Global Gaming Business, October 2018 by Global Gaming Business

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CONTENTS Global Gaming Business Magazine

october

Global Games 2018 Page 30 Last year’s trends of new cabinets, unique game mechanics, high-profile licensed themes and new ways to play all continue with this year’s lineup of new slot machines and related technology at the Global Gaming Expo. Here’s our annual roundup of the new games from all the big manufacturers, including many highlights that are presented exclusively in these pages. By Frank Legato, Marjorie Preston and William Sokolic

AGS

Ainsworth Game Technology

Aristocrat

Aruze Gaming America

Everi

Gamblit Gaming

Gaming Arts

Incredible Technologies

IGT

Konami Gaming

Merkur Gaming

Novomatic Americas

Scientific Games

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

CHANGE YOUR STORY.

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©2018 Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd aristocrat-us.com #aristocratslots WESTWORLD and all related characters and elements © & ™ Turner Entertainment Co. and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s18)

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CONTENTS

Vol. 17 • No. 10

october

Global Gaming Business Magazine

COLUMNS

24 COVER STORY Complete Solutions

16 AGA State of Success

Everi Holdings has grown its business since the merger of legacy companies Global Cash Access and Multimedia Games, injecting new technology and security into financial solutions while growing its games division with new variety, and establishing its interactive division to efficiently deliver content online from the company’s growing game library.

Stacy Papadopoulos

18 Fantini’s Finance To Invent Again Frank Fantini

112 Marketing Signs of the Times Julia Carcamo

118 Making My Point Sharp Objects

By Frank Legato

Roger Snow

On the cover: Everi President and CEO Michael Rumbolz (seated) is flanked by Darren Simmons, senior vice president and business leader, financial technology solutions; and Dean Ehrlich, executive vice president and games business leader

FEATURES The discipline of data analytics is changing gaming operations, but operators should know the various types of analytics and what each accomplishes. The biggest challenge to operators on the Las Vegas Strip is not the coming of the millennial generation, but the disappearance of value for the mid-level customer. By Jeff Hwang

98 Managing Data The wealth of data available to gaming operators is useless if it is taken at face value; here’s how to know where to look. By David Patent

102 Sports Betting and the Tribes Many tribal gaming operations are moving ahead with sports betting, but for others, opening compacts to negotiations is too risky. By Dave Palermo 6

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

The Agenda

10 5 Questions

106 Analyzing Analytics

94 Challenge on the Strip

DEPARTMENTS

By Brian Wyman

114 Social Marketing The evolution of social media has given operators a new set of tools to market their properties.

14 By the Numbers 20 AGEM 22 Global Gaming Women 110 Cutting Edge 120 Frankly Speaking 124 Goods & Services 129 People

By Dave Bontempo

122 Minimum Controls for Tribal Gaming Federal regulators have released a set of updated minimum internal control standards for tribal gaming to replace standards thrown out by a judge in 2006. By Dave Palermo

130 Casino Communications With Marcus Glover, President and Chief Operating Officer, Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa

EVOLVING ENTERTAINMENT

At Scientific Games, we’re EVOLVING ENTERTAINMENT, and at G2E this year visitors will see how we not only have the full spectrum of products, services, technology and talent to meet today’s challenges, but also the VISION and capacity to help shape the FUTURE of entertainment.

LOTTERY | GAMING | SYSTEMS | DIGITAL | SOCIAL The look and feel of the games and their individual components and displays are trade dress of Scientific Games Corp. and its Subsidiaries. TM and © 2018 Scientific Games Corp. and its Subsidiaries. All rights reserved.

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THE AGENDA

Butt Out, Feds

Vol. 17 • No. 10 • OCTOBER 2018 Roger Gros, Publisher | rgros@ggbmagazine.com twitter: @GlobalGamingBiz Frank Legato, Editor | flegato@ggbmagazine.com twitter: @FranklySpeakn Monica Cooley, Art Director | mcooley@ggbmagazine.com

Roger Gros, Publisher

he saying goes “out of the mouth of babes….” Well, my 17-year-old might object to that characterization, but it happened when we were having a discussion about the new evacuation plans from his high school in the event of a fire. The administration has imposed new procedures so now you have to wait in your classroom in the event of a fire alarm until school officials can confirm there is indeed a fire before you can leave the building. Now, we all know in these times, this might be a wise policy given the shootings and other challenges facing our schools. But he didn’t believe it was an appropriate change, because what happens if there actually is a fire? We went back and forth with a variety of scenarios, and then I said I was sure they’ve done some studies and research to determine this was the correct course of action. My son looked at me and just shook his head. “Dad, it’s the government.” And of course, he was right, reminding me of the axiom I’ve always witnessed throughout my lifetime. Anytime the government gets involved, things never improve and they generally get worse. Let’s not forget that wonderful bill in 1992, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. This lofty sounding title did exactly the opposite of what was intended. Sports were not “protected” against gambling; it only spread gambling through illegal channels until the underground betting threatened the very viability and legitimacy of the games. Billions of dollars were funneled to crime syndicates that ran these illegal sports betting websites, and who knows what the profits were used for? The Supreme Court decision in May to overturn PASPA was not based on the complete failure of the bill, however. The court ruling was overturned because PASPA left in place some state laws that permitted gambling on sports, most notably the effective and transparent sports betting industry in Nevada. The suit that challenged PASPA contended it was unconstitutional for the federal government to treat one state differently than it treated another, and the court agreed. We’re all very happy that PASPA was tossed out, but some seem to have missed the lesson of PASPA in the first place. It was a fatally flawed law right from the start, and the unintended consequences were wideranging and damaging to the country. And now the feds are at it again. They want to double down on the failure of PASPA by passing a

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

new federal law controlling sports betting in the United States. First, Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah got up in the Senate to talk about a bill he intended to introduce that would inject the Congress into what the Supreme Court has already called a states’ rights issue—and what gambling law over decades has already established. Now, Hatch has never been a friend of gaming, and that’s OK. He seems to be opposing sports betting on moral grounds, and that’s hard to argue. But then, New York Senator Charles “Chuckie” Schumer got involved, and is insisting that Congress needs to pass a law to “protect” the sports leagues and collegiate athletics by forcing casinos and sports betting operators to pay an “integrity” fee for the right to bet on their games. Now, we all know “integrity” is completely the opposite of what this would be. If the leagues get any kind of payment linked to the level of betting on their games, they are active participants in encouraging people to bet, and therefore have a vested interest in the outcome of these games. So “integrity” isn’t quite the word. Coincidentally or not, most of the sports leagues are headquartered just down the street from Chuckie in New York City, so despite his insistence that the repeal of PASPA has created a regulatory vacuum, the opposite is of course true. Delaware, New Jersey, Mississippi and West Virginia immediately legalized sports betting and implemented it. Rhode Island and Pennsylvania plan to launch sports betting in 2019. With those states off the table as far as supporting federal legislation, and many other states considering legalizing sports betting, the possibility of a federal bill to impose any controls of sports betting seems remote. The American Gaming Association wrote a sixpage letter to Schumer stressing that their goals are the same as his—but it can all be accomplished in the setting of states’ rights rather than interference by Congress. AGA VP Sara Slane explained why. “The AGA strongly believes no additional federal engagement is needed at this time based on the significant, effective regulatory oversight already in place,” Slane wrote. “Replacing an already proven regulatory regime with a non-existent and untested federal oversight apparatus would be out of step with seven in 10 Americans who think this decision should be left to each state and tribe.”

Lauren Byrge, Director, Sales & Marketing LaurenB@GGBmagazine.com Floyd Sembler, Business Development Manager fsembler@ggbmagazine.com Becky Kingman-Gros, Chief Operating Officer bkingros@ggbmagazine.com Lisa Johnson, Communications Advisor lisa@lisajohnsoncommunications.com twitter: @LisaJohnsonPR Columnists Julia Carcamo | Frank Fantini Stacy Papadopoulos | Roger Snow Contributing Editors Dave Bontempo twitter: @bontempomedia Jeff Hwang | Dave Palermo twitter: @DavePalermo4 David Patent | Marjorie Preston William Sokolic | Brian Wyman

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Rino Armeni, President, Armeni Enterprises

•

Mark A. Birtha, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Hard Rock International

• Julie Brinkerhoff-Jacobs, President, Lifescapes International

• Nicholas Casiello Jr., Shareholder, Fox Rothschild

• Jeffrey Compton, Publisher, CDC E-Reports twitter: @CDCNewswire

• Dean Macomber, President, Macomber International, Inc.

• Stephen Martino, Vice President & Chief Compliance Officer, MGM Resorts International, twitter: @stephenmartino

• Jim Rafferty, President, Rafferty & Associates

• Thomas Reilly, Vice President Systems Sales, Scientific Games

• Steven M. Rittvo, Chairman Emeritus, The Innovation Group twitter: @InnovGrp

• Katherine Spilde, Executive Director, Sycuan Gaming Institute, San Diego State University, twitter: @kspilde

• Ernie Stevens, Jr., Chairman, National Indian Gaming Association twitter: @NIGA1985

• Roy Student, President, Applied Management Strategies

• David D. Waddell, Partner Regulatory Management Counselors PC Casino Connection International LLC. 901 American Pacific Drive, Suite 180 • Henderson, Nevada 89014 702-248-1565 • 702-248-1567 (fax) www.ggbmagazine.com The views and opinions expressed by the writers and columnists of GLOBAL GAMING BUSINESS are not necessarily the views of the publisher or editor. Copyright 2018 Global Gaming Business LLC. Henderson, Nevada 89014 GLOBAL GAMING BUSINESS is published monthly by Casino Connection International, LLC. Printed in Nevada, USA. Postmaster: Send Change of Address forms to: 901 American Pacific Dr, Suite 180, Henderson, NV 89014

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NUTSHELL

“They

5Questions

Nick Batram

Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy, GVC Holdings

VC Holdings is a huge online gaming company consisting of such powerful brands as PartyPoker and PartyCasino, bwin, Ladbrokes, Coral, SportingBet and more. GVC also has a relationship with MGM Resorts in the U.S. to run its New Jersey iGaming operations and now has reached an agreement to operate its online sports betting business across the country. Nick Batram was recently appointed the head of investor relations and corporate strategy for GVC. He spoke with GGB Publisher Roger Gros at the GVC offices in London in August. To hear a full podcast of this interview, visit GGBMagazine.com.

1 2 3

GGB: Give us a thumbnail of GVC today. Batram: We are one of the biggest online sports wagering companies in the world. We got there largely

through acquisitions but also through growth. Every business we’ve acquired, we’ve accelerated their growth. It’s a fascinating story. Over the past 10 years we’ve gone from an unregulated gray market to a largely regulated business. Today, 95 percent of our revenue is taxed by jurisdictions regulated now or in the process of being regulated. GVC is built on technology, isn’t it?

Yes, technology is very important to us. We own everything from the casino to the poker room to the sports book to the back end, and even bingo now, and the platforms that run them. That gives us a number of advantages. First, it’s quite efficient. When we do acquire companies, we’re able to plug in synergies easily. You saw that with the bwin deal in 2016. The Bwin.Party transaction made everyone sit up and take notice. What did that mean to the company?

That meant a lot to GVC. It propelled us into becoming a big company and allowed us to do an even bigger deal with Ladbrokes Coral. The Bwin.Party acquisition was the result of a failed merger that happened in 2011. Bwin historically was a pioneer in European sports books. PartyPoker, prior to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006, was the largest online gaming brand in the world. Post-UIGEA, business shrunk significantly, but had been built up, and casino was added. But Party didn’t have any sports and bwin didn’t have any poker, so what could possibly go wrong? It had a ₤1 billion market cap, and prior to our acquisition it had slumped to ₤750 million... There were only two suitors—GVC and 888. And there’s always the danger when you’re buying a distressed company if you’re trying to catch a falling knife or actually got something where you can create real value. Fortunately, it was the latter. The Ladbrokes Coral buy is the big one. That brought you some brick-and-mortar outlets for the first time. How has that worked out so far?

4 5

It’s very early days, but we’re very pleased with what we bought. There’s no question that, being a 100 percent online business, buying a retail business in the U.K. raised a few eyebrows. But we’re pleased with the U.K. legislation that limits the machines in the betting shops. There could have been a number of scenarios. But that uncertainty permitted us to acquire what we think is a fantastic brand with a very good business underneath. We managed to do a transaction that insulated our shareholders from a worst-case scenario. Tell us about your new agreement with MGM Resorts to operate their mobile sports betting.

There were a number of ways to get into a regulated U.S. sports betting market. Our preference was to be more than just a technology supplier. From day one, we wanted to do a deal with a big partner so we could leverage our experience with their brand and multi-state footprint. MGM fits that description. Our existing relationship with them, originally worked out with bwin, has been a valuable learning curve. We know each other and there’s a common belief about where we see the market and how we can address it.

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

Said It”

“The evidence suggests if we did nothing else in Massachusetts but bring back money that was being gambled in casinos outside Massachusetts by our citizens, that alone would make it a success. We would have $250 million in tax revenue just by bringing back those citizens.” —Stephen Crosby, chairman of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, on how the opening of new casinos, such as the MGM Grand, keeps Bay State gaming money at home

CALENDAR October 8-11: Global Gaming Expo (G2E), Sands Expo & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada. Produced by Reed Exhibitions and the American Gaming Association. For more information, visit GlobalGamingExpo.com. October 16: European Gaming Congress, Grand Union Hotel Ljubljana, Slovenia. Produced by EEGE Events. For more information, visit EuropeanGamingCongress.com. October 24-25: ICE Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa. Produced by Clarion Gaming. For more information, visit iceafrica.za.com. October 25: UNLV Gaming & Hospitality Education Series: Sports Betting & Esports, Stan Fulton Building, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Produced by GGB Magazine and UNLV William F. Harrah College of Hospitality. For more information, visit UNLVGHES.com. November 8-9: GSA Technology Summit 2018: Blockchain, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada. Produced by Gaming Standards Association. For more information, visit GamingStandards.com. November 20: UNLV Gaming & Hospitality Education: The Perils and Possibilities of AML and Payment Processing, UNLV’s Stan Fulton Building, Las Vegas. Produced by GGB Magazine and UNLV William F. Harrah College of Hospitality. For more information, visit UNLVGHES.com. November 21-22: Balkan Entertainment & Gaming Exhibition BEGE Expo, Inter Expo Center, Sofia, Bulgaria. Produced by the Bulgarian Trade Association of Manufacturers and Operators in the Gaming Industry. For more information, visit BalkanGamingExpo.com. November 27-28: ICE Sportsbetting USA, Convene, New York, New York. Produced by Clarion Gaming. For more information, visit SportsBettingUSAConference.com. December 13: UNLV Gaming & Hospitality Education Series: Modern Player Development, UNLV Stan Fulton Building, Las Vegas. Produced by GGB Magazine and UNLV William F. Harrah College of Hospitality. For more information, visit UNLVGHES.com.

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BY THE

NUMBERS

And Then There Were 5 L

ast month, the state of Mississippi legalized a state lottery, becoming the 45th in the United States to back public wagering. Mississippi, like Nevada, had avoided legalizing a lottery because of the perceived damage it might do to an already-established casino industry. The Mississippi casino industry backed off its opposition to this popular betting option as long as the legislation didn’t allow video lottery terminals or online purchase of lottery tickets, limiting sales to in-store tickets and the multistate lottery systems. The powerful Nevada casino industry continues to resist legalization. In addition to Nevada, only Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii and Utah prohibit the establishment of a state lottery within their borders.

dialing for dollars

espite efforts to make states pony up “integrity fees,” a new study by the Nielson Group revealed that a fully mature sports betting industry in the U.S. would contribute as much as $2.3 billion just to the National Football League, which launched its 2018-19 season last month. Commissioned by the American Gaming Association, the study estimated that media rights payments would soar by 18 percent, sponsorship fees would be up 7 percent and ticket sales would increase by 6 percent. All these increases would be due to increased fan interest, which would spur these higher payments. Sara Slane, the senior vice president of public affairs for the AGA, said it puts to rest any complaint that the leagues need “integrity fees” to benefit from legal sports betting. “We think these numbers are conservative and show that the league is frankly tripping over dollars to pick up pennies,” said Slane.

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

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AMERICAN GAMING ASSOCIATION

State of Success The annual report on the commercial casino industry in the U.S. shows more jobs and revenue

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s the premier national trade group representing the U.S. commercial casino industry, the American Gaming Association is proud of the gaming sector’s role as a job creator and revenue generator across the country. This summer, AGA released new data on the gaming industry’s strong economic impact through the 2018 edition of State of the States, our flagship economic analysis of the U.S. commercial casino gaming industry for the 2017 calendar year. Our new report detailed the continued growth of the commercial gaming industry and its positive impact on state and local economies. For instance, in 2017, states received $9.23 billion in revenue from commercial gaming taxes alone, funding important government initiatives like education programs and jobs for teachers. In addition to tax revenue, states with commercial casino gaming experienced revenue growth across the board. In fact, casinos in all but four states experienced gaming revenue increases, reflecting strong macroeconomic trends and sus-

By Stacy Papadopoulos

tained job growth in most parts of the country. There was also some movement among the top commercial casino markets in the U.S. The Baltimore/Washington, D.C. market grew to become the fourth-largest commercial casino market in the country with $1.77 billion in gaming revenue in 2017, passing the New York City at $1.57 billion. Last year was also a record-breaking year for the national commercial casino industry. Last year, commercial gaming revenue in the United States surpassed $40 billion for the first time, a 3.4 percent increase over 2016. Charting the industry’s growth and economic impact is one way AGA supports the industry, and we’re thrilled to share these positive figures with you. We’re proud of the development the gaming industry has experienced in the past year and look forward to continued progress in the years to come. Stacy Papadopoulos is senior vice president and general counsel and interim CEO of the American Gaming Association.

2017, states received $9.23 billion in revenue from commercial gaming taxes alone, funding important government initiatives like education programs and jobs for teachers.

we speak casino

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

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FANTINI’S FINANCE

To Invent Again Like butterflies, two Las Vegas-based gaming companies are emerging

einvention is a word commonly used in the gaming industry. Sometimes it’s a word of self-praise, such as Las Vegas continues to reinvent itself. Sometimes it’s as an admonition, such as a company with a dated business model needs to reinvent itself. For two publicly traded casino companies, reinvention is simply a truism. It is now a well-known story that Eldorado Resorts and Golden Entertainment have transformed from small, privately held Nevada gaming companies into much larger, multi-state publicly held enterprises. Over several years, Eldorado has gone from one-and-a-half casinos in Reno into what, when its purchase of Tropicana closes, will be a national company of 26 casinos in 13 states approaching $3 billion in revenue. Golden, after purchasing Colorado Belle and Edgewater casinos in Laughlin, Nevada, will have gone from primarily a Nevada slot route and tavern operator to principally a casino operator with over $1 billion in revenues. The transformations are not unknown. We’ve chronicled them and included both companies in our Nevada Triple Play (along with Monarch Casino) as opportunities for investors. And we’ve watched their stocks rise from $8-something a share each to $47 for Eldorado, and as of this writing, $25 for Golden. But the speed and scope of change has surprised even this bull. Eldorado began its transformation in acquiring three MTR Gaming properties through merger and going public. However, with the purchase Isle of Capri, Eldorado overnight became a national operator of regional casinos. That seemed like a lot to bite off. But Eldorado met the challenge and is fulfilling its promise to grow profits through efficiencies. Then Eldorado announced it is buying Tropicana Entertainment’s seven casinos, including the flagship Trop in Atlantic City, and the MGM Resorts-Hyatt joint-venture Grand Victoria near Chicago. That would seem like enough for a while, but even before the close of that deal, Eldorado an-

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

By Frank Fantini

nounced an agreement with British sports betting operator William Hill to run sports books at its properties. William Hill is already entrenched in the U.S., operating more sports books than any company in Nevada, with operations in Delaware and New Jersey, and contracts to operate Penn National’s sports books, among others.

