the same device, thus making the device popular and profitable for even several years, catering to this segment so singularly is shortsighted.
Manufacturers are, by and large, forgetting that gaming machines are more accurately considered “serious gambling devices for adults,” and that therefore, while kiddie games with balloons, party pops and other such childish paraphernalia might be amusing for a short while, they quickly become distracting and detrimental to the “gambling experience.” Combined with wins of little value, those 20 percent of slot players who feed 80 percent of all profitability are mostly left high and dry—and leave to find other games to play. But this was not always so.
Not so long ago, gamblers were important customers at casino resorts. They were prized, welcome, respected and catered to very well. Then corporate executives suddenly saw profitability from $600 rooms and $100 buffets, and all of a sudden gamblers were no longer so important. At the same time, gambling dollars were being siphoned off by these incredibly expensive, wholly unnecessary and ill-advised conceptual changes to how casino resorts operated. This has had a direct impact on how slot manufacturers produced their products and what kind of products they made.
Innovative machine designs, themes, games, game concepts, bonuses, features, animations, characters, secondary and tertiary bonuses, hybrids, and everything else that technology allows manufacturers to now include in slots are all great and wonderful innovations. They have made the casinos of the 21st century truly casinos of the 21st century. But machines still do not have on-screen controls that players can use to make their experience the kind of experience that they want, as opposed to what the manufacturer thinks they should want. Additionally, there are no controls that allow players to turn off animations or other repetitive features with which they have become familiar, and which are now, therefore, a distraction. This is particularly irritating for gamblers. It is for this reason—among many others, of course, but more so for this than any other—that gamblers do not like to frequent these machines, even if they happen to like them.
It is such a simple idea, yet it is completely ignored by manufacturers. Just put an icon on the screen that says “disable animations,” and you will keep all of these players. Why this has not yet been done, and why games still do not have viable screen controls, such as volume and monitor position—or other such features that research reports have called for for more than a decade—is still perplexing. They are not expensive to include. They make the experience better for the player. They make the player want to play more and play longer. They will help gamblers gamble more money. This will mean more money for the machine, more money for the casino and more money for the manufacturer. It seems a win-win for everyone, and it seems obvious to the players, yet manufacturers are still ignoring it. And these are just some of the “missing links” that plague the industry due to ongoing misunderstanding by the casino operators and game manufacturers.
Factors that drive machine performance, or a lack thereof, are almost never the factors that manufacturers suspect. There are, of course, other factors that influence the performance of the game, such as whether the seating is comfortable, its position in the casino, reflections from overhead or nearby lighting, noise from other machines nearby, or other situations that jointly contribute to “discomfort” for the players. None of these are usually considered by manufacturers or casino operators when questioning the performance of their games. Other situations also impacting performance are the kind of casinos in which the games are placed, if there is good enough service, if the player is made to feel comfortable and welcome, and many similar intangibles that are obvious to the players themselves but are generally difficult to quantify—unless you know how.
For test games, pure performance data alone may be indicative of how many players like to “try” this “new” game, but this may be the “novelty” factor rather than the “sustainable performance” factor. Similarly, just because 5,000 players flock to this game and send the performance data through the roof does not necessarily mean that this is a good game. It certainly looks good in the spreadsheet, but will that translate to successful and sustainable general release? Maybe so, maybe not. The graveyard of good intentions is littered with slots and machine concepts that manufacturers thought were pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, only to have them fail—and discover that just one small piece of player intelligence would have made a whole lot of difference. Many well-known manufacturers can simply glance at their own recent history to find classic examples of exactly this.
Qualitative intelligence, by its very nature, usually defies quantification. It is discursive and more literate, and it is therefore more elusive. To extract valuable meaning from discussions with hundreds or even thousands of players requires not only intuitiveness, but also decades of experience and the ability to translate and transform vague player responses and general opinions into meaningful, useful and informative analysis relative to the games that are subject of the research.
The most valuable recommendation that I can provide to begin to understand what the player really wants is to place yourself in the player’s seat and answer these questions:
•If it’s your money, how do you feel about the game?
•If it’s your money, do you still think this is a “good game”?
•If you’re the manufacturer, is this the kind of game that you want to continue to produce, and one that you think will have longevity and success in greater release?
•If it’s your money, do you still think this is the kind of game you want to continue to produce and provide for the rest of the industry?
•If you’re the casino operator, and if it’s your money, would you play in your own casino on the slots you have ordered?
Think about it. Just five questions. Casino gamblers—the players who feed 80 percent of your profitability—experience this every time they play your machine. And they have hundreds more such concerns, many of which you have likely not considered—or, if you have considered them, why have you not corrected them? To solve the economic problems of the gaming industry in 2011, all you have to do is one simple thing: Remember the gamblers. That’s it.
Look back on the history of Las Vegas. Was this great city built on expensive hotel rooms, overpriced buffets, shopping malls on the Strip, and that sad buzzword, “non-gaming revenue”? Or was Las Vegas built on gamblers? Which is the goose that lays the golden eggs? Is it the “celebrity chef”? The drug-infested nightclub? The $200 show ticket nobody can afford? The $100 buffet? Or is the casino first, second and last—everything through the casino and for the casino? That’s what people come for, and that’s what made Las Vegas great. And that is what is making Macau great right now.
How can we get back to these great and glorious profits? Start by making slots that cater to gamblers. Give them the features they actually want and not those that do nothing to enhance the gambling experience. Add to your customer service and on-the-floor staff instead of firing them to save pennies in your budget. And then look at the facade of your property to see if you have enough neon. How did Elvis become The King? He followed the advice of a wise friend: Wear more jewels. Who was that friend? Liberace. People don’t come to Las Vegas to see shopping malls with tired, dry and bland facades, or skyscrapers that look dull and uninviting. They don’t come to see the Strip dark and with no neon. They want your casino property to look like a casino, not a Wall Street bank. And when they get into the casino, they want your slots to be the kinds of machines where they can win serious money so they can show off to all their friends and shout, “Look what I won!”
That’s the Las Vegas experience. That’s the casino experience. That’s the gambling experience. And—with thanks to the MGM Film archives—That’s Entertainment!
Victor H. Royer is the President of Gaming Research Services, a division of GSR Holdings Inc. He is a 26-year veteran of Las Vegas gaming, a 20-year consultant to the gaming industry, and the author of 22 books on casino games and gaming. He has also researched and authored more than 100 industry reports. He can be reached at DrVHR[at]aol.com.
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