The agreement with “William Hill offers two potentially big opportunities for Eldorado beyond its own sports books— an ownership position in William Hill and the inclusion of online gaming.

”

The agreement with William Hill offers two potentially big opportunities for Eldorado beyond its own sports books—an ownership position in William Hill and the inclusion of online gaming. Eldorado will own 20 percent of William Hill US and gets $50 million of parent William Hill Plc. stock. Given the rapid growth of William Hill US and the expected multi-year rollout of U.S. sports betting, this is a meaningful opportunity for Eldorado. (The U.S. division doubled first-half revenues to nearly $50 million, and that was before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal sports betting ban.) And if online sports betting becomes a multibillion-dollar business in the U.S. as it is in the U.K., the opportunity is that much more meaningful. Golden’s reinvention started by merging with Lakes Entertainment, giving it a small casino in western Maryland and a listing as a public stock. Golden acquired slot routes in Montana, moving beyond Nevada, and continued opening about a half-dozen taverns a year in Nevada, each generating upwards of $500,000 a year in EBITDA. Given the

growth of slot routes throughout the country and the belief that Las Vegas could handle twice as many of the company’s taverns, Golden looked like a blocking-and-tackling story, sure but unexciting. That changed when Golden bought American Casino and Entertainment’s Stratosphere on the north end of the Las Vegas Strip along with two locals Las Vegas casinos and the 1,900-room Aquarius 90 miles south in Laughlin. Now, this $48 million EBITDA company is looking at generating around $190 million this year. Then, Golden announced the Colorado Belle and Edgewater purchases from Marnell Gaming, in which CEO Anthony Marnell becomes a shareholder and board member. Suddenly, Golden owns about 40 percent of Laughlin capacity in three adjacent properties along the Colorado River and the 12,000-seat Laughlin Events Center, and espouses a strategy of making the low-cost, laid-back town a getaway destination for the 2.2 million residents of the Las Vegas Valley. It takes only a few back-of-the-envelope calculations based on achieving peer-like valuations, realistic returns on the $140 million Stratosphere renovation, proper marketing of Stratosphere, Laughlin bouncing back 30 percent to its former peak, and natural growth in fast-growing southern Nevada to get a stock price well beyond today’s. Perhaps the least appreciated aspect of the Laughlin purchases is Anthony Marnell, the son of Marnell Companies CEO Tony Marnell, an architect whose companies have built much of the Las Vegas landscape, from the Rio to Bellagio to Park MGM to office parks and restaurants. They do everything first-class. Two years ago, Marnell Gaming bought the Nugget casino resort in Sparks, adjacent to Reno and the closest major casino to Tesla’s developing giga-factory. In other words, it would not be surprising to see Golden one day land in fast-growing Reno, filling out its Nevada casino strategy. Frank Fantini is the editor and publisher of Fantini’s Gaming Report. For a free 30-day trial subscription email subscriptions@fantiniresearch.com.

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AGEMupdate AGEM MEMBER PROFILE

Lima, Peru-based RCT Gaming started in Brazil in 1994 developing video bingo for local markets. Today, RCT develops slots, video bingo and other solutions for casino and bingo halls in Latin America and Asia. RCT Gaming uses its own hardware and software that support the games, designed for the most diverse markets in the world. The new NXGB hardware platform, developed in partnership with RCT’s software team, which is based in Brazil, is technically superior to its competitors. Its compact size allows for great business agility. All RCT games run on this new hardware platform, and all supporting software has been certified by Gaming Laboratories International. The market has responded well to RCT hardware with its compact, easy installation and very competitive price. For 25 years, RCT clients have understood that they can count on technical support from the company. RCT concentrates on slots and video bingo, which include the noted Halloween theme, and interconnected traditional bingo terminals. RCT Gaming also is a provider of slots and video bingo for online gaming platforms. With 25 years of experience, the development structure of new games is designed to serve different markets, whether it be the preferences of the players or the diverse regulations in each country. New games are currently being and will be released soon. More interactive games with bonus jackpots and innovative “mystery” features will be unlike any in the market. RCT Gaming has offices in Peru, Mexico and the U.S. In several countries of Central and South America, RCT games are operating on platforms from other vendors in partnership with RCT. For those countries with changing legislation and regulations, RCT has the solution. For more information, visit rctgaming.com.

AGEM Board of Directors Actions – September 2018 • Reed Expo Senior Vice President Melissa Ashley gave a short Global Gaming Expo preview presentation at the recent monthly meeting. She reported that pre-registration and booth space sales were trending up compared to 2017. In addition, the conference program was creating a lot of interest, especially with the introduction of the Sports Betting Symposium, as well as higher-quality, improved content and some exciting keynote speakers. New for this year will be a satellite media tour and media tower to improve press and public relations coverage of the show that has already seen an additional 25 news outlets request to attend. • AGEM recently announced a joint initiative with the European Casino Association and Clarion for a Gender Diversity Scholarship to attend the Executive Development Program—the prestigious gaming leadership course that takes place November 10-18 in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. By creating and awarding this scholarship to a female talent aspiring to the highest executive levels, these partners are demonstrating their support of industry diversity. Judging will be completed by the end of September and the winner announced early October. • UNLV International Gaming Institute Executive Director Bo Bernhard gave an in-person presentation at the September meeting to thank AGEM for its continued support, and also to update members on the organization’s progress. The institute was set up originally with just two staff members, and has grown substantially in a short space of time—it is just about to employ the 32nd member of the team. It has a truly global reach, having hit all six gaming continents with initiatives and events since its inception. One of its most high-profile events is the EDP mentioned above. • AGEM members recently approved a $10,000 contribution for renewal membership to the Nevada Council on Problem Gaming. This important nonprofit organization’s mission is to generate awareness, promote education and advocate for quality treatment and support resources for problem gambling in Nevada. AGEM is a proud supporter of this very worthwhile cause. • AGEM welcomed a new Associate member in September—Posiflex Business Machines based in HayAssociation of Since Gaming Equipment 2018 ward, California. 1984, Posiflex hasManufacturers designed and manufactured POS and industrialAugust touch terminals and kiosks for the gaming industry and many other verticals.

Positive contributors to the August 2018 AGEM Index he AGEM Index decreased in August 2018. The included the following: composite index finished the month at 565.39 points, a decline of 43.88 points or 7.76 percent, compared to July 2018. The AGEM PlayAGS Inc. (AGS) contributed 2.21 points due to a reported year-over-year increase for the 35th 12.22 the percent increase in stock price toand $32.04. •Index AGEM’s newa website goes live on September 24, and reflects organization’s messaging objecconsecutive month and has climbed 89.85 points, or tives an updated contemporary, fresh styling. The site information about the association, 20.81inpercent, since August 2017. provides Everi Holdings Inc. (EVRI) reported a 17.96 percent increase in stock price to $8.67, contributing 1.73 but importantly, spotlights the members themselves. During the latest period, seven of the 13 global gaming points. reported 9-11 month-to-month •equipment G2E 2018manufacturers will be held October at the Sands Convention Center, Las Vegas. AGEM will once increases in stock price. Six manufacturers reported again haveina stock boothprice at the show show floor contributors entrance. included the following: Selected negative decreases during thelocated month. just inside the main

UPCOMING EVENTS

With its stock price falling 36.94 percent to $30.30, The major stock market indices saw gains during the Scientific Games Corporation (SGMS) contributed month. The S&P 500 reported a month-to-month negative 16.37 points. increase of 3.03 percent to 2,901.52. The Dow Jones Industrial Average grew 2.16 percent to 25,964.82, index International Game Technology (IGT)areported The AGEM Index decreased August 2018. during The composite finished the month at 565.39PLC points, decline a while the NASDAQ increasedin5.71 percent the 16.77 percent decrease in stock price to $21.04, period to points 8,109.54. of 43.88 or 7.76 percent, compared to July 2018. The AGEM Index reported a year-over-year increase for contributing negative 11.51 points.

AGEMindex

the 35th consecutive month, and has climbed 89.85 points, or 20.81 percent, since August 2017. During the latest period, seven of the 13 global gaming equipment manufacturers reported month-to-month increases in stock price. Six manufacturers reported decreases in stock price during the month.

AGEM

Agilysys

Exchange: Symbol (Currency)

Stock Price At Month End Aug-18 Jul-18 Aug-17

Nasdaq: AGYS (US$)

16.07

16.45

Ainsworth Game Technology

ASX: AGI (AU$)

1.16

1.13

2.66

Aristocrat Leisure Limited

ASX: ALL (AU$)

31.59

32.20

21.17

Astro Corp. Crane Co. Everi Holdings Inc. Galaxy Gaming Inc. Gaming Partners International International Game Technology PLC Konami Corp. 1.

PlayAGS Inc.

Scientific Games Corporation Transact Technologies

Taiwan: 3064 (NT$)

10.29

18.50

20.00

15.05

NYSE: CR (US$)

91.28

90.57

74.23

NYSE: EVRI (US$)

8.67

7.35

7.71

OTCMKTS: GLXZ (US$)

1.31

1.29

0.82

Nasdaq: GPIC (US$)

8.70

8.23

10.55

NYSE: IGT (US$)

21.04

25.28

20.37

TYO: 9766 (¥)

4,655

5,250

5,730

NYSE: AGS (US$)

32.04

28.55

Nasdaq: SGMS (US$)

30.30

48.05

35.20

Nasdaq: TACT (US$)

14.10

11.05

9.75

Percent Change Index Prior Period Prior Year Contribution (2.31) 56.17 (0.14) 2.65 (56.39) (0.02) (1.89) 49.22 (11.28) (7.50) 22.92 (0.05) 0.78 22.97 0.68 17.96 12.45 1.73 1.55 59.76 0.01 5.71 (17.54) 0.06 (16.77) 3.29 (11.51) (11.33) (18.76) (9.68) 12.22 2.21 (13.92) (16.37) (36.94) 44.62 0.46 27.60 Change in Index Value

(43.88)

AGEM Index Value: July 2018

565.39

AGEM Index Value: August 2018

521.50

1. There is no Prior Year data for PlayAGS Inc. because the stock began trading in January 2018.

AGEM is an international trade association representing manufacturers of electronic gaming devices, systems, lotteries and components for the gaming industry. The association works to further the interests of gaming equipment manufacturers throughout the world. Through political action, trade show partnerships, information dissemination and good corporate citizenship, the members of AGEM work together to create benefits for every company within the organization. Together, AGEM and its member organizations have assisted regulatory commissions and Index participated in monthly the legislative process to solve problems and create a positive business The AGEM is published by Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers (AGEM) and Applied Analysisenvironment. | Copyright © 2018 20

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

WE’RE READY FOR GAME TIME. ARE YOU?

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Ready To Connect? IGT’s PlayShot sports betting solution is your best bet. Talk with us to learn more. © 2018 IGT Global Solutions Corporation. The trademarks used herein are owned by IGT or its affiliates, may not be used without permission, and where indicated with a ®, are registered in the U.S. IGT is committed to socially responsible gaming. Our business solutions empower customers to choose parameters and practices that become the foundation of their Responsible Gaming programs. Images are representative only.

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Education for Everyone Global Gaming Women Brings New Learning Series to G2E 2018 By Patrick Roberts

lobal Gaming Women supports, inspires and influences the development of women in the gaming industry. GGW is offering new and diverse content as part of its G2E Educational Track during G2E 2018. The series takes place on Monday, October 8 at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas and has been carefully designed to perfectly balance both education and mentorship. “We are very excited to be a part of the educational sessions offered at G2E again this year. As everyone who has been involved with GGW can attest, education is the passion that drives the organization,” says Phyllis Gilland, president of GGW. “With this new education series that we developed for G2E 2018, we are thrilled to continue to fulfill our promise of bringing people together from all segments of gaming with a common goal of

enriching their professional and personal lives.” While Global Gaming Women is producing the content of these sessions, organizers emphasize the learning sessions are for everyone of any gender and any staff level. “That is an important point that we want to stress,” says Felicia Gassen, executive director of Global Gaming Women Charitable Education Fund. “Yes, providing continued educational opportunities for women in the gaming industry is our goal, and we are producing this series, but the series content is designed to be relevant and beneficial to anyone in the industry. We are eager to once again welcome a broad audience to each session.” There are three tracks in the GGW G2E Learning Series, based on GGW’s core values of courage, integrity and leadership.

COURAGE TRACK

INTEGRITY TRACK

LEADERSHIP TRACK

The Power of Tech Part I: Suppliers’ Perspectives in Leveraging Technology to Bring Added Value to Your Customers

The Power of Tech Part II: Casino Operators’ Perspective: How to Capture, Maintain and Grow Revenue While Maintaining Data Integrity

Leadership Traits of C-Suite Execs

Moderated by Melissa Aarskaug from GLI, this session will address how many businesses can be fearful of embracing new technologies, even when faced with hard facts about their benefits. This session will feature suppliers to the industry discussing several of the latest must-have technologies, how they can bring added value, and how to courageously move forward. Invited panelists include Cath Burns of SGMS, Julia Boguslawski of AGS and Siobhan Lane of Aristocrat.

Lorrie Corbin Bamford of Gaming Capital Group leads this discussion that addresses the simple fact that data is money. In today’s business world, if you’re not using data, you’re not making money. So how can operators take full advantage of their data and of modern technologies without compromising data integrity or security? This session will explore the latest technologies, techniques and best practices for using data and maintaining integrity. Invited panelists include Shonette Harrison Crew from Hollywood Casino, Erica Kosemund from Choctaw Nation and Sherri Pucci from The Flamingo/Linq.

Casino Finance: The Evolution of Casino Finance for the Modern Business World

Finance isn’t just for finance people—it’s for all smart business leaders who understand the power that numbers bring to the conversation. This session will help attendees become more comfortable in their own numbers skin as well as explain current market trends, finance technologies, and must-know finance jargon. The session is moderated by Deloitte’s Nikki Etherington, and invited panelists include John Eder from Seminole Gaming, Kelly Lister from MGM Resorts and IGT’s Sandra Beaver.

How a Diverse Workforce Reinvigorates Your Team

Diversity is a common buzzword in business today. So what does it really mean, and how can diversifying your workforce impact your teams—your corporate team, departmental teams and employee team performance? This session will provide clarity of definition and mission that moves diversity from buzzword to actionable benefit. Leading the discussion is Kat Anderson from Scientific Games, and invited to join as panelists are Christie Roser of Aristocrat, Phyllis James of MGM Resorts and Paula Eylar-Lauzon of Boyd Gaming.

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

Stephen Covey spoke of the seven habits of successful leaders. So which of these habits and other traits are most common in the C-suites throughout today’s gaming industry? This session will explore those traits and outline the characteristics attendees should embrace, as put forth by a panel who has achieved Csuite success using those habits and traits. Boyd Gaming’s Cassie Stratford will moderate this session with invited panelists Julie Cameron-Doe of Aristocrat, Becky Harris from the Nevada Gaming Control Board, Angela Heikes from Mystic Lake and Ann Hoff from Excalibur Hotel/Casino. Mentoring Matters: The Why, the How, and the Affected

Mentoring is the core pillar of GGW’s mission. Simply put, mentoring matters. This session will explore why it matters, how best to mentor, and its effect on those who mentor and who are mentored. Ann Simmons from the Simmons Group will lead the discussion. Anyone with passes to addend G2E 2018 is welcome to attend these sessions. For more information on GGW, its mission, how to become a member or a sponsor, and other programs and offerings, visit globalgamingwomen.org or connect directly with any of the GGW board members during G2E 2018.

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g n i n n i W

COMBINATION Everi Holdings draws on diverse but connected business divisions to offer a unique combination of product solutions to casinos • By Frank Legato

(L-R) David Lucchese, Executive Vice President, Digital, and Interactive Business Leader; Dean Ehrlich, Executive Vice President and Games Business Leader; Darren Simmons, Business Leader, Financial Technology Solutions; Michael Rumbolz, President and CEO; Mark Labay, Senior Vice President, Strategic Development and Investor Relations; Randy Taylor, Executive Vice President and CFO; Ed Peters, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing; Tim Richards, Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy Officer

n the summer of 2015, executives of the newly christened Everi Holdings, Inc. gathered to ring the bell to open trading on the New York Stock Exchange. In a decade that saw more mergers and acquisitions in the slot sector than any other time in the industry’s history, this ceremony capped the transaction that perhaps most stood out as unique. Multimedia Games of Austin, Texas was a growing and highly regarded slot manufacturer that most had assumed would be acquired by one of the big slot suppliers. But the company that did acquire Multimedia was not a slot supplier at all—it was Global Cash Access, the leading supplier of ATMs, kiosks and

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

cash-access and credit services to the casino industry. While the acquisition was a surprise at the time, three years hence, it makes perfect sense, as casinos strive to find new and more convenient ways to fund the play of slot machines. Technology being produced for the payment side—now known as the Financial Technology Solutions division, or FinTech—has helped the slot side, and vice versa. Mobile technology is providing a bridge between the two sides, as Everi slots benefit from a growing number of options to fund play. Hardware technology developed on the slot side applies readily to the financial side in the form of kiosks and ATMs.

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(L-R) Brad Rose, Senior Vice President, Game Development; Keith Riggs, Senior Vice President, Engineering; Allison Pope, Senior Vice President and Executive Producer; Jim Palermo, Senior Vice President and Executive Producer; Loren Nelson, Senior Vice President, Game Technology

“Most of the significant advantages have been at the hardware level,” says Michael Rumbolz, president and CEO of Everi. “We’ve been able to share what we learned as a payments company with our slot manufacturing people, which means that our interfaces to systems that were worked out years ago for our payment systems are now cleaner and much easier through our slot machine manufacturing. It also gives us the opportunity to address a customer in many more ways than just the slot floor.” But more important than synergies between the two sides of Everi’s business are the innovations coming from the engineering teams of both sides. On the FinTech side, Everi continues to provide new ways to provide what Rumbolz predicts will be more than $26 billion in cash and credit services to fuel the games of casinos across North America this year. In addition to its industry-topping business as a supplier of ATMs and payment kiosks to casinos, Everi is spearheading the effort to provide mobile digital-wallet solutions and other innovative ways for players to access cash using smartphones, through deposit accounts and even through access to bank accounts via debit-card transactions. On the games side, Everi continues to grow, recently augmenting its game development studios in Austin with facilities in Reno, Chicago and Las Vegas—five game development studios in four cities, headed by industry veteran Dean Ehrlich, executive vice president and games business leader. The disciplines of Everi’s two legacy companies dovetail neatly with the company’s young interactive division, which is growing rapidly on both the B-2-B and B-2-C sides under another industry veteran, David Lucchese, who is executive vice president, digital, and interactive business leader.

Forward with FinTech This year, Everi has made significant moves forward in all three of its business divisions, but perhaps none is pointed more squarely toward the future of the gaming floor than Financial Technology Solutions. While about two-thirds of that $26 billion in funds being provided

through Everi systems for play on casino floors still comes from ATM transactions, and a good portion of the remainder still comes from verification of good, old-fashioned written checks (“There’s still a large swath of Americans that prefer to deal in checks,” says Rumbolz), Everi is leading the charge in what will be the industry’s transition from these traditional services to a digital cash access ecosystem. Rumbolz notes that Everi is adding an e-wallet system, called CashClub Wallet, to the financial solutions already offered by the company. “We’re in a pilot program right now, with a major customer,” he says. “We anticipate that once that’s concluded, we will start adding more and more customers to the e-wallet transaction line for us, and as we do that, I think more and more jurisdictions will look to their fellow jurisdictions, and see what questions we’ve answered and how we’ve taken care of their concerns.” “Digital represents the ability to perform transactions through a number of different vehicles,” adds Darren Simmons, business leader, financial technology solutions. “Mobile cash access is an important vehicle. Making what we call our e-wallet available on an application through your mobile phone, on iOS or on Android is a big part of what we’re introducing now. And that’s going to be a fairly dramatic shift for our casino customers, just in terms of the experience that they’re providing back to their consumers in how they access cash.” Just as applications like Venmo enable digital money transfers between personal bank accounts, Everi’s e-wallet solution enables customers to fund casino deposit accounts and ultimately move those funds to the credit meter of a slot machine. “It will start as the ability to bring cash to your mobile device, through either an ACH transaction directly from your checking account or a debit or credit card transaction from your account,” says Rumbolz. “Once it comes to your wallet, then the placement into an operating system on a casino floor, the casino slot system, will allow you to fill your casino account with cash, and then use that account for gambling purposes.” OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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At G2E, the company will launch its newest full-service kiosk, the CXC 5.0, which offers enhanced security features.

Everi’s e-wallet solution enables customers to fund casino deposit accounts and ultimately move those funds to the credit meter of a slot machine.

Rumbolz, a former chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, anticipates little regulatory pushback to the use of e-wallets. “One of the reasons is that we are not offering, and don’t intend to offer, anything that isn’t already available to a patron on the casino floor,” he explains. “What we’re offering them is the ability to remove the friction of standing in line, or having to move from one device to another, to complete a transaction. We’re trying to make it much easier for patrons. “And, we believe that as the casino industry starts looking at more and more sports wagering options, a mobile wallet that stays within the ecosystem of the casino that owns a sports book becomes an easy way for those customers to then make sports wagers on the applications that are provided by the casinos.” Another part of the company’s digital offering is CashClub Concierge, which allows casinos to provide traditional cash-access services anywhere on a property using a mobile tablet. “With our entire digital strategy,” says Simmons, “which is connected to our e-wallet, we’re trying to find ways for our casino customers to be able to serve their customers, wherever and whenever they want.” The FinTech division, of course, also continues to improve and innovate in its core ATM and kiosk business. New ATM products have state-of-theart security features such as a rear-facing camera to capture images of anyone who might be standing directly behind a customer accessing cash. “There also will be privacy glass,” says Rumbolz, “so that someone can’t stand to your right or left and lean in to look as you’re putting in your PIN. It’s not just to provide security and safety, but peace of mind to the patrons.” FinTech also constantly works on improving Everi’s lineup of payment 26

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

Jackpot Xpress, an easy-to-use mobile tablet platform, enables floor staff to securely and efficiently process and pay jackpots.

kiosks. At G2E, the company will launch its newest full-service kiosk, the CXC 5.0, which offers enhanced security features; the VersatileXchange, a versatile, cost-efficient kiosk; and Jackpot Xpress, an easy-to-use mobile tablet platform that enables floor staff to securely and efficiently process and pay jackpots.

Cabinets and Content Hardware advances are just as important on the games side of the business. Ehrlich’s team continues to create new form factors, along with content specifically designed for the new cabinets, as well as a flood of content for all the established cabinets. This year, Everi launches a new entry for the Empire premium cabinet series, called the Empire DCX. “The modern casino floor has changed rather significantly,” says Rumbolz, “from the days of row upon row upon row of spinning-reel slot machines, that looked very much the same, regardless of who the manufacturer was. Once video technology really took off in the gaming space, you started to see manufacturers differentiate not just the product, and the product offering, but also the housing that that product sat in. And so, form factor became extremely important. And you’ll see companies that will be literally surviving off a particular form factor. “Content is going to drive it.” “We know we’ve got to have new cabinets coming out in order to be competitive,” says Ehrlich, “but even more so, we’ve opened a couple of additional studios. We are beginning to see these recent investments start to pay dividends with much stronger game performance.” That content is taking a variety of forms this year (see page 52), and is designed to appeal to a lot of different types of players. “For the past couple of years, we’ve been expanding Everi’s offering to make sure that we were speaking to each of the customer sets that are attracted into casinos,” Rumbolz says. “For example, we now have wide-area progressives. The company never had that before.”

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“As we have been growing, we’ve been focused really on the slot floor, and trying to make sure that the slot machine floor has something from us for everybody that’s coming into a casino.” Other surging product categories for Everi include mechanical stepper slots, high-denomination video and branded games on the new Empire MPX cabinet, also known as the E43. “As we have been growing, we’ve been focused really on the slot floor, and trying to make sure that the slot machine floor has something from us for everybody that’s coming into a casino,” Rumbolz says, adding that the company is currently considering whether to expand into the area of electronic table games. Ehrlich says Everi’s concentration on new content is in line with a shortterm goal of achieving a 10 percent ship share. “There’s constantly a new product launch—something different, whether it’s a new cabinet, new license, new theme or new play mechanic,” Ehrlich says. Both proprietary and licensed brands will be available either for sale or lease at G2E, as Everi is known for making it easy for customers to put their products on the floor. “We offer flexibility for our customers,” says Ehrlich. “You have to get the product on the floor. It doesn’t mean giving it away, but certain operators have capital capabilities and others have operating expense opportunities. We make sure we really do our best to work with our casino partners.” Rumbolz notes that his team at the newly merged Everi determined early on that Austin would remain the center of the company’s games division, a big reason being the steady stream of engineering talent coming from the University of Texas, located in the city. “Austin has become, in no uncertain terms, really an extension of Silicon Valley,” Rumbolz says. “All of the giants that devour engineers on a daily basis, like Google, like Apple, and companies that are in our space, like Scientific Games, or adjacent verticals, like Zynga, are all down there, competing for the talent among themselves, but also competing for the talent that’s coming from the university, because they have an extremely strong program. “For years, I think it was an advantage for Multimedia Games to be the only gaming company in town, and therefore one of the more interesting companies to go to work for. At the end of the day, we will be in Austin... Those engineers reside in Austin; they like living there. I don’t feel the need to drag them to Las Vegas, or force them to move. And we have people that have been with the company a very long time, both our company and the predecessor company, that have developed their own relationships in that marketplace.”

Interactive Action Meanwhile, the company’s interactive division, launched at the beginning of 2017 with the B-2-C free-to-play casino app Super Jackpot Slots, is growing rapidly. The B-2-C business will expand this year with a new social/mobile casino app designed for high-end players, called High Rollin’ Vegas. On the B-2-B side, the company’s content is already live on both social and real-money internet casino sites, through remote game servers owned by partners Spin Games and GAN. “Through our technology partners, we are de28

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

—Michael Rumbolz, President and CEO, Everi

livering content currently to a network of 32 sites,” says Lucchese. “We’ve been delivering games to Playtika, the largest social operator in the world, for six years. Our content is always among the top 10 games there.” Marshall Adair, senior executive producer and director, adds that Everi content porting through the Spin RGS includes the No. 1 games in New Jersey’s real-money online casino market. Later this year, Everi will release its own remote game server—currently before Gaming Laboratories International for certification. “Now that we have our RGS done, we’ll be able to control our path out to serve our customers and serve opportunities to distribute our content globally,” Lucchese says. “We have a very high success rate with what’s out there. Operators are asking for more Everi content, and we’ll be able to do that with our own RGS.” The proprietary RGS is expected to have 20 titles available by the end of the year, and 50 by next year, according to Adair. “We’re pulling from the top of our library,” he says. “We’re pulling our best hits from land-based and using them to go online first, because we have some ground to make up in the space. We’re not pulling form the dregs of our library unless specifically asked for a game.” Everi also is offering a “Remote Math Server (RMS),” developed by Adair’s team. “We’re basically taking our math and putting it on a server,” says Lucchese. “We can put our math out there and operators can add their own art and assets; our IP remains protected.” Asked the benefits of forming a new public company three years ago, Rumbolz takes care to point out that what happened was that two former public companies merged into one new company. “The important aspect of branding both the legacy Multimedia Games and the legacy Global Cash Access into a new name was really to let the industry understand that neither one of these is the old company that they used to deal with,” he says, “that it really is a new day, we have a new ability to have synergies across the casino floor—and that we’re going to be providing a new set of products that are going to address the slot player, but also how the slot player puts money into slot machines. “So, the rebranding of the company was extremely important, to make sure that the industry understood that we are completely different than either one of our predecessor companies.” Rumbolz says his goal for the next five years is for Everi to become one of the “big four, or the big three” slot suppliers in the business. “My intention is to be there, to be shoulder to shoulder with the largest players in the space,” he says. “But more important to me is to be the supplier that the casinos have to have—that we will be producing the products that casinos will look at as essential to running a modern casino floor. “I would anticipate that any modern casino operator over the next five years is going to look at our product set and realize that they have to have a relationship with us, and they have to have our products, in order to operate in this industry.”

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018 Our annual spotlight of innovation in the slot-machine business BY FRANK LEGATO

elcome the 17th edition of Global Games, our annual sneak peek into the games to be displayed by the world’s slot manufacturers at the Global Gaming Expo.

These games—many being revealed exclusively in this section—are accompanied by new developments in cabinets, game styles and system innovations that are reaching the slot floor in intriguing ways. This year’s innovations at G2E continue the trend of the past few years of slot-makers launching new cabinets, as well as the trend of using those new form factors to house a typically amazing body of innovation on the content side, from new entries in IGT’s masterful “4D” combination of 3D images and midair haptic control to a new cabinet from Scientific Games that will use the so-called “Pepper’s ghost” illusion technique; from new entries in the AGS Orion series of cabinets to new brands from Aristocrat, new form factors from Aruze and Konami, and the debut of a startup slot manufacturer, Gaming Arts, which is making a transformation from a bingo supplier to a slot manufacturer thanks to bringing in several of the most respected slot-supply veterans in the business. There are new progressives from Ainsworth and Novomatic, new branded games and new cabinets from Everi, compelling new form factors from Incredible Technologies and Merkur Gaming, and new skill games from Gamblit. And most of the major slot suppliers are now involved in the rejuvenation of the high-denomination stepper style of game, so expect to see a lot of that. New technologies once again take center stage this year, including mobile and cardless play—and how those technologies will affect the new sports-betting market. But this annual feature, in the end, is about the games. Here’s a peek into the very best innovation that the slot sector has to offer.

All articles written by Frank Legato unless otherwise indicated.

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AGS Game Obsession With additions to its Orion cabinet series and a new round of content in all game styles, AGS completes its first year as a public company with an eye to the future launched the previous year. The marquee-style cabinet, with a 42-inch he slogan of gaming supplier AGS is “Obsessed With the Game.” vertical flat-screen monitor surWhile it originally referred to the variety of slot and table games rounded by 498 game-controlled LED rolling out of the company the past few years, the slogan could easlights, scored big hits with inaugural tiily apply to the overall “game” of growing into a complete gaming manutles Fu Nan Fu Nu and River Dragfacturer. ons. AGS is approaching its first anniversary as a public company, after Operators generally have favored ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on January 26 to banks of Orion cabinets, thanks to emerge as PlayAGS, Inc. with a successful initial public offering of 10.25 the U-shaped “starwall” million common shares. LED lighting between Private equity firm Apollo Global Management—the parent company the monitors, which of AGS from when the company was known as American Gaming Sysmakes a bank of games almost like tems—is now the public company’s largest shareholder, controlling around a work of art in itself. 34.2 percent of the company following the IPO. Earlier this year, Apollo “This year has been fantastic,” subsidiary Apollo Gaming Holdings, L.P. conducted a secondary public ofsays Andrew Burke, senior vice fering of 5.5 million shares of the company’s common stock. president of slot products for AGS. Apollo’s ownership initially provided AGS the financial muscle to ex“We had a continued rollout of the pand its business far beyond the basic Class II business that distinguished title library for the Orion Portrait, the company in the early years following its 2005 founding. the first cabinet in the Orion That growth has accelerated family to be released. It’s obsince the arrival in late 2013 of Presiviously been a smashing sucdent and CEO David Lopez, who cess for us, well beyond our best has overseen the creation of a tableestimates and expectations.” game division that now has more Burke says AGS has concentrated on giving the than 2,700 products installed worldOrion library some depth with new content, as the wide, and an interactive division that “family” gets its first addition. Launched at the launched a white-label social casino NIGA Indian Gaming Tradeshow in April, the last year. The company also recently —Andrew Burke, Senior Vice President of Orion Slant places all the best features of the poracquired Gameiom to provide realSlot Products, AGS trait version into a distinctive slant form, its 24money games and slot content aggreinch main game screen topped by a 32-inch top gation for real-money wagering. LCD monitor, situated horizontally—commonly The growth in all divisions has known as a “landscape” orientation. The game-controlled side LED lights, accelerated in the first year of the public PlayAGS, Inc., as the company 420 of them in this case, blend into the landscape screen in a unique effect. strives to exploit the marquee products of recent years—particularly, the The company launched the cabinet with four inaugural titles. “In half Orion family of cabinets on the slot side. a year, we will accelerate the growth of that product line,” says AGS Product Manager Brett Vela. “By the end of the year, we hope to have 20-plus Orion Rising titles available for the platform, in Class III and Class II, in all of our major Much of the past year for AGS has involved the rollout of additional titles markets.” for the Orion Portrait cabinet, the first in what is now called the “Orion AGS plans to add another new cabinet to the Orion family at the family” of cabinets. Global Gaming Expo, although the company is keeping the specifics under First released in spring of 2017, the Orion Portrait made a splash as wraps until G2E. the first premium cabinet for AGS, joining the core ICON cabinet

“G2E is really exciting for us. We will be showing another cabinet for the Orion family in our booth—the first time anyone in the industry will see it.”

OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

“G2E is really exciting for us,” Burke says. “People view us as a small company, but our hardware roadmap is very robust. We will be showing another cabinet for the Orion family in our booth—the first time anyone in the industry will see it.”

Building the Library G2E will provide a forum for additions to the libraries of games fitting into all that new hardware, including not only the Orion variants, but additional games for the core ICON cabinet. “That’s a very versatile format too,” comments Burke. “Content that works on the ICON will work on the Orion Slant, and the new cabinet we will roll out in the Orion family will be very complementary as well.” The company’s R&D team certainly has been busy, thanks in part to a growing number of design studios. The company has been expanding efforts from its main game design studio in Atlanta, Georgia, with a small studio in Austin, Texas, and a recently opened studio in Sydney, Australia, providing the highly volatile style of slot product for which that region is known. At G2E, the company will launch the first game series from the new Australia studio, a group of Asian-themed games with striking artwork under the heading Fa Cai Shu. Four inaugural titles will be available for the Orion Slant, all featuring a three-level progressive jackpot. “The difference here,” says Vela, “is a pick-‘em bonus that reveals free games as well as credit prizes and progressives.” Among the four inaugural titles is Tiger Magic, a four-by-five, 50-line

game incorporating a feature that upgrades all wild symbols to 2X, 3X or 5X multipliers. Also on the Orion Slant will be a new six-title series called Kingdom Cash, featuring a four-level progressive in which the top two prizes are linked and the bottom two are stand-alone jackpots. “These games feature great artwork and great math,” says Vela. “This is going to be a really good game for us, and it’s going to add a lot of diversity for us on the Orion Slant.” The inaugural games on Kingdom Cash include Kingdom Cash Jaguar, a 243-ways-to-win game; and Kingdom Cash Earth, featuring a five-level picking bonus that can reveal free spins or a jackpot symbol. The company also is launching new games for the Orion Portrait cabinet, including additions to the popular Xtreme Jackpots series, the first AGS multi-linked progressive series connecting across core ICON and Orion cabinets. The Xtreme Jackpots base games feature Jackpot Pick and Free Spins Bonus events. When a full stack of wild symbols lands on any of the middle reels during the base game, players have a chance to hit the Jackpot Pick Bonus and are guaranteed to win one of the four Xtreme Jackpots levels. New Xtreme Jackpots games pegged for launch at G2E include Monkey Temple and Bonanza Blast—both featured on the Orion Portrait. Both offer a progressive picking bonus randomly awarded when a wild symbol lands in the base game, and both employ expanding reel features— Monkey Temple in the bonus game, with individual reels expanding to widen the win area; and Bonanza Blast, with reels expanding in either the base game or free spins when dynamite appears and blasts to expand the reel set.

Royal Derby features mechanical horses racing around a large track and 10 ETG betting terminals with high-definition graphics.

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

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“We’re going to be doing more advanced game features like mystery triggers of exploding dynamite,” Vela says. “We’re featuring the same progressives players are familiar with; however, we’re adding new and exciting features they haven’t seen in the series before.” Meanwhile, AGS is pumping similar new content into its Class II business, which grew last year through the acquisition in December of the installed Class II base of Rocket Gaming Systems, a transaction that instantly added 1,600 recurring-revenue games to the company’s footprint. “Our Class II product is doing the best it’s ever done,” says Burke. “Orion in Class II is just a great product. Our Class II customers are the happiest they’ve ever been.”

New Horizons The expansion of the company’s staff and product groups continues on the heels of the creation of the company’s successful table-game and interactive divisions. The latest expansion of the company’s product offerings will be thanks to a recently concluded agreement with Alfastreet, the legendary Slovenian manufacturer of electronic table game products. While AGS has no in-house ETG offering (and Burke says the genre is not on the product roadmap), the company has agreed to become the exclusive U.S. distributor of Alfastreet’s Royal Derby, a 10-player arcade-style electro-mechanical horse racing game linked to electronic play stations. Royal Derby features mechanical horses racing around a large track and 10 ETG betting terminals with high-definition graphics. “It’s a beautiful piece of machinery,” says Vela, who says first installs of Royal Derby were expected by the end of September.

The company also is forging ahead with its new interactive division, recently announcing an agreement with PokerStars Play to deploy its social white-label casino as part of The Stars Group’s social casino portfolio. “We had the opportunity to work with AGS to extend our social casino portfolio, (and) we were impressed with their land-based content and broad range of non-slots games,” PokerStars Director of Social Gaming Lloyd Melnick said in a statement. “Their products are a good fit with what our existing customers are looking for, and we are excited to be able to offer our millions of registered players the AGS experience.” Expansion of the company’s product portfolio is accompanied by expansion into new markets. The company is licensed in most U.S. jurisdictions, and is working on the last new markets—Ohio was added recently, and the company is awaiting final approval in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the supplier is expanding its footprint in Canada, with games in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba with a target of a presence in all provinces by early next year. As Burke says, it’s getting harder to classify AGS as a small company, with more than 600 employees spread across offices in Las Vegas, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Austin, Mexico, Australia, Tel Aviv, Israel, Isle of Man and Gibraltar. The company is sure to grow larger—sooner rather than later. Burke says the key is the still-growing R&D team. “We’ve been adding a lot of talent in R&D, and we’re diversifying the product mix we’re putting out,” he says. “As our different studios come on line, we can offer different types of games and experiences that appeal to a greater variety of players. “We’re still focused on the core gambler that really likes to play, and play with high volatility. But we’re now giving them a broader offering.” OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

AINSWORTH Strength in EVOlution Ainsworth continues to capture new markets by concentrating on successful brands insworth Game Technology has been in a state of evolution since the the Australian company first sold games in the Americas, but particularly since the 2016 opening of its nearly 300,000-square-foot North American headquarters in Las Vegas. That was when customers realized the Australian company was committed to succeeding in the U.S. The company’s subsequent moves only solidified that opinion—the new facility brought with it a new design studio to complement the original Sydney game design team. The 2016 acquisition of South Carolina-based Nova Technologies opened a new stream of business in Class II markets, and a second design studio in the U.S. The final result has been success. Ainsworth slots have gained popularity in the U.S. with a mix of high denominations and high volatility, in games that are unlike those of other manufacturers. Offerings such as operator-selectable multi-denomination setups and premium games available for sale have solidified the company’s position with operators. The games themselves offer more unique styles of bonuses that go beyond the company’s Australian roots. In Class II, Ainsworth has broken ground with its AnyBet system, a oneof-a-kind Class II progressive link in which a jackpot is available at any bet, but jackpots are more frequent with higher bets. Meanwhile, Ainsworth dove into the branded-license game with a splash, with two versions of Pac-Man, based on the Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. hit that is the best-known arcade game in history. The company previously had success with brands like King Kong and The Three Amigos, but Pac-Man put Ainsworth on the map in more jurisdictions than any other game. “The first two titles—Pac-Man Wild and Pac-Man Dynamic—performed tremendously for us,” comments Mike Trask, director of product management and marketing for Ainsworth. “Pac-Man is a true A-list brand. It’s certainly the most powerful third-party brand we’ve had at Ainsworth.” The evolution of Ainsworth’s game library has paralleled the new form factors on which the library has grown. In the past three years, the company’s games have gone from the former workhorse core cabinet A560 to the A600, A640 and A600 Slant Top cabinets. Much content works across several cabinets; other content is designed particularly for one format.

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

Those cabinets are finding their way to new markets these days, as the company has moved into the Washington state central determinant lottery and into Kentucky, where Churchill Downs has just opened Derby City, including some 900 historical racing games on premium cabinets from Ainsworth—the largest single installation of games in the company’s history. This year, Ainsworth launches yet another new cabinet, the dual-flat-screen EVO, which will serve as a modernized core cabinet as the A560 is phased out. The new hardware will join the current formats in hosting a wealth of new content with many innovative bonus features, but with the common thread of concentrating on the game styles, genres and features that have brought the company its success thus far. The Ainsworth U.S. team also has evolved since the new headquarters was unveiled three years ago. In June, Ainsworth named industry veteran Joe Bertolone as its new president for North America. Bertolone’s career has covered both operations and supply—he was director of operations for William Hill US, and most recently served as president and CEO of gaming technology supplier DEQ Systems Corp., which was sold to Scientific Games in 2017. Another key addition is Deron Hunsberger, former longtime sales and gaming operations executive at major suppliers including Aristocrat, Bally, Shuffle Master, WMS and Scientific Games, who was brought in as senior vice president of sales and marketing last December; and John Archuleta, a 30-year veteran of sales for several major gaming suppliers who was appointed as a regional sales director for Northern Nevada. Management changes have been accompanied by the maturing of the R&D team at the Las Vegas studio, comments Trask. “Our U.S. development team continues to grow,” he says. “A good deal of what we’re going to show at G2E comes from that team in Las Vegas. We are now investing in our game portfolio through expansion of our teams in the U.S., Australia and Japan. We have signed on two new outside game development groups to add diversity in our content offerings.” According to Trask, a total of 130 games will be available for order at this year’s Global Gaming Expo—and an additional 50 to 60 games will be developed within the next year. Many of those games were designed for the A640 premium cabinet launched last year. The A640 “has been our top-performing cabinet on

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“For our customers, a huge advantage is that we offer our premium products as for-sale products. It’s a great point of differentiation for us from some of our competitors.” —Mike Trask, Director of Product Management and Marketing, Ainsworth Game Technology

casino floors essentially everywhere,” says Trask, who notes that two of the top-performing games on the A640 have been Super Charged 7s and Super Hot 7s, wheel bonus games (one progressive, one non-progressive) developed by the Las Vegas studio. “Those games have really taken hold,” Trask says. “Across the country, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a place where they haven’t found a spot, particularly in the locals market.” The games reflect a math specialty of the young Las Vegas studio, a midlevel volatility that appeals to a broad range of players. “They are much lower volatility than a typical Ainsworth game,” he says. “We’re trying to give a new feel to players, particularly 1-cent players—a little less volatile, a little more time on device, and giving players the opportunity to get into that wheel spin quite often.” Trask says Ainsworth’s G2E display will include clone games that capitalize on that formula, as well as a “4 Play” version that will feature four reel sets, activated for a $1 minimum bet.

Brand Power But the big buzz this year, as last year, will surround unique games based on licensed brands—led by last year’s mega-hit, the Pac-Man franchise. Fittingly, the debut of the next games in Ainsworth’s Pac-Man series also will debut the new dual-screen cabinet, EVO. EVO brings special touches like edge lighting and an LCD button deck to the core dual-screen format—in this case, two 24-inch LCD monitors. There will be a full library of more than 60 titles for the EVO, including many designed exclusively for the sleek new cabinet. Those are led by the next entry in the Pac-Man slot brand, the fourgame Pac-Man Link. Four base games—named for the Pac-Man ghosts, Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde—are linked to a five-level progressive.

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

“The games have the classic feel of the arcade game, with Pac-Man, the ghosts, the sounds,” says Trask. This year, the Pac-Man series will be augmented with a new theme from Bandai Namco, a slot based on another classic arcade game from the early 1980s, the alien-shooting spaceship game Galaga. Galaga, on the A640 premium cabinet, includes multiple features mimicking the sights and sounds of Galaga game play. The multiple-progressive game includes an alien-fighting bonus and a free-game event. One more premium theme on the A640 is Ben-Hur, which wraps the cinematic theme around a central wheel bonus. “I think Ben-Hur is right in that wheelhouse of some of the other successful themes we’ve done, like Three Amigos, King Kong and Cinderella,” says Trask. “Also, it is in a line of premium content that a casino can own outright. “That’s very important. For our customers, a huge advantage is that we offer our premium products as for-sale products. It’s a great point of differentiation for us from some of our competitors.” Licensed brands, of course, make up only a small portion of Ainsworth’s game library. Among the highlights of this year’s launches on the A640 cabinet are several games with unique features that represent new types of game mechanics for Ainsworth. Two good examples are Cards of Cash and Triple Challenge. Cards of Cash is a five-level progressive featuring poker symbols in the base 36

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

game, but including a bonus that involves collecting cards to build poker hands. Triple Challenge features virtual dice as the bonus mechanic—a sic bo-style game in which the player rolls for progressives. “These have a very different feel than a traditional game,” comments Trask. “There’s tons of interaction, rolling the dice to increase win levels—you continue to have those moments of touching the screen and hoping for the next level.” Another strong new game series on the A640 is Triple Action, with two inaugural games using the full vertical monitor for three separate reel sets with a cost-to-cover of $1 to activate all three. A bonus symbol on any of the three reel arrays triggers free games on bonus reels that include only the higher-paying picture symbols. The inaugural games are Triple Action Dragons—reprising the Action Dragons theme popular on the dualscreen A560 cabinet—and Triple Wealthy Phoenix. Another standout is a new version of Quick Spin, Ainsworth’s top-performing brand of 2018. The new Quick Spin keeps the familiar large bonus wheel but presents the games in a four-play format, with four individual reel sets. The player has the option to play two reel sets for a minimum $1 or all four for $2 per spin. Other than the four-play format, the math of the new Quick Spin is identical to the original. “We’re using some very familiar titles, and we’re taking what we have that’s working and moving it to different formats,” Trask says. “We’re adding some increased graphics capabilities, but the core of this is taking what we have that’s working extremely well across the country and trying to give people some more options to play with it.”

Mixing Volatility Of course, the new formats and game styles from Ainsworth are accompanied this year, as always, by a new batch of the high-denomination, high-volatility games for which the company is known. “We’ve continued to bring some of our high-denom product—traditional games like Eagle Bucks and Thunder Cash—over to the A640 cabinet,” says Hunsberger. “Now, we can offer that premium cabinet with our high-denom product. We’re starting to place those in high-limit rooms, and we’re seeing good results.”

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Among this year’s new products capitalizing on that strength are a pair of multi-game products, Multi-Win 7 and Mega Choice. Multi-Win 7 places five of Ainsworth’s top-performing high-denom titles in a single unit under a two-level stand-alone progressive. Mega Choice offers an operator-configurable nine games. Both give the operator the option to disable any of the available denominations. This year, the classic Ainsworth volatility is accompanied by the newer middle volatility of games produced by the Las Vegas studio. The mix of volatility will lend variety to the new EVO dual-screen format. Three games in what Hunsberger calls the “mid-high” volatility category are among the first games designed exclusively for the EVO cabinet, in a series called Top Pays. Each of the three base games in the series has a unique bonus feature. Bubble Bucks features a mechanic in which the player pops bubbles for multipliers. Tres Chiles features a collecting-style bonus, and It’s Lit features a multiplier bonus and free games in which wild symbols are guaranteed to multiply at 2X, 3X or 5X. “The series certainly is not as volatile as our high-denom games, but it’s a pretty volatile play experience for a core game,” Trask explains. “That said, the player is going to be able to see some massive wins on the bonus. We’ve taken very simple play mechanics—proven play mechanics very recognizable to your core casino audience—and brought them into this cabinet, which I believe puts us in line with what a dual-screen cabinet needs to look like on today’s casino floor.” The games all feature a customizable multi-denomination function, with the ability to run any or all of four different denominations. Traditional high-volatility Ainsworth math is featured on other EVO standouts such as the Super Wins Chef’s Magic series, with four unique base games all including a re-spin feature for the bonus trigger; and the Asianthemed Dragon Drum and Panda Gong, 1,024-ways-to-win games featuring random drop-down wild symbols. On the Class II side, Ainsworth continues to employ what has worked best to augment the library. “We’re continuing to take our best-performing Class III content and transferring it over to Class II,” says Hunsberger. “You’ll see Pac-Man and the Quick Spin in Class II. We try to keep the math somewhat close.” He adds that the company is doing the same repetition of success for its new games in the Washington central determinant market and for its historical racing product, currently in Kentucky but ripe for expansion elsewhere. Bertolone, the company’ new North America president, says the company will continue to grow by applying its winning formula to new markets. “We’re continuing to move product that works in that high-denom sector,” he says, “and we’re making sure our coverage model in the field is getting product to the markets we need to. “We really try to stay focused on what we’re good at,” Bertolone adds. “We’re trying to leverage where we’ve had success in the past, as more operators, especially in regional markets, try to build that type of player base.” For Ainsworth, building a player base has always been a specialty.

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ARISTOCRATTECHNOLOGIES Best Foot Forward Aristocrat uses its most popular titles and game styles to launch new formats, while augmenting its staple of licensed brands ristocrat Technologies lays claim to game titles that consistently have been recognized as the best in the business—the Buffalo franchise, the Dragon Link and Lightning Link progressive products and others typically top industry surveys as the highest-earning slot offerings in the U.S. and elsewhere. Aristocrat game designers and product planners keep the market dominance of many of the slot-maker’s offerings in mind, even when creating completely new game styles and form factors. That’s why the industry will see, this year as every year, the company’s best and most established game mechanics and most popular themes presented in completely new iterations at the Global Gaming Expo. Most recently, those iterations have been in the form of new, premium-style cabinets to house a vast amount of both for-sale and gaming operations content. Last year, the company previewed the Helix+ Tower cabinet. It’s a larger version of the Helix+, its center being a 55-inch, flatscreen 4K-resolution monitor. The monitor is infinity-style, so banks of the Helix+ Tower games form a kind of artwork of their own. Also launched last year was the Helix XT, a portrait cabinet with a curved 4K monitor that bends at the top toward the player. Since those launches at last year’s G2E show, Aristocrat has been gathering feedback from customers and refining the form factors, and has launched both cabinets commercially, housing some of the company’s best titles, according to Nathan Drane, Aristocrat’s vice president of commercial strategy, games. “We’ve brought some of our content from the Arc cabinet (the premium curved-screen cabinet that has hosted some of the biggest branded hits) across to the Helix XT,” Drane says, “and we’ve added dedicated games like Buffalo Max, Gold Stacks 88 and Wonder 4 Boost. G2E is going to be the coming-out party for that cabinet. We’re going to have a lot of dedicated portrait content, leveraging that full portrait canvas with really great mechanics, linked jackpots and more.” Then there’s the Edge X cabinet, with two 43-inch LCD monitors stacked in a landscape configuration that the company calls “personalized space” to create a “mini-jumbo feel” within a standard slot footprint. Finally, the RELM XL reel-spinning cabinet, with its 43-inch curved monitor above the spinning reels, topped by a bonus wheel, is hosting new brands, new versions of current hits, and games designed specifically for the format. After the successful launch of RELM XL at last year’s G2E, Aristocrat is following up with popular themes including licensed brands like Britney Spears and proprietary hits like Buffalo Golden 7s at this year’s show. The new hardware joins the flame55 cabinet, the sleek format released

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

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The launch title for Edge XL will be Madonna, showcased on the Edge X at last year’s show. last year that uses a 55-inch vertical monitor curved in two places. The flame55 has scored hits with Game of Thrones and other themes in its first year.

Cabinet Flexibility As Drane notes, all the new Aristocrat cabinets are designed as premium-style form factors, but they are being made available in the company’s for-sale library as well as on the gaming operations side. The Helix+ Tower and Helix XT product groups have had a great first year. “We’ve seen great performance on those two cabinets, and it’s really engaged customers in our entire portfolio, including steppers,” says Drane. “We’re really excited to be commercializing the flame55 cabinet, which we’ve shown at a previous show, and officially launching the Edge X products, and getting those into the market,” adds Jon Hanlin, Aristocrat’s vice president of commercial strategy, gaming operations. Both cabinets represent state-of-the-art video, he adds. “Premium video is a huge momentum-driver for our products. We had a great result with the Arc Double and the Behemoth cabinets over the last three or four years, so we’re really excited to start the next chapter in that premium video cabinet space with these two great products.” Another new video cabinet offering, the Edge XL, will be unveiled at G2E. It is a super-sized version of the sleek Edge X dual-screen cabinet, the 43-inch landscape monitors replaced by 48-inch displays. It is the Edge X counterpart of the Arc Double cabinet. “With Edge X and Edge XL, we’re giving operators a choice of offering a really premium, large-format experience, or a smaller version for operators whose size and floor configurations are tight,” Drane says. The launch title for Edge XL will be Madonna, showcased on the Edge X at last year’s show. Meanwhile, Aristocrat continues to pump up the library for the original Edge X with Mad Max Fury Road, based on the 2015 Australian post-apocalyptic film starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. “It’s a very visually based movie,” Hanlin says, “a beautiful movie—so it fits well into that large-format cabinet.” Also coming soon on the flame55, he adds, is a slot based on the hit Showtime series Billions, the Wall Street drama starring Paul Giamatti

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018 “We’re bringing some of Aristocrat’s biggest and best brands to the RELM platform.” —Nathan Drane, Vice President of Commercial Strategy, Games, Aristocrat Technologies

and Damian Lewis. One more new format getting fresh content is the Helix+ Tower, launched last year with the game Mighty Cash, featuring a hold-and-spin mechanic that has proven very popular with players. At G2E, Aristocrat will launch Wonder 4 Spinning Fortunes on the Helix+ Tower. The Wonder 4 format offers the player the option of playing from one to four games on four different reel sets. In this case, Buffalo Gold will head up four new games designed for this configuration. All games feature “Extreme Free Games,” which allow the player to spin reels on up to eight game windows at once; and “Random Boost,” in which wilds can upgrade a bonus from regular free games to Super Free Games or Extreme Free Games. “We’re commanding some of our strongest brands with premium elements like signage and jackpots,” Drane says. “It gives you that retail jackpot presence, that retail signage presence on the gaming floor in the game sale space. We really haven’t done that before; signage has been isolated specifically to the gaming operations business. Hopefully, this feature will be exciting for our customers, and it will certainly look good on the floor.”

The RELM Factor With the RELM series, Aristocrat—the traditional king of video—has, in less than two years, made headway in the stepper-slot category. The original RELM stepper format was unveiled at G2E 2016 and released to the market in June 2017, and has been followed by the RELM XL in the premium space, with the addition of a 43inch curved screen and a jackpot wheel. Developed by Aristocrat engineers along with those of Tennessee-based Class II subsidiary Video Game Technologies, the RELM cabinet—its back-lit, oversized reels surrounded by an array of LEDs synced with game events—has achieved great success with the eight original launch games, and according to Drane, one of the focuses in R&D this year has been to populate the hot new format with more games. “We’re bringing some of Aristocrat’s biggest and best brands to the RELM platform,” Drane says. “We’re bringing Buffalo Gold, Dragons Gold, Wicked Winnings II and Gold Stacks 88 all to our RELM mechanical reel platform.” In each case, an established proprietary brand is customized for the stepper format, with familiar features—Buffalo Gold’s multiplier feature, 5 Dragons’ bet-up mechanic and free games with player selectable volatility, the re-spins 42

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

and free games of Wicked Winnings and the stacking of picture symbols in Gold Stacks 88—remaining key features of the stepper versions. Aristocrat has committed to releasing no fewer than 60 new titles on the RELM stepper cabinet within the next three years. In 2019, there will be 20 new titles on the RELM, says Drane, who notes that they are split evenly between high-denomination and low-denomination offerings. “We’ll continue to support both categories,” he says. “The brand strategy allows us to tap into a new market segment—players who like video-style brands and video-style mechanics, but like to play on a mechanical reel.”

Brand Power The stepper genre actually will be the basis for a major licensed brand from Aristocrat this year, as Motown comes to the RELM XL premium stepper cabinet. “Motown’s a great brand—very nostalgic, but with great music that appeals to all,” says Hanlin. “The brand represents nostalgia for people of a certain age, but also, Motown songs were featured in a recent Broadway show. Those song are always out there in the ether. We’re really excited about this brand, and we feel it’s a brand that can continue over multiple games.” Featured songs in the inaugural game include hits by the Temptations, the Jackson Five and other legendary Motown artists. The sound system, naturally, is one of the most prominent strengths of the RELM XL format in this application, which also employs a vibrating sound chair to complete the experience. “We’re putting our best foot forward in that (stepper) space,” says Hanlin. “We wanted to make sure both the RELM XL and RELM formats are really leveraging the best brands we have, particularly proprietary brands, to maximize our offering in the stepper space.” Of course, the RELM XL offering is only one of a multitude of new licensed and proprietary brands coming from Aristocrat this year. The company released Game of Thrones and Mariah Carey on the flame55 this summer, and at G2E, will introduce Buffalo Diamond in the format—celebrating the 10th anniversary of the industry-topping Buffalo brand. “Buffalo Diamond is a very important product for us,” says Hanlin. “Similar to how Buffalo Grand is a top-three performing game in the market now, this next evolution of Buffalo on the flame55 will have progressive free games. Buffalo is really all about the free games, and the frequently re-triggering feature. With progressive free games, we’re adding this new hot slot mechanic that’s out in the market to Buffalo. It’s just a great marriage of hot trends and classic brands.” Also on the flame55 is Westworld, based on the hit futuristic HBO show about

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018 At G2E, Aristocrat will launch Wonder 4 Spinning Fortunes on the Helix+ Tower. The Wonder 4 format offers the player the option of playing from one to four games on four different reel sets.

an Old West-themed amusement park run by androids. Previewed at last year’s G2E, Westworld will be approved and for sale at this year’s show, according to Hanlin. “The flame55 lineup is full of great brands,” he says, “brands that can drive that cabinet forward and really engage both customers and players.” Another big branded game to be launched at G2E is the B 52s. Themed with the sights and sounds of the legendary 1980s “new wave” band, the game will utilize the substantial real estate of the imposing Arc Double cabinet. Also featured at the show from gaming operations will be the two major themes released earlier this year, the X-Files on the Arc Double and The Big Bang Theory on the flame55 format. Finally, Aristocrat will unveil a new progressive link to carry on the tradition of the wildly popular Lightning Link and Dragon Link products—according to Hanlin, currently the No. 1 and No, 2 best-performing products for Aristocrat on the gaming operations side. Dollar Storm continues the hold-and-spin mechanic and frequent progressives of the first two links, while adding a fifth jackpot—a wide-area progressive.

Bar-Top Beauty All the new cabinets, game styles and entertainment brands Aristocrat will unveil at G2E will be accompanied by yet another first for the company—the multi-game Bar Top. The new product represents not only Aristocrat’s first foray into bar-top multi-games, and first offering of several basic video poker games, but also a response to intense customer demand to play Aristocrat video slots at bars. Video poker games will be accompanied by Buffalo Gold, Wild Lepre’coins, Buffalo Keno and other popular games. Including the most popular Aristocrat video slot brands in the Bar Top is “really the key selling point,” says Hanlin. “We’ve seen bar operators in Nevada actually cut a hole in their bar and put one of our Buffalo machines directly into the bar. That will tell you the kind of demand that is there to play Buffalo at a bar.” 44

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Drane adds that the company’s motto for the Bar Top is “Every slot player deserves a seat at the bar.” “What we mean by that is that in our Bar Top, we’re not only bringing some of the poker products that you love, but we’re bringing slot content to the bar, to provide a solution to operators from a hold perspective (video slots like Buffalo hold substantially more than video poker), but also to players who like to play slot content while they’re sitting at a bar.” Drane says the company has been testing the waters on the product with customers since previewing it last year at a pre-G2E showing. “We received feedback on the form factor, the hardware, the player loyalty systems, as well as the content—and we’ve got a lot of positive feedback, from route operators through to small local casinos and the large corporates,” he says. “Customers understand this could be a different bar setting as well as an addition to their existing bars, so we do see this as widespread across the Americas.” There will be 18 games available to operators in the inaugural edition, and Drane says the company is building functionality to scale above that in the second and third iterations. Aristocrat will be taking its growing library of content in all game styles into new markets over the next year. The company recently launched its VLT footprint with the Atlantic Lottery Corporation in Canada, and will be rolling out games in Manitoba in December, says Drane, who adds that Aristocrat will be entering the central-determinant video lottery market in Washington state around the same time. “Aristocrat is excited to enter these new market adjacencies; we have committed to entering these segments with our customers over the past couple of years,” says Drane. “That’s all coming to fruition.” In the end, it will be the variety Aristocrat offers in all game styles that will keep the slot-maker at the top of the market. “It’s absolutely vital to the future of our portfolio, and how we service our customers, to make sure we give them all the product they could possibly need for their casino floor, whether it be leased or bought,” says Hanlin, “and that we cover all the available options in the market, whether that’s video poker, stepper, VLT or central determinant. “We’re expanding our offerings to make sure we can service any customer in North America.”

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ARUZE Projecting Forward Aruze uses projection imaging and other innovative technologies to move forward in slots and electronic table games hings have moved forward rapidly for Las Vegas-based Aruze Gaming America. It is a forward movement that has accelerated since Eric Persson took over in March 2017 as the company’s general manager. Persson, now president and chief operating officer of the slot supplier, instituted changes quickly. Noting that he wanted to offer operators something he himself would have appreciated—he was senior vice president of Las Vegas Sands Corp. and served senior roles for several other operators prior to joining Aruze— Persson immediately instituted an industry-first two-year performance guarantee on all products using the APX video platform, and on any new video platforms going forward. Just before last year’s Global Gaming Expo, he added another industry first for Aruze customers, a six-year guarantee on any new APX cabinet purchase on hardware, software and service support. While making moves like this to solidify the company’s relationship with its customers, Persson looked to expand Aruze’s product base, bringing in veteran leadership for product management on the slot side and for a move into the table-game side of the industry. Laura Sims joined as product manager just before G2E 2017. In January, Brandon Knowles joined as executive director of table games. Sims had been a product manager for Aristocrat prior to her most recent stint in the same role for online slot studio Genesis Gaming. Knowles was experienced in an area to which the company’s focus was shifting, electronic table games. He had managed ETGs for Shuffle Master and IGT. The executives’ arrival marked a shift in Aruze’s growth path, with the introduction of new technologies on the slot side and diverse table games products. The company’s display at the Global Gaming Expo will reflect this movement, as well as showcasing new cabinets and product lines that expand the footprint of Aruze Gaming America in new ways.

Cabinets and Content This year’s G2E will mark a continued evolution in the cabinet area, accompanied by some intriguing new content to fill those form factors. The most recent of those is the Muso Triple-27 cabinet, launched at NIGA’s Indian Gaming Tradeshow in April. According to Sims, the new cabinet will eventually replace the core Cube-X cabinet launched a few years ago. For now, the company continues to release content that can be adapted to either cabinet. The Muso Triple-27 cabinet features three stacked 27-inch monitors, a highperformance sound system, an ergonomic glass-table button deck with a 13.3inch LCD interface, and the first-ever wireless charging port on a slot machine, accompanied by a USB outlet. Sims describes the Muso Triple-27 as a good example of “out-of-the-box” 48

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

thinking in Aruze R&D. “One of the great aspects is that it looks like a much larger cabinet; it’s got a really great presence,” she says. “But it’s actually an inch or so shorter than our Cube-X cabinet. It’s the first with a wireless charger built in, plus a USB outlet. All of the LCD panels are upgraded to a higher brightness and high definition.” Sims adds that one unique aspect of the Muso Triple-27 is its LED lighting, which surrounds the entire cabinet. “Because of the LED lighting in the back, it has a tremendous presence on the floor,” she says. “As you walk around the back, it’s calling out to a player from every direction. No one else is doing lighting on the back; that’s a part of the cabinet that’s ignored traditionally. But this really makes it more exciting.” Some 200 Muso Triple-27 units were already in the field by early August, housing two different games. Sims notes that the game Wheels Go Round, with sequential animation that serves almost as additional signage, has generated particularly strong customer feedback. At G2E, Aruze will launch additional titles for Muso Triple-27 and for the other cabinet launched last year. At G2E 2017, the company debuted the Thor cabinet, featuring a curved 55-inch HD monitor with a 21.5-inch tablet touchscreen and dual USB charging ports.

Vertical Options Aruze also will arrive at G2E with new content for the Cube-X Vertical 80, which stackes two 40-inch monitors to present an 80-inch play surface; and the Cube-X Vertical—with its 42-inch vertical monitor, still a mainstay for premium games.

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The Cube-X Vertical games were released beginning in January, and according to Sims, the two highest performers have been Xtreme Dragon’s Fortune and Xtreme Panda. “Both have an expanding reel feature and very animated characters that interact with the reels,” says Sims. “The panda gets angry and pounds on the reels and throws a giant coin.” Sims calls Xtreme Panda her “personal favorite” in the Cube-X Vertical series, citing little touches like an Easter egg in which the panda reacts to petting by playing with his ears. In the Dragon’s Fortune game, the dragon shoots flame down the reels and lights them up with wilds. “The feature comes in very frequently, but the game still has a high level of volatility,” says Sims. “That’s part of what keeps it so engaging to players. If you like adorable characters, it’s a great game for you. If you like frequent features, it’s a great game for you. If you like higher volatility, if you like chasing progressives, it’s a great game.” Aruze will bring four game pairings to G2E—along with the two Xtreme games, the company will show Ancient Wheel Aztec and Ancient Wheel Tiger; Thunderstorm Diamond Noir and Thunderstorm Gilded Treasure; and Sizzling Wheel Mighty Tiger and Sizzling Wheel Flamenco Desire. “We did a lot of focus testing with players around the Sizzling Wheel games,” says Sims. “We had very positive responses—players said it looks like a lucky game because the wheel is on fire the whole time. It always has this feeling you’re almost already in a bonus.” On the Cube-X Vertical 80, Aruze is launching two-game pairings— Xtreme Tornado and Xtreme Explosion; and Wild Explosion Get’cha Money and Wild Explosion Get’cha Gold. All include bursts of wild symbols, multipliers or other bonuses through tornados, erupting volcanos or fantastic explosions. The base-game feature in the Wild Explosion games is triggered when dynamite or bombs land on the reels, starting a timer countdown through three base-game spins. Wild symbols stay in place when they land and spread out to other reels in an explosion when the timer reaches zero. “These games have great characters, and some of the most fun sound packages I’ve ever heard,” says Sims. Aruze also will display six new games in the Cube-X Innovator Deluxe reel-spinning series, including multi-progressive groups Moonshine/Sun Fire Jackpot, Leap to Riches, and Dazzling Thunder. “Sun Fire Jackpot and Moonshine Jackpot really showcase the way we take a cabinet we already have and refresh it, so it feels like something completely different on the floor,” Sims says. While the other games on the cabinet have a glow ring encircling a video wheel, Sun Fire Jackpot and Moonshine Jackpot do not. “We changed it from your traditional flat wheel to a vertical wheel that spins towards the player,”

Sims explains. “That creates an entirely different feel. Visually, as you walk across the floor, it feels like a new cabinet.” The Leap to Riches progressive link features games with skill-based or perceived skill features. The operator has the option of setting the skill level on a skillstop feature, ranging from full skill to perceived skill in stopping the final reel. For all the diversity in Aruze’s slot product, this year’s trade show marks the company’s expansion into completely new areas. On the slot side, the company is launching new technologies both to create entirely new play experiences and to reprise one of the most popular game offerings in the company’s history.

Future Vision One of the most-visited displays at Aruze’s G2E booth is sure to be Ray Vision, a new type of slot bank that uses projection mapping to create a 3D picture across a top screen that conforms to the shape of each cabinet. in three-game or six-game, back-to-back configurations, Ray Vision tops the individual screen on each play station—the premium package includes a vibrating chair with integrated sound—and uses the projection on the top screen for bonuses, jackpot celebrations and attract sequences. “It has the feel of community games while still offering individual play,” says Sims. “In a three-pack, that middle seat that nobody wants is turned into the hot spot. The giant volcano interacts with each individual player.” The top screens are actually one molded plastic screen displaying projected images. There is a see-through glass button deck. “That looks fantastic,” says Sims. “When I saw it in person, I thought it looked like something out of Tron!” Common features include the volcano shaking to throw wilds into the reels of one player, and big-screen jackpot features. “It creates this really seamless feel,” says Sims. “The image even comes down around the sides of the monitors, which is something you wouldn’t be able to do with a normal LCD.” She says Aruze is planning to have Ray

OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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Vision to market by the end of the year. New technology also is aiding a G2E reboot of Paradise Fishing, one of the games that arguably put Aruze on the map in Nevada. The refresh of the game reprises its most popular feature, a common fishing bonus in which players use special fishing “reels” that give a realistic experience of fish tugging on the line as players try to reel in the largest bonuses. The new Paradise Fishing is on the “Muso Limited” cabinet, which reprises the Muso Triple-27 features, but with a 27-inch main screen topped by a 55-inch portrait monitor. Unlike the original Paradise Fishing, banks of the new version can go anywhere on the floor, including back to back, unlike the original’s requirement to be placed on a wall. “All the features people will remember from the original Paradise Fishing are there— the great fishing bonus, the reel controller with tension,” says Sims, who adds that the new presentation includes an extra touch—a wrap that makes it look like you’re fishing in a wooden boat.

A Seat at the Table Under an effort headed by Knowles, the company is moving in a big way into the electronic table games market, and even into the supply sector of the live table-game market. According to the company, Aruze’s table games products will be the “centerpiece” of its G2E booth, encompassing the inaugural series of Aruze electronic table games, and its first RFID-enabled gaming chips. The ETG effort began with Aruze’s popular Shoot to Win Craps game, which can be found at many Las Vegas properties. At G2E, the company will officially launch Roll to Win Craps, a hybrid dealer-assisted ETG that combines digital technology with a live-dealer craps game using real dice on a standardsized craps table. All bets and payoffs are made via electronic terminals equipped with ticketin/ticket out payment. Up to 10 players place bets electronically, and the physical dice pass to each player as in the live game. The dealer enters each result on a terminal and play proceeds like a regular craps game. Only one dealer is needed for Roll to Win Craps, to call the results and direct game play. The table is an innovation in itself. The back panel facing players is formed from a series of LED panels, which can be programmed to display each point, proposition bets, hard-ways, etc., or even as a medium for advertising. “Side bets are configurable,” Knowles explains. “There are various table layout scenarios.” He said one possible side bet is a progressive won if a shooter reaches a predetermined number of rolls without crapping out. “Wagers are identified by color and where they’re coming from,” says Knowles. “The dealer doesn’t have to track bets or make payouts, and all action is reconciled electronically.” 50

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“Because of the LED lighting in the back, it has a tremendous presence on the floor. As you walk around the back, it’s calling out to a player from every direction. No one else is doing lighting on the back; that’s a part of the cabinet that’s ignored traditionally. But this really makes it more exciting.” —Laura Sims, Product Manager, Aruze Gaming America

Knowles says Roll to Win craps is expected to achieve GLI certification in December and will roll out in Nevada early next year. Meanwhile, the same projection imaging technology that is being applied to the slot side in Ray Vision is being applied to other new ETGs Aruze will launch at the show. Lucky Roulette is a modified version of a previous Aruze product called Virtual Roulette, in which projection imaging provided the entire visual, including the spinning roulette wheel. Lucky Roulette uses a real roulette wheel, with a real ball, with projection imaging available for side bets, spin history and other messaging. In one side bet, the player bets on a number, and his or her game screen goes into a separate bonus event if the number lands. Projection imaging also is being used on Super Big Wheel, a big-6 game that includes side bets for progressives; and on yet another radical product from Aruze—the Omni-Table. The Omni-Table is essentially a generic table game that uses projection imaging from underneath to present the layout of any specific game. The operator can transform one table from blackjack to Three Card Poker or any other game that occupies a similar footprint. “Operators don’t need bodies to move furniture to switch out games,” Knowles says, adding that as with the other new table products, the projection display also includes room for advertisements on the table— shows in the showroom, restaurant specials, or even outside advertising. There is one more new ETG product being shown which will “defy the imagination,” says Knowles. It is tentatively called “Multi-Card, Multi-Game.” “As you pull a card out of a shoe, that card can be played for your baccarat game, your blackjack game, your war game. The idea is you’re leveraging labor to deliver multiple games across multiple terminals. Side bet opportunities are endless.” Finally, in July, Aruze entered into a distribution agreement with Genesis Gaming Solutions to distribute a new line of Aruze Gaming RFID-embedded gaming chips powered by the best-of-breed PJM3.0 technology, in conjunction with the Genesis Bravo system suite. “We are definitely in the RFID chip business,” Knowles says. “In fact, we are rapidly approaching 150 mph in the RFID space.” Still, G2E is about the games, and with the new ETGs, Aruze will arrive at the show with around 80 titles. “We’re on fire,” says Knowles. “And we’re looking for different ways of innovating the market.”

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EVERI Originality, Variety, Excellence Everi expands game development and explores new ways to deliver a wealth of content n the three years since payments leader Global Cash Access merged with surging slot manufacturer Multimedia Games to form Everi Holdings, the former headquarters of Multimedia Games in Austin, Texas has remained the creative heart of Everi’s games operation. Top engineering talent from the University of Texas had always combined with the artistic vibe of the capital city to give Everi slots their unique appeal, and the merged company’s management, headed by President and CEO Michael Rumbolz, was wise enough to leave that operation unchanged. Dean Ehrlich, who joined Everi in January 2017 as executive vice president and games business leader, has expanded on that success. The gaming business now internally houses multiple studios in three cities. Each studio has its own name, its own specialty—and its own identity, from Studio 7, Big Bet Studio and Top Shelf Studio in Austin to a second outlet of Top Shelf in Reno, the Black Hat Studio in Chicago, and the newest, bZillions in Las Vegas, headed by gaming technology veteran Steve Weiss. “R&D spend is currently more than $45 million a per year, which includes all our outside developers,” says Ehrlich. Much of that growth is devoted to new hardware platforms, in what Ehrlich calls a “doubling down” on the hardware strategy. This year, Everi will be adding to what is already a remarkably diverse collection of hardware. While still providing new content for the Core HDX video cabinet and the Player Classic and Player Classic Boost stepper cabinets, the company is also rolling out new content for the Empire MPX premium format, also known as the E43 (referencing its 43-inch flat portrait screen); and the towering Empire 5527—featuring a 27-inch flat touchscreen LCD topped by a 55-inch portrait-style LCD. More variations of the Empire cabinet se-

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

ries will be highlighted this year, including the Empire DCX, a new premium form factor featuring dual curved 42-inch landscape-style LCD monitors; and Empire Arena, the elaborately banked execution of the E5527 cabinet. Add in a new stepper cabinet this year as well, and the number of formats on which a parade of new content will flourish has few equals in the industry. Everi’s R&D team is filling all of these new cabinets not only with licensed brands, but with 70 percent original content—original math and/or innovative new play features—and a variety of themes, over 80 this year alone. “One of our most significant mantras here is creating original content,” Ehrlich says. “Our different development studios have the tenacity and the capability to produce never-before-seen content. Just consider Lightning ZAP, for example. We have a very talented group of experienced industry veterans that spearhead our game creation efforts.” To ensure the company releases only its best, Everi has ramped up its player-based research with focus groups on concepts, game prototypes, brand licenses and new hardware. “We bring players into our Chicago office,” explains Ehrlich. “We conduct roundtables, ask questions and formulate whether or not they believe a concept would make a decent slot game or, more importantly, not. We also speak with players about brand licenses to determine whether we want to pursue a particular license.” When a game reaches the prototype stage, Everi goes back to the players in Chicago. “They’ll play the game, kick the tires on it and provide feedback,” Ehrlich says. “We’ll make necessary changes, retest it and eventually release it to market.” Ehrlich says this process can repeat several times for more challenging innovative concepts. “We’ll go back to the well a few times, especially if it’s a new play mechanic,” he says. “We want to ensure the game resonates with and is very intuitive for the player.”

Stream of Content Everi game developers are spending more time than ever seeking player input on new games, simply because of the flood of new content pouring from the company’s five studios. The exhaustive research and development effort will pay off for Everi at

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On the premium video side, the E43 joins the other new Empire configurations—the E5527 and banked Empire Arena—in hosting one of the most impressive collections of licensed brands in the business. the Global Gaming Expo, with more than 130 games on display—new content designed for all the various cabinet formats, including an impressive lineup of both licensed brands and proprietary content. One of Everi’s most prominent offerings introduced in the past year is Everi Bet 2.0, an upgrade to the company’s groundbreaking technology that allows operators to set theoretical returnto-player (RTP) percentages according to the level of wager. Games with the Everi Bet 2.0 feature incentivize the player to make higher wagers, its LCD button deck displaying in simple terms that the payback percentage rises with the bet, with bet levels marked with “good,” “better” and “best” return to player. According to Andrew Frisch, Everi’s director of product and program management, Everi Bet is the most-requested functionality from Everi’s Customer Advisory Board. “We’ve enhanced the messaging to the player, in terms of the button deck changes on screen,” he says. “Pop-ups will change to really make sure the player knows what’s happening as they bet up.” Meanwhile, Everi will fill the cabinets launched in the past year with new content designed for each, and will complement that with content that can be shared between one of the new form factors and the Core HDX dual-screen cabinet. According to Frisch, the E43 cabinet has been updated since its launch last year. “The lighting on the Apex Edge topper now follows the same design cues as the cabinet itself,” he explains. “We’ve also brought some of our merchandising from our more premium space into our for-sale space.”

Brand-Happy On the premium video side, the E43 joins the other new Empire configurations—the E5527 and banked Empire Arena—in hosting one of the most im-

pressive collections of licensed brands in the business. At the forefront is Singin’ in the Rain, a masterful themed video slot on the E43 that uses bonus events to take players into the heart of the iconic 1952 MGM musical starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor. The new game, which was slated for a September release, is offered with specialized merchandising including theme-specific wedges and single- or double-faced signage. But once the attract features draw players, the game itself takes over with an immersive experience drawing on the most memorable scenes of the film. The game’s quality is indicative of the design team that worked on it— Everi’s Black Hat Studio in Chicago includes many of the same game designers who were responsible for the former WMS Gaming’s landmark Wizard of Oz video slot series. Singin’ in the Rain uses similar math and play mechanics to that long-running success, including two mystery bonus events in the primary game and three separate bonus events, with one leading to one of five progressive jackpots. Bonuses and the progressive jackpots are linked to each of the film’s four main characters. One themed game to be officially launched at G2E is a new video OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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Willie Nelson game on the E43. The Willie Nelson theme first was used in last year’s pair of mechanical reel-spinning games, designed for high-denomination players. The new video version is packed with bonuses, music and video developed in partnership with Nelson himself, who lives right around the corner from Everi’s Austin games headquarters. As a result, the game includes nods to Nelson’s unapologetic highwayman lifestyle. There’s the “Whiskey River Free Spins” with “Seein’ Double” double Willie symbols. Or the “Willie’s IRS Beater” bonus prize of exactly $1,199. The leaf of a certain plant favored by Nelson is one of the wild symbols. Bonuses include original images of Nelson’s Texas home, and music includes guitar recorded there by Nelson’s grandson-in-law. Also on the E43 is South Park, a hilarious three-reel video slot based on the long-running Comedy Central animated series depicting foul-mouthed kids and injecting social commentary in a particularly raunchy manner. The game captures many of the funniest bits from the show, which is in its 22nd season. Everi also will launch three new branded themes on the super-sized E5527 cabinet, launched last year with The Brady Bunch. Set to launch around the time of the show is Felix the Cat, a multi-progressive game based on the quirky cartoon character ranked No. 28 on TV Guide’s list of “50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time.” Following next year will be the E5527 versions of Fruit Ninja, the fruit-slicing video game that has been offered as a skill-game in the company’s TournEvent system titled Fruit Ninja Gold; and Hot Stuff, based on the 1960s comic book character Hot Stuff the Little Devil, now owned by DreamWorks, titled Smokin’ Hot Stuff Wicked Wheel. Both games feature a six-level progressive available at any bet. On the Empire Arena banked E5527 product will be a game previewed last year and ready for release later this year—Shark Week, a six-pod group of games presented as a themed package, the 55-inch monitors arranged touching each other to form a spectacular top display that looks like a giant aquarium. The bonus game is based on the Discovery Channel program Shark Week, television’s longest-running program featuring shark-based stories, research and unique insights. Placed on top of four popular Everi base games, the top monitors host clever themed bonuses like “What Did the Shark Eat?” 54

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In Knight Rider, KITT (it stands for “Knight Industries Two Thousand”) randomly appears to reward up to seven re-spins with wilds and multipliers up to 7X. The Knight Rider Pick Bonus awards credits or “Jewel Jackpots.” and a touch-screen event in which the player touches the shark to break the cage in which he is contained. One more new licensed theme will be featured on the latest iteration of the Empire series of cabinets, the Empire DCX. The new cabinet uses the dual landscape-oriented curved monitors to create a wrap-around effect. The launch game is based on The Mask, Jim Carrey’s hit 1994 film in which a mild-mannered bank employee finds his wild inner self through a magical ancient mask that washed up from a river. Carrey’s inventive, maniacal zoot-suited character comes through in the immersive experience created by the Empire DCX in several funny bonus events.

Brands for Sale Everi’s lineup of for-sale video products also uses the Empire series—alongside and sometimes along with the dual-screen Core HDX—for both licensed brands and the company’s growing stable of hit proprietary themes. “We have a robust pipeline for both the Core HDX and the E43 in the for-sale video space,” says Frisch. “We’re also looking to leverage select brands in this forsale space.” One of those for-sale brands highlighted this year is also one of those games available on either the Core HDX or the E43 cabinet—Knight Rider, based on the popular 1980s TV series starring David Hasselhoff as a detective aided by “KITT,” his self-aware, artificially intelligent Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am. In the base game, KITT (it stands for “Knight Industries Two Thousand”) randomly appears to reward up to seven re-spins with wilds and multipliers up

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

to 7X. The Knight Rider Pick Bonus awards credits or “Jewel Jackpots.” While the branded games are certainly strong, many more of the titles being launched on the E43 and Core HDX display Everi’s well-known prowess in creating and continuing hit proprietary game groups. For instance, Lazer Lock, a banked multi-denomination linked progressive in which higher bets give players better odds at a progressive, will be available later this year on the Core HDX and in the first half of 2019 on the E43. Also on both formats is a new version of Lightning ZAP, the innovative game configured without reels but with a field of award amounts, won by a zap of lighting from a central electrical sphere. The player’s hits on a spin button charge up the sphere until it zaps a prize. Lighting ZAP, released earlier this year, has been a hit with players, and according to the company, has performed above house average across the map. At G2E, Everi will capitalize on that success with the launch of Lightning ZAP Jackpot, which adds five progressive jackpots to the field of “zappable” prizes. The new version is available in three unique themes, offering the operator a choice of volatility. For players, there are no “non-win wins”—every prize is higher than the bet. At G2E, Everi will launch an Asian-themed version of the game, Dragon ZAP, a high-denomination variation with a “Match 3” progressive picking bonus. It is available either on the Core HDX or the dual-screen, large-format Texan HDX. The company’s G2E lineup, in fact, contains several sequels to popular Everi brands. On the Core HDX are new versions of FuXuan Jackpot Inferno, Fire Phoenix Burst and High Voltage, all games already performing well in the field. FuXuan 88 features stacked wilds, a free-spin event with a “nudge” feature, and a multi-pick bonus. All bonuses are available at any bet. Jackpot Inferno Wildstorm features four reel sets with wild reel stacks and up to 100 free spins with all the lower-paying symbols removed from the reels. Fire Phoenix Burst is a 720-ways-to-win game with the “Phoenix Burst” feature leading to stacked symbols. High Voltage Jackpot Jolt features seven jackpot levels, and a clever feature in which symbols which “block” a jackpot become paying symbols by themselves. Other highlights include Diamond Rain, previewed at last G2E and being released by the end of this year; and a sister game, Jackpot Wheel, both on the E43. Also on Core HDX is Double Jackpot Wolf, one of a new series of high-denomination video games that use proven math models ported over from the mechanical reel side. Jim Palermo, Everi’s senior vice president and executive producer, notes that tapping into the success of Everi’s reel-spinners made sense. “Ten of the top 25 mechanical-reel games on the market in a recent Eilers-Fantini report were ours,” Palermo says. “All of them also work as video games. It turns out they’re just 56

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

good games.” “Super Jackpot was the first one we brought from mechanical to video, and it’s done so well we’ve now expanded that,” says Frisch. “We’re looking to continue that success with more titles and offering them into our for-sale video footprint.” The newest outside development team secured by Everi, Steve Weiss’ Las Vegas bZillions Studio, will have a primary focus on single-line, high-denomination video product in addition to new large-form-factor development. It’s an example of the flexibility Everi brings to all the form factors. Palermo notes that just as titles launched on the Empire series of cabinets are being made available on the Core HDX, the best games on the dual-screen will be available on the E43 portrait cabinet. “Nearly all of the themes that work well on our Core HDX format will be brought to the portrait cabinet,” Palermo says. “That’s a strategy that differentiates us from our competitors. You can’t lose buying our portrait cabinet, because you also get the best games from our dual-screen format.” Among those games is Money Frog, one of the best-performing games on the dual-screen format, which Palermo says is performing even better on the portrait cabinet. Other highlights on the video side include Money Ball, with the random Money Ball feature awarding static jackpots and the MoneyBall Frenzy feature leading to one of five progressives; Dragon Surge, a ways-to-win game with an expanding-reel feature; and Cherry Bomb, with a tall, eight-by-five-reel array and “mini-reels” that can trigger progressive jackpots.

Mechanical Mastery As Palermo notes, the mechanical reel-spinning genre has been one of the brightest spots for Everi the past few years. The Player Classic 3.0 platform, highlighted last year with the first Willie Nelson-themed games, is available in two new formats, the Player Classic 26, introducing a 26-inch top box over the spinning reels with three exclusive titles per year; and the Player Classic Boost, including a game-controlled video topper above the top LCD screen. “Everi is one of the top mechanical-reel providers in the industry, if not the provider for high-denomination currently,” says Ehrlich. “If you ask a casino operator which high-denomination mechanical is a must-have on the floor, they’re going to say Everi.” “The Player Classic 3.0 is one of our most successful platforms to date,” adds Frisch, “so we’re enhancing the cabinet, and adding variety into what the form factor looks like. We launched the Boost feature early this year, which gives us more real estate to display the progressives on the Apex N topper and pay tables on the LCD top box.” Displaying pay tables, in fact, is one of the big draws of the new reel-spinners. Everi’s researchers learned players really miss the full pay-table displays

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“If you ask a casino operator which high-denomination mechanical is a must-have on the floor, they’re going to say Everi.” —Dean Ehrlich, Executive Vice President and Games Business Leader, Everi

that were used on the classic reel-spinners. “One of the things we consistently heard from players was, ‘We love to pay-table shop; we need more pay tables to be prominently displayed,’” says Frisch. “Boost was our first move in that direction, and we’ve now followed that up with the Player Classic 26, which is a bit different from our standard cabinet with a large 26-inch top box.” Everi’s new stepper slots combine games with the old-school mechanical reel mechanics with some games that feature unique new game mechanics. The twin games Sapphire Spin and Shamrock Spin are classic high-denomination ($1-$100), three-reel buy-a-pay games, with a free-spin bonus available only with the second coin bet. Cash Machine and Hundred or Grand both add innovative game mechanics to the classic formula. Cash Machine is a simple “what you see is what you get” game with dollar amounts serving as the reel symbols. The player gets what lands on the reels—and max bet is required to activate all the reels. Hundred or Grand returns only two prizes for winning combinations— 100 credits or 1,000 credits. “We’re aiming to offer something truly unique in the stepper space,” Frisch says. Other highlights in the mechanical space for Everi are Wild Jewels and Wild Electric Diamond, follow-on titles to the popular progressives Blazin’ Ice and Lightning Diamonds that link to the same progressive pool. “We’re also leveraging our really premium mechanical games with new versions,” says Frisch. “For Black Diamond, one of the best brands we have, we’ve released a Skyline variation as well as a Deluxe version in the standard form factor.” The tall Skyline cabinet, in fact, is getting its own upgrade in the premium mechanical space. Skyline Revolve features the tall Skyline top box incorporating Everi’s first mechanical bonus wheel. The lease-only offering comes with a complete merchandising package, and two premium brands for the launch—a reboot of Penn & Teller, featuring new, funny video recorded by star Penn Jillette, the “talking” member of the famous comedy/magic duo; and Casablanca, last year’s hit brand in a nine-line, nine-coin high-denom reelspinner.

Everi Specialties All the core games will be accompanied by new offerings in some of the areas in which the company has excelled. Everi’s best content will be available next year in Everi Game, the company’s first-ever multi-game platform. The product will be released in two 12-game bundles beginning in Q1 2019. The company’s expertise in simple high-denomination games is being

used this year to add a new base game to the TournEvent system, with which the company will wrap up the latest TournEvent of Champions national competition at the XS nightclub during G2E week. It is an add-on to the original TournEvent and the Fruit Ninja skill game, designed to target the traditional player. It is a simple three-reel tournament game, targeting older players who don’t like the fast-paced balloon-popping of the original. “It was one of the most-asked-for developments from our customers,” says Frisch. Other new functionality for TournEvent is a feature that allows multi-property operators to host TournEvent tournaments at multiple locations simultaneously; and a “sit-and-go” mode that allows players to play their tournament sessions at various times. Finally, the wealth of high-performing content from Everi is easing the company’s move into the interactive space. In an effort headed by Dave Lucchese, executive vice president, digital and interactive business leader, Everi is on track with an interactive strategy that falls into two primary “buckets”—B-2-C and B-2-B. For B-2-C, the company continues to pour content into its mobilebased social casino launched last year, called Super Jackpot Slots. The freeto-play site, which offers Everi’s best games, is now joined by a second site, High Rollin’ Vegas, designed to showcase high-denomination, three-reel mechanical-style reel-spinning games. Meanwhile, for B-2-B applications, Everi games are now available to a network of more than 35 sites via services provided by third-party partners. However, the company has developed its own proprietary remote game server (RGS), which is currently before Gaming Laboratories International for certification. Going forward, Everi’s RGS will be deployed for both social and real-money customers. “The whole premise behind our strategy is leveraging all our great brands for land-based casinos,” Lucchese says. “We don’t have math guys in our department; we’re leveraging the exact land-based math.” One technological advance from Lucchese’s team, headed by Marshall Adair, senior executive producer and interactive director, was to take Everi’s strong math designs and put them on a server it calls the Remote Math Server (RMS), which will allow operators to customize Everi games on their own sites. Lucchese says the heart of all the interactive success has been the strength of Everi’s content. That content, in all its variations, will be on display this month in Las Vegas for all to see. OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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GAMBLIT In It to Win It One of the pioneers of skill-based slot games continues to pursue the casino market with new innovation ince skill-based games first hit casino floors in 2016, they’ve been touted as the next big thing—the innovation that will finally bring Gen X, Gen Y and millennial players into the fold. It’s no small job to literally bridge the generation gap between young adults weaned on video games and traditional slot players. Not surprisingly, the new wave of video-gambling games has seen its share of wipeouts. Eric Meyerhofer, CEO of Glendale, California-based Gamblit Gaming, isn’t surprised, or especially concerned. “Video slots have been perfecting their art for over 30 years and slot machines are over 100 years old, but skill gaming is very much in its infancy,” says Meyerhofer. “While we’ve had some great promotional support from our casino partners, it’s apparent the majority of casino patrons still aren’t aware that skill games exist. As with any new industry, this will take time, patience, cooperation and, of course, fun and exciting games that people tell their friends about.” Once players discover the games, he adds, they “generally really enjoy the interactivity, engagement and game play compared to slots.” Gamblit is leveraging high-profile brands like Deal or No Deal, PacMan, Jetpack Joyride and Cut the Rope to not only win over next-gen consumers, but to engage everyone on the casino floor. Heading into G2E, Meyerhofer talked about what’s new and what’s next:

“As with any new industry, this will take time, patience, cooperation and, of course, fun and exciting games that people tell their friends about.” —Eric Meyerhofer, CEO, Gamblit Gaming GGB: Here’s the chicken-and-egg question. Do casinos have to attract younger players to help these games get a foothold, or do the games come first, to bring in the younger players? Eric Meyerhofer: The larger group of younger casino visitors is assured, cer-

tainly in the U.S., where the largest population groups of the combined Gen X and millennials compared to boomers is overwhelming numbers-wise. You will see younger visitors. The question remains: will they become electronic game players? For slot 58

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machines, it’s clear the answer is no. With our games, we’ve proven that yes, the younger visitors not only like to engage in our games but often play multiple games on our TriStation hardware. It’s our belief that monetizing this customer base on the gaming floor is key to the future of the industry. Can you break down that audience by age, gender, etc.? Is there any spillover into older generations, the people who are already regular casino patrons?

We’ve seen customers of all ages on our games. However, our average player is 36 (compared to the average slot player, who is 58, per the American Gaming Association). Our player age curve is the perfect complement to slots, with our attraction for players over 50 as the lowest segment and players under 40 as our largest. We tend to be pretty evenly split between male and female, with some games leaning towards one side or the other. We have a significant amount of unrated players, meaning most casinos are seeing Gamblit games as new revenue.

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You’re working to shorten the play cycle. What’s your goal in that regard?

Some of our first-wave games lasted more than a minute between wagers versus approximately six seconds for a slot machine. Striking the right balance between a captivating experience and financial results will be important in order to engage and monetize this younger player. Let’s talk about the Pac-Man multi-player game. It certainly brings the brand recognition, and it’s a game that has the longstanding affection of generations of players. Beyond nostalgic appeal, how does your version tune it up for casinos?

We have very high expectations for Pac-Man: Battle Casino. We co-developed the game in a rare partnership with Bandai Namco Amusement, which has been amazing to work with. The development team in Tokyo has kept all the things that make Pac-Man incredibly fun, while implementing a straightforward wagering mechanic and system under our guidance. Given that Pac-Man is the most popular video game character of all time and the controls are easy to pick up, we think it will have massive universal and broad age appeal. We certainly saw that at G2E last year when the game made its world debut. You just launched Deal or No Deal, both single-player and multi-player versions. Can you describe that game and how it plays? How do you choose these brands, by the way? Why Deal or No Deal, for instance?

With Deal or No Deal, we kept all the classic elements of the show everyone loves—selecting a briefcase, the banker making an offer, fun models—but instead of trivia, you’re playing poker to win big. Players either battle it out against other players on our Model G multi-player table or against the house on our TriStation single-player system. Both DOND experiences are true to the game show while giving players the familiarity of poker. 60

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Our brand selection is a layered process; most of all, we start with, “What’s fun? What do we like to play?” Stats like downloads help us know we’re providing games our customers already know and love while allowing them to wager on it for the first time. Some partnerships include “Into the Dead,” which has over 75 million downloads, while “Catapult King” has reached more than 40 million and “Cut the Rope” tracks over 1 billion. It all starts with what’s a fun, deeply engaging and an easy-to-learn experience. Why do you think Cut the Rope has such widespread appeal?

Very few apps in existence have crossed that billion-download mark; Cut the Rope achieved that success largely due to the adorable nature of Om Nom, the main character, the fun of the puzzles, and engaging game play. We’ve been thrilled to work exclusively on the casino version with ZeptoLab, adding wagering to Cut the Rope 2, which will be shown at G2E this year and on floors soon. What else will you be talking about at G2E?

We’ll be showing a lot of great new products—over 20 games—including the world debuts for games such as Doodle Jump, another Gamblit exclusive which has received over 250 million downloads, and the all new exclusive single-player Pac-Man game Cash Chase. Where are Gamblit Games being played right now?

We’re live at more than 25 locations from California to Nevada to Indiana and Oklahoma, with many more in the works. We still consider this to be a test-launch phase, gathering lots of data on what does and doesn’t work and modifying our games for the best player experience. —By Marjorie Preston

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GAMING ARTS

New Team, Familiar Journey Bingo supplier Gaming Arts assembles a dream team of veterans to move the company into the Class III slot market first visit to the executive and R&D teams at Las Vegas-based Gaming Arts, LLC leaves the distinct impression of a veteran slot supplier. The company’s president, Mike Dreitzer, is a 20-year industry veteran who most recently was president, North America for Australian slot manufacturer Ainsworth Game Technology, where he opened that company’s massive Las Vegas headquarters and guided the supplier into new markets in the U.S. In June, it was déjà vu for Dreitzer when he was joined by Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval to cut the ribbon on the newly expanded Gaming Arts Technology and Innovation Campus. Jean Venneman, the company’s chief commercial officer, has had a distinguished career in the slot sector, in executive and slot-development roles at IGT, Bally and Scientific Games. She led the team that produced IGT’s Wheel of Fortune in 1996. Keith Kruczynski, the director of game development, made his name during 12 years in the same position for the former Bally Technologies, where he was one of the primary developers of a parade of hit games. Jason Babler, the product marketing manager, spent six years with Ainsworth, including Dreitzer’s time there, before moving with him to Gaming Arts. Before that, he was a marketing executive with Station Casinos and Club Fortune Casino. Despite that enviable stable of slot-sector experience, as far as slot machines go, Gaming Arts is a startup.

Bingo Beginnings Gaming Arts was founded in 2009 by David Colvin, an inventor with success in patents and IP who formed the company after purchasing the bingo and keno divisions of Las Vegas Gaming, Inc. Since then, the company’s main stock in trade has been in supplying keno and bingo games and technology that is now turning bingo and keno operations into more profitable enterprises. Colvin, who is CEO of the company, started Gaming Arts with a few employees, but steadily grew the company into one of the leading suppliers in the bingo and keno markets. The company’s growth accelerated this year, with the signing of an agreement with Canadian distributor Bet Rite in June to bring 62

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Gaming Arts bingo and keno games and technologies to Canadian lotteries; and the July announcement that Gaming Arts had acquired the assets of Las Vegas Bingo Supply, Inc., a privately held supplier of live bingo equipment. Gaming Arts currently stands at more than 60 employees, and the company is licensed in nearly 80 jurisdictions throughout the U.S., Latin America, the Pacific Rim and South Africa. The company provides bingo supplies and systems to run live keno operations to hundreds of operators, and is creator and underwriter of more than 100 proprietary bingo and keno games and technology. Gaming Arts is clearly established in the gaming industry as a prominent supplier for bingo and keno. But that slot-machine thing? In early 2018, Colvin and his son, Eric Colvin—now the company’s chief technology officer—met with Dreitzer to discuss the prospect of coming on board to lead Gaming Arts. There would remain a solid focus on the core businesses of keno and bingo, but Dreitzer would also help bring the company into the Class III casino slot business. “I really saw great potential in the vision that David and Eric had to expand the company from both a content and a gaming technology standpoint,” Dreitzer says. “Moving into the slot business was a natural extension for where Gaming Arts was headed. “The goal is to become an end-to end provider and partner for gaming enterprises worldwide, meeting a multitude of our customers’ needs all at once. With the solid foundation of an amazing team that had already been put together by the Colvins, led by GM Moises Navarrete, a solid foundation was there to build upon from day one.” Since joining as president in February, Dreitzer has wasted no time. In April, he brought in Venneman and Babler. (Kruczynski had joined the company in January, one of the first additions in the Colvins’ drive to create a new slot supplier.) As of August, Dreitzer had assembled a staff of some 20 veteran slot developers, mathematicians, and sales and marketing executives, with a combined 100-plus years of experience in developing and marketing slot machines. At this year’s Global Gaming Expo, Gaming Arts will officially introduce its first

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“Slot games are too serious. Our motto is ‘Fun for the Player.’” —Keith Kruczynski, Director of Game Development, Gaming Arts

three series of slot machines. Launching a startup slot supply operation is a new experience for Venneman, and for most other members of the new Gaming Arts team. But it is an opportunity they relish. “It’s exciting to be at a company when it’s just getting into the starting blocks,” Venneman says. “I spent most of my career at companies that were trying to hang on to market share. I’ve been where we had all the market share, and right now, we’re sitting at exactly zero market share. So we have just one direction to go.”

Keno, Bingo and Slots As chief commercial officer, Venneman not only oversees the product plan for slots, but is responsible for growing the core keno and bingo businesses as well—a learning curve she conquered early on. The company’s Optima live keno systems enjoy a 70 percent market share in casinos. The company also provides operators with keno kiosks, allowing players to pick a game, enter their numbers and print a ticket. Players can take the tickets home with them, watch the keno drawing on a mobile app, and return to the kiosk later to redeem winnings. On the bingo side, in addition to its business of supplying bingo games, equipment, paper and daubers, Gaming Arts has developed several system products designed to inject some life—and profitability—into drab bingo games. “We have numerous products that have really been great at enhancing the excitement level on a bingo floor,” Venneman says. “Bingo has a usual program of the different games they play. We offer stand-alone and overlay games that are added to one of their existing games, where if the player bingos during that session, we will provide them with a tablet that links to monitors around the bingo room so everyone can see it, and they’ll have the ability to spin a wheel or play other games in order to get their prize with the entire bingo room sharing in the excitement.” It’s called the SuperGames suite—various bonus games with exceptionally high jackpots with separate pay tables, offered to bingo operators as an extra card in their games, with a different prize level. “It’s almost a side bet, if you will, on our game that we completely insure,” explains Babler. “We call up an entire pay table, and if we’re using our multi-win patent, we’re able to pay multiple winners as well. Generally in bingo, when someone hits a bingo, that’s the end of the game—and if people tie, they split the prize. We don’t split any prizes on our pay table.”

Gaming Arts takes that concept to the maximum with Bingo Millions, an add-on game in which winners can snag up to $1 million. The supplier insures the prize in this side bet as well, even if two players win the top prize. The game recently launched at the Plaza in Downtown Las Vegas. Bingo Millions is very easy to play—simply bingo in 47 or less on the additional coverall card and win $1 million. (There is a smaller-scale version with a $100,000 prize called Bingo Millions Mini, and a third version which combines the two.) On the marketing technology side, SuperPromo is the world’s first interactive casino-wide promotional system, featuring a suite of promotional games that can be customized and delivered to slot and table players via a casino management system. SuperPromo offers every conceivable casino promotion and more. Finally, Gaming Arts offers a suite of electronic gaming machines that are pure U.S.-style bingo, under the SuperBingo and Ultimate Bingo brands. SuperBingo is a first-of-its-kind electronic bingo game that offers high play rates coupled with highly differentiated game mechanics. Ultimate Bingo includes a four-level “MegaProgressive” jackpot, awarded for completing various bingo patterns on the cards. Ultimate Bingo offers the same game play on up to nine different cards at once, with the same available progressive prize. Both are available in either the patent-pending Phocus U103 upright or Phocus S103 slant-top cabinets, with denominations configurable by the operator. OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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To the Slot Side Streamlining Gaming Arts’ effort to get the slot side of the business up and running was the fact that the development team was able to use the same cabinets, and more importantly, the same platform as those electronic bingo machines. Kruczynski compares the advantage to when his former company, Bally, acquired Reno-based Class II supplier Sierra Design Group in 2004, and used that company’s platform as the basis for Bally’s Alpha slot platform, which revived the company’s business and survives to this day under Scientific Games. “The nice part about our platform is that it’s already approved,” Kruczynski says, “which reminds me of what Bally did after purchasing SDG—we have this really great LINUX platform that is completely modifiable. We can custombuild it without having to worry about Unity or Windows licenses. That has made this effort really exciting, and advantageous for us.” The inaugural Gaming Arts Class III slot library consists of three game series, dubbed “Pop’n Pays,” the “Da Fa Ba Series” and “Dice Seeker.” According to Kruczynski, all the games are designed “for the true gambler,” but each series caters to a specific play style. All have an optional mystery progressive feature called “Rocket Rollup,” with what the company calls “an exciting ride for the player.” For operators, the games feature configurable return-to-player to drive higher bets. The Pop’n Pays series features inventive game mechanics, high-volatility math, frequent bonus symbols and free games with “Rapid Re-triggers.” The inaugural games carry lighthearted themes like “Piñatas Ole!,” in which piñatas appear randomly on the reels to award up to 100 times the bet—or one of three progressive jackpots—to the background of fun custom music. “Slot games are too serious,” says Kruczynski. “Our motto is ‘Fun for the Gambler.’” The Da Fa Ba Series is a group of Asian-themed games (“ba” is Mandarin for the Asian lucky number 8) employing a multitude of popular play mechan64

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ics. One primary-game mystery event is a perceived skill-stop that gives the player three chances to improve a reel result. There are dual-purpose wild symbols that can trigger a “Take It or Leave It” gamble feature if the wild doesn’t result in a win. A free-game event offers the player a choice of volatility for the bonus. Games in this series are ways-to-win games, with no traditional paylines and wins returned for adjacent symbols. According to Kruczynski, they are what the internal team calls the “Sydney Line,” because they cater to recurring players with Australian-style math. Dice Seeker is a group of games utilizing a top-screen dice feature. Games like Viking Invasion feature dice that light up and award bonuses according to the number of pips on the die that lights up. Kruczynski says it’s a playerfriendly event, because the dice are weighted equally. The games also feature “sticky” wild symbols which can stay in place for several spins. Gaming Arts is augmenting its first slot machines with a series of EGMs that replicate live table games in a single-player machine series called Casino Wizard. The first two entries, Casino Wizard Blackjack and Casino Wizard Baccarat, offer players the same odds as the live games, but the company is offering a number of side-bet features to increase operator hold. Venneman says she’s confident that the Gaming Arts journey to capturing market share in the Class III slot market will be a quick one, and that confidence is common throughout the team. “It’s going to be a necessity that we have an excellent product, and we think we do,” she says. “We’re going to have to have a consistent pipeline, and we know we will. And, we think our games are going to resonate with the players. “We’re very excited to bring this company into a new space. But it’s a space we know very well.”

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

INCREDIBLE TECHNOLGIES Innovate, Expand Incredible Technologies creates innovative new brands while expanding its R&D and market footprint ncredible Technologies has a unique growth story—particularly as a slot manufacturer. The company, of course, had been well-known as a game manufacturer long before it ever produced a slot machine, its biggest hit, the Golden Tee Golf arcade and tavern game, still popular 30 years after its launch. But the company achieved success as a slot manufacturer almost immediately after its Global Gaming Expo debut in 2008. Such success in a new industry boils down to two crucial factors for IT: First, the company has been able to transfer mastery of game mechanics from the amusement-game industry to casino slots, arguably better than any other company that has straddled both industries. Secondly, the company’s development staff quickly conquered the art of effective slot-machine math, and has been able to apply it again and again. IT also has developed a knack for using its own successes to create new success, building consistently growing families of games that utilize the popular features of their early hits, the most notable being what the company calls its “money family” of games that grew out of the early hit Crazy Money. Since 2015, the company has averaged around 80 percent growth in yearover-year sales revenue, and 2018 is shaping up to be another record year. To prepare for its 11th G2E, the company is writing a new chapter in its growth story. Last year, the company opened an office in Las Vegas, housing two additional internal game development studios. That brings the development staff to a total of seven studios, with five housed in its Vernon Hills, Illinois headquarters. Caitlin Harte, director of product marketing for Incredible Technologies, says the expansion of game development staff—the lion’s share of 50 new employees added in the past year—is meant to fill the company’s library with new proprietary game families. “What’s exciting about the Las Vegas studios is that we’re drawing from a different talent pool,” she says. “These designers have a different view, and come from different industries.” The new ideas coming from the expanded group of game studios are creating inventive new game mechanics and entertaining new themes, but Harte says the core of the success for the new variety will always go back to some of the industry’s strongest core game math, which she credits to co-owner and Executive Vice President Richard Ditton, who founded Incredible Technologies along with President and CEO Elaine Hodgson in 1985. “Richard created proprietary math tools about five years ago that we still use,” Harte says. “Every game has to pass a standard on these tools before it can even go to the art stage. Our games focus on math first, features second, and finally, on wrapping a beautiful design around each.”

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

Old Favorites, New Favorites Incredible Technologies is applying this winning formula both to build on the success of its current game families and to create new ones, in an effort to expand the library of games available for its Infinity V55 cabinet, launched at last year’s G2E. The V55 features a 55-inch, flat-screen 4K vertical full-touch monitor, making it the largest screen on a core cabinet in the industry. Harte says the first games launched on the V55 have been a “huge hit,” performing anywhere from two times to six times house average. “Performance out of the gate has been really strong,” says Harte. “And that’s only with the four launch titles.” This year’s G2E will focus on a wealth of new content for the V55. “We’ve had a couple of big brand families throughout the years, particularly with our ‘money’ themes. We’re looking at what will be the next ‘money brand.’” She says that big follow-up to the “money” family could be Clinko, a series of video slots on the V55 featuring a pachinko-style mystery bonus feature. The series is launching with Clinko Winning Wall, a 30-line video slot that uses that big 55-inch monitor for a mystery-bonus pachinko game. When triggered randomly, the big screen transforms into a colorful pachinko board with pegs displaying different awards. The ball bounces from peg to peg as it falls from the top of the screen down to the reels, awarding the prize the ball hits, including credit amounts, added wilds, sym-

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bol upgrades or a line-win multiplier. There’s a free-spin event in which two Clinko balls are released before every spin, adding the awards touched along the way. During free spins, there are jackpot pegs added to the board, corresponding to three progressive jackpots at the top of the big screen. While Harte predicts Clinko Winning Wall could be the next big game family, it’s only one of a full complement of new games to be launched on the V55 at this fall’s trade show. Bars Up features a traditional-style slot game on dual 25-line reel arrays. Game play centers on classic bar symbols, and a simple but clever game mechanic: When a gold bar symbol lands, it upgrades the bar symbols on its reel set, turning single bars into double bars and double bars into triple bars. A free spin event continues as long as at least one bar symbol lands in a spin. When a bar lands in a free spin, it cascades down to the lowest unoccupied position and locks in place. Filling the entire screen with bars awards an additional credit amount. Three bonus symbols trigger a picking bonus in which the player touches symbols to match three symbols corresponding to one of five progressive bonuses. It’s a “true-pick” progressive feature—the outcome is not predetermined; players really are choosing their prize. The screen reveals what was behind the icons not selected, to drive that point home with players. DreamStar uses the big screen for another unique game mechanic, themed around a DreamStar that is the center of a celestial solar system. If the DreamStar symbol lands in the 40-line base game, it activates a second 40-line reel array. All wilds on the bottom screen are copied onto the second reel set. The process is repeated to create a third reel set if the DreamStar

lands on the second array. A progressive bonus transforms the entire big screen into beautiful 4K animation of the DreamStar solar system, and players spin planetary rings to match planets to win a progressive. Freedom Fortunes places a patriotic theme on the big cabinet, centered around the Liberty Bell, Uncle Sam and various World War II icons. Random bonus features occur when the Liberty Bell rings, with the player qualifying for more bonus features by betting up. Live It Up Power Wheel adds the high-performing Power Wheel game family to the V55. The game, featuring fast cars, jewels, cocktails and other icons of the high-roller lifestyle, features a two-level bonus wheel spin to win credits, multipliers or one of six progressive jackpots. Credit awards won on the outer wheel can be multiplied up to 4X by the inner wheel. Finally, IT draws from the “money family” well again with Sky Dragons, based on the Money Rain 2 game on the V55. Like Money Rain 2, it uses a “ScatterWays” ways-to-win format in the base game, with the familiar flipping-dollar-bill reel symbols and a “Money Reel” activated when one or more special “reveal” symbols land. This version includes an expandingreels feature that grows the array from three rows of symbols per reel up to seven rows, as the dragons drop to reveal symbols and expand the reel set, row by row. All the V55 games are available with IT’s Simple Sign Kit, which is a digital sign on a video monitor that can be put up simply and affordably. According to Harte, the Simple Sign Kit has increased game performance an average of 30 percent when used in banks of games since its 2014 introduction. OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018 The V55 offerings will be accompanied by new games in IT’s other form factors, including the tall Skybox cabinet, which will host the new game All Good!

Multi-Game Edge The V-55 is the basis for a new casino marketing display package that IT calls the V55 Edge. Harte says it was designed to answer customer complaints regarding expensive digital signage and Plexiglas wedges with complicated printed inserts used in marketing signage. Infinity Edge is a brilliant 4K LCD video wedge that displays motion graphics and custom casino-branded content, built to tie V55 cabinets together in a compelling display. The V55 Edge will debut at G2E in several configurations. “This is the only wedge that is a full video screen,” Harte says. “Plexiglas and alternative digital signage is costly and difficult to update as gaming content changes. The Edge plays video from a video media player, so it’s easily customized and updated, while keeping costs low. We plan to offer three different types of content—abstract attract content, game-specific content or casino-specific content. It can be be customized to attract different audiences. There are a ton of different configurations, so it doesn’t have to be just four games; it doesn’t have to be against a wall.” Configurations include triangles, back to back, or a unique sawtooth design that places games at an angle, which Harte says is an innovative way to give players some additional personal space. The V55 Edge setup is being used to launch Incredistars, IT’s first multi68

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

game platform. The inaugural version will include three of the company’s most popular games in its “money family”— Crazy Money 2, Money Roll and Money Rain. In the Incredistars platform, the V55 screen displays three reel sets, and the player can use them to play any mix of the three available games. The V55 offerings will be accompanied by new games in IT’s other form factors, including the tall Skybox cabinet, which hosts a new game, All Good! All Good! debuts another new game family, called SkyRing. The 40-line base game, with classic bar, bell, cherry and 7 symbols, sits under a second monitor that displays “Instant Winner” credits. The huge Skybox monitor is unlocked during free spins, where the entire monitor is full of instant credit awards and additional free spins. Every other spin, SkyRing Scatters are dropped onto the Skybox. If a SkyRing lands on an arrow symbol, the player wins all prizes that the arrow points to, totaling up to four awards. The new additions to IT’s library come as the company is expanding its reach into new markets in Ontario and Mexico, and working toward approval in the few U.S. markets where its games do not have a current footprint. The first installation of IT games in Ontario occurred over the summer, and more titles will be introduced through the end of the year. The company’s move into Mexico marks its second international expansion in one year. Meanwhile, one of the newest casino developments for IT involves its flagship amusement brand, Golden Tee Golf. The Golden Tee World Championship was held at the Orleans in Las Vegas in June, bringing the company’s most storied brand to the casino industry in what could be called a skill-based esports format. IT awarded more than $100,000 in prizes during the championship matches alone. “Our focus this year is to once again be innovative and clever, with our operators in mind,” Harte says. “We’re listening to their needs, and providing high-earning content that doesn’t have to have licenses on top. We offer games that can last a long time, and great brands that last a long time, and we’re giving them the flexibility to fit what we’re offering on their floors.”

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

INTERNATIONAL GAMETECHNOLOGY Recapturing the Market IGT uses meticulous research to produce “Proven Performers” on its way to recapturing dominance of the slot market wenty years ago, the spelling of “slot machine” in North America and many other parts of the world was accomplished with three letters: IGT. At the start of the 21st century, International Game Technology dominated the slot market with anywhere from 70 percent to 75 percent market share. The company’s competitors fought over the remaining 25-30 percent of the market. Of course, that competition matured over time, with IGT’s competitors consolidating, expanding and blazing new and innovative trails in the sector. Today, while IGT still sells more slot machines than any other North American supplier, the overall pie is dominated not by one, but by four companies. Over the past few years, IGT has worked to change that, with meticulous market and player research. One laser focus has been to bring IGT back to the top of the market for core video slots, a space it absolutely owned in the early 2000s that had slipped away as competition grew. Not long after the merger with lottery and slot giant GTECH created today’s London-based company International Game Technology Plc., the new end-to-end company’s games division—now known simply as IGT—an-

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

nounced an intense effort to effect a turnaround in the core video space. As noted by Dallas Orchard, IGT’s senior VP and chief product officer for gaming who spearheaded that effort, the video turnaround is complete. “We’ve really been pushing that turnaround over the last couple of years as the No. 1 priority in the business, on the back of a lot of discipline around our test banks and our focus groups, which is really in full flight now,” Orchard says. “That core video turnaround, which we believe is complete now, is about creating sustainable results moving forward.” The core video turnaround, of course, also has helped all of the other diverse product areas at IGT, including those areas like premium video, mechanical steppers and video poker, where the company never has relinquished its leadership position. That’s because the discipline of using test banks combined with customer focus groups has ensured that every new game released meets the company’s status of “Proven Performer.” “Our commitment to the market a couple of years ago was that we will no longer publish games to the market that we don’t have confidence in ourselves,” Orchard says. “We’re really using that Proven Performer grade to come back from the test banks to decide what we’ll release to market, what we potentially rework and what we potentially throw away, at our expense, to make sure we end up with quality in the marketplace.” The Proven Performer grade is achieved through a program of live testing of each new game in “test banks” across North America, a process Orchard oversees along with Mike Brennan, senior director of product management, as well as the heads of each product group. “And we’re pretty tough on ourselves,” Orchard says. “Mike’s on me every month to make the grades tougher to achieve to go to market, because we want to make sure that when they go to market, they work.” Games are placed in the field test banks of host casinos for 90 days each, and, to eliminate false performance assumptions based on the novelty factor, game performance is only scored for days 60 through 90. “We throw the first two months away,” Orchard says. “It’s the third month that drives the grading. It’s been very successful for us.” If a game doesn’t make the grade in 90 days, it goes back to the drawing board, and developers use focus-group testing and other research to rework the game until it achieves the Proven Performer score. And it works. Brennan offers the Fortune Coin video slot as a prime example of test-bank success. “It didn’t pass test bank with two iterations; the team pulled it back and reworked it, and now we have one of our strongest test-bank scores in a long time. We relaunched it, and it’s now one of our highest-performing games.” Brennan says the test-bank system allows a game to be reworked and relaunched “without that market stigma” that would result from an unsuccessful

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018 The CrystalDual 27, introduced at the spring NIGA Indian Gaming Tradeshow, features dual, high-definition, 27-inch landscape displays, the option for bank-wide synchronized lighting, a mobile device charging port, and other innovative features.

general launch. “It allows us to have that safety net to make a game go from good to exceptional,” he says. Operators are recognizing the benefits as well. “We had our Customer Advisory Board a few months ago,” says Orchard, “and the No. 1 piece of common feedback from our customers was that the dedication and the discipline to our test bank process has really created a lot more confidence, and is correlating with the performance we’re seeing in the marketplace. We’re able to prove to our customers now that if our games are scoring well on test bed, they should feel confidence in purchasing those games.”

Video Revival The testing regimen has translated into performance both in the core video and premium video segments—manifested in a G2E lineup that will be dominated by those “Proven Performers.” While IGT has been in line with other manufacturers the past several years in launching a wealth of new form factors in core and premium video, Orchard says two cabinets in particular have fueled much of the recent video success—the CrystalCurve and the CrystalDual 27. The CrystalCurve, with its 43-inch curved 4K HD portrait monitor, has proven a versatile form factor for a wealth of core video content, as well as premium. The CrystalDual 27, introduced at the spring NIGA Indian Gaming Tradeshow, features dual, high-definition, 27-inch landscape displays, the option for bank-wide synchronized lighting, a mobile device charging port, and other innovative features. Launch titles include Mistress of 72

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

Egypt, Solar Disc and Scarab. “The beauty of the CrystalDual 27 is that we were able to launch it with some of the highest-performing games ever from our test beds—great games that haven’t been seen in the market before,” says Orchard. “We believe with the CrystalCurve in the for-sale library and the CrystalDual 27 off to a great start, from a hardware perspective we’re on par with all of the market leaders, and from a game performance standpoint, we’re really starting to prove ourselves. We’re seeing incremental sales, which is critical.” According to Orchard, 50 percent of IGT’s core video games are available on both cabinets. “We’re supporting other cabinets as well,” Orchard says. “As part of this journey, we went back and cleaned up a lot of the underperforming games on those older cabinets. Also, we’ve made a lot of our titles backwards-compatible at the request of our customers. We’re starting to be more disciplined on which games go on which cabinets.” On the core video side at G2E, the CrystalCurve and CrystalDual 27 will host a full collection of those high-performing games. Highlights will include Fortune Coin, the highest-scoring test-bank game in the past year. A ways-to-win video slot in the Jackpots series, Fortune Coin is an Asianthemed game with a four-level progressive jackpot. When one or more Fortune Coins land on the reels, it can trigger any of three bonuses—an award of up to 1,000 times the bet, a free-spin event in which all minor symbols are removed from the reels, or a progressive picking bonus with the goal of matching three icons corresponding to one of the jackpots. An “Award All” icon triggers all four progressive jackpots. Fortune Coin is offered on four different cabinets, including the CrystalDual 27, CrystalCurve upright and both CrystalSlant slant-tops. “We reworked the game twice, and this version is screaming on test banks,” says Phil O’Toole, IGT’s director of product management for North America. “It’s a real success story for the test bank.”

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It’s based on the original 1984 Ghostbusters film, and if you’ve seen the movie, you can imagine what the TRUE 4D technology can do with this theme. Players can reach out and feel a tingle when they touch the “proton stream” that snags ghosts, or use their fingers as proton blasters to catch ghosts in the “Ballroom Blaster Bonus.” Other new core multi-progressive slots include two new games for the Hot Hit series—Hot Hit Ignite and Hot Hit Pepper Pays—which features a simple progressive mechanic that awards progressives for seven or more game title symbols on a ladder ranging from resets of $25 for seven of the symbols scattered on the reels to $10,000 for Hot Hit symbols on all 15 spots of the threeby-five array. There are several events in which those progressives can be hit, including a picking bonus that locks Hot Hit symbols in place and offers picks for credit amounts or additional Hot Hit symbols; and a re-spin feature that locks all jackpot symbols in place and prompts the player to re-spin for additional jackpot symbols, credits and additional spins. Also in the multi-progressive core category is the Hyper Hits series, which awards one of three progressives for landing a five-ofa-kind with a gold disc on the fifth reel. Other standouts in the core video area include Coin-OMania, which features coins falling from the top of the screen to land as wild symbols on the reels; Golden Egypt Grand, with a 75-line, pyramid-shaped reel array; and Wild Pirates, with a unique mechanic in which cannonballs landing on the reels hold in place for a countdown, and explode to place wild symbols on adjacent reels. The core video group also includes several games that place modified versions of hit games from the video library on the CrystalCurve, “with a small twist or tweak to entice players,” says O’Toole. Called the All-Star Evolution series, games include Ocean Magic Grand and Cleopatra Gold. “They have the same DNA as the original titles, but we’ve added additional layers for the player to win, such as a bigger bubble in Ocean Magic Grand, for the player to chase and stay in the game,” says O’Toole. In a similar mode, Golden

Jungle Grand is a follow-up game to the hit video slot Scarab, featuring the same kind of persistent game feature, in which players accumulate special symbols for 10 spins before the reels transform into full stacks of wild symbols.

Premium Play The premium video segment also benefits from IGT’s collection of market-leading hardware. “We believe the CrystalCurve Ultra is the most beautiful premium product in the market,” comments Orchard. “It has given a tremendous shot in the arm to our premium game development.” Dominating the premium space for IGT this year is yet another remarkable collection of licensed brands from popular culture—movies, TV, music—including games utilizing the standout “TRUE 4D” mid-air haptic and gesture recognition technologies that allow players to reach out and touch 3D images (generated by IGT’s TRUE 3D technology) to affect the game; and the equally innovative PowerSight technology, in which players affect the game simply by fixing a gaze on a certain area. According to Kurt Larsen, vice president in charge of IGT’s premium studio, new titles this year are joined by strong brands that have been reworked with significant updates. “I consider those completely new games,” Larsen says. “We have strong licensed brands, with entertainment and immersive experience that also captures the heart of gamblers.” One of the most prominent is a new version of the Ghostbusters brand released this summer using the mid-air haptic technology—Ghostbusters 4D, on the immersive CrystalCurve TRUE 4D cabinet. It’s based on the original 1984 Ghostbusters film, and if you’ve seen the movie, you can imagine what the TRUE 4D technology can do with this theme. Players can reach out and feel a tingle when they touch the “proton stream” that snags ghosts, or use their fingers as proton blasters to catch ghosts in the “Ballroom Blaster Bonus.” There are even secret gestures that unlock additional game features, such as ghosts that appear when you outline a shape in the air. Other new branded themes on the CrystalCurve TRUE 4D cabinet include American Gods 4D, from the IGT design studio in Graz, Austria. It is based on the Starz network fantasy drama centered on a celestial battle between “Old Gods” and “New Gods,” featuring a collection of interactive bonus events in which the players touch objects related to the theme of the show. “4D just gets more and more compelling,” comments Larsen. “American Gods’ graphics are mind-blowing, and Ghostbusters is a fantastic usage of 4D. Dallas continues to work with our partner Ultra Haptics to update the technology, to make sure the experience is ever stronger.” Just as compelling is the new Sex and the City Ultra, on the CrystalCurve Ultra cabinet, with its imposing 50-inch, ultra-HD top portrait LCD monitor over of a 32-inch landscape monitor. The remarkable PowerSight technology allows players to “shop” in picking bonuses by fixing their gaze on various merchandise, to pop bubbles for bonuses by simply staring at them, and to search for “gold cards” to move up to a higher award level. The shopping bonus, called “Retail Therapy,” or the popping of bubbles to reveal diamonds in the “Champagne and Diamonds Wheel Bonus,” can lead to one of five progressive jackpot levels. Other new branded themes on the CrystalCurve Ultra cabinet include Blake OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018 Shelton, based on the music and performances of the country music and TV star; and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the game about the master of thrillers and the macabre that was previewed last year and is now ready for market. At G2E, the company also will launch a new version of The Price Is Right, all on the CrystalCurve Ultra. The CrystalCurve cabinet will host new multi-level progressives such as the Asian-themed Fortune Gong, which Larsen says is the “strongest MLP we’ve built in a long time;” and Golden Goddess, which features a unique reel array that links two reels with like symbols. Additionally, the company will launch Jurassic Park Trilogy, a three-game series based on the iconic movie franchise. Also new in the progressive area is Money Strike, a bolt-on progressive product that can sit atop all of IGT’s video core games. “This can really drive peak performance on casino floors,” says Orchard. “We’re doing an aggressive rollout on that product.” Finally, IGT will be rolling out more offerings in the skillbased genre to augment its Video Reel Edge series, as Cleopatra Pinball and Texas Tea Pinball continue to do well in the market. The company will display the follow-ups to those two pinball-based games, Fuzzy’s Fortune and Little Fish Big Fish, along with Chill Gaming’s innovative Bloomtopia and Fortunes of the Brave games.

Stepper Dominance IGT maintains the market lead in mechanical steppers, both in the core and premium areas—a position that was strengthened last year when the company brought back Anthony Baerlocher, one of the top game developers for 18 years beginning in 1992 and the man responsible for many of the company’s most iconic reel-spinners. One of the main focuses in maintaining that lead this past year was a new effort fueled, like so many other aspects of IGT, by player research. According to Orchard, what players told IGT on the stepper side was to be more like... themselves. Well, their former selves, anyway. Baerlocher spent much time last year gathering customer feedback, and what customers told him was later verified in the test banks: Players want the steppers in the core S3000 line to look and feel more like that line’s predecessor, the S2000 product group that produced legendary hits like Double Diamond and Red, White & Blue. New mechanical reel-spinners, and reworks of classic titles, are now being designed to be more similar to the S2000 model in terms of sound, artwork, and particularly the pay table—recent games have used the top-box display to house only the top few jackpots, along with generic art, bonus features and progressive jackpot meters. The new games go back to displaying the entire pay table on top, right down to the single-cherry win. “It involves something as simple as recreating top glass on the top screen with the full pay table, adding chunky solenoid sounds on reel stops, even reel dividers to make it feel more like S2000, but still give options and functionality to take the player to new places,” says Brennan. Orchard says the results are plain to see in the test banks, with performance on many S3000 games increasing threefold when reworked with the classic features. According to Nick Nistler, product manager for core spinning reel, the changes have given a boost to the high-denomination stepper category. “In me74

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

“In mechanical reels, we’re focusing on three-reel and high denominations. We’ve gone back and increased the bet structure and the max bets to recapture that threereel, high-denom market.” —Nick Nistler, Product Manager for Core Spinning Reel, IGT

chanical reels, we’re focusing on three-reel and high denominations,” says Nistler. “We’ve gone back and increased the bet structure and the max bets to recapture that three-reel, highdenom market.” The steppers being launched at G2E reflect this effort, with classic-style games often boosted by a new bonus feature. Red, White & Blue Super Drumroll Bonus features a lock-and-respin feature and a unique free-spin mechanic. When a drumroll symbol lands on the payline—it is a three-reel, single-line game with the classic RW&B math—the player hears the drum roll and is awarded one free spin. A “super drumroll” symbol on the payline awards up to four spins, which can be re-triggered up to a maximum of 42 spins. For lower denominations, Triple Double Diamond and Legend of the Phoenix are offered in three-reel, 25-line configurations in the “Progressive Free Games” series. In a unique game mechanic, the top box displays three free-game “buckets”—red, green and blue—with free-game meters that increment as those colors land in symbols on the reels. When scattered bonus symbols land on the reels, the corresponding free games are awarded. Fifteen free spins is the “must-hit-by” level. The reels rumble in anticipation when two of the three bonus symbols land. Among other highlights, Pinball Gold is a three-reel, three-line game with a nine-credit max bet and a pinball bonus. As the player bets up, the bonus amounts in the pinball bonus rise. In the bonus, the player gets five shots in a pinball game, with the ball falling to touch various bonus awards. Other standouts on the stepper side include low-denomination crossovers from core video like Dragon of Fortune, which includes a nudge feature in which the dragon symbol nudges a wild symbol to the payline. A progressive picking bonus can lead to free games, award credits or one of four progressive jackpots. “Seeing success of being able to translate game mechanics from video to stepper is very pleasing for us, because we have a lot available to be able to drive that growth,” says Nistler. IGT’s commitment to stepper innovation does not stop at core; the company also will reveal a range of premium stepper games, on the CrystalDual + Stepper and CrystalWheel Stepper cabinets, as well as the large-format cabinets including the S3000 XL and the Megatower cabinet unveiled at last year’s G2E. On the CrystalDual + Stepper, with its tall custom top-box display—used with great effect last year with the latest version of the Megabucks wide-area progressive—the company is launching new versions of Alfred Hitchcock and Temple of Treasures, all to follow Jin Long 888, currently one of the best performers in the market. The S3000 XL large-format cabinet will be reprised with a “v2” version in the game Triple Gold, a three-reel, five-line game with a wide-area progressive jackpot starting at $200,000. With oversized reels, expanded personal space

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for the player and enhanced lighting, the new version of S3000 XL is designed to host any S3000 game. The Megatower cabinet was launched last year with Megatower Wheel of Fortune, the top-performing wide-area progressive slot in the marketplace, according to a recent Eilers-Fantini survey. At G2E, a follow-up to that hit will be launched, Wheel of Fortune Gold Spins.

Poker, Keno and More Even more than the reel-spinning genre, IGT has always been the undisputed, dominant leader in the video poker area. This year, the company continues last year’s trend of launching specialty video poker games that include bonus features but maintain the return-to-player percentages of the iconic original stable of IGT video poker. The RTP is retained by adding an affordable extra per-hand bet. In the Asian-themed Lucky 8’s video poker game, on the Universal Slant cabinet, a five-credit ante bet unlocks several bonus features related to the Asian lucky number 8. In the base pay table, extra credits are paid for three 8s or better—including 88-for-one for a full house with three 8s and 2,088 credits for four 8s. When dealt three of a kind or better, players trigger the Lucky 8’s Bonus Wheel, a virtual wheel in the beautifully designed top box with values up to 8,888 credits and a dragon slice that that re-spins the wheel with increased values up to 18,888 credits. Max Action Poker jacks up payouts for a sixth credit wagered, including 8,000 credits for the royal flush, 4,000 credits for four Aces on Double Bonus, and a whopping 14,000 credits for four Aces with a kicker on Double Double Bonus. There will be a new Game King multi-game unit displayed at the show including not only poker, but a new line of video keno games, headed by keno versions of the most popular IGT specialty video poker games. IGT will also launch Super Times Pay Keno and Ultimate X Keno, leveraging some of the most-played poker titles of all time. Both slots and video poker will be available in tournament mode on new versions of the SpinFerno and SpinSplosion tournament products, and on TournXtreme, the new four-level tournament experience IncrediBell! As players progress through four levels in a tournament game, IncrediBell! switches theming to four different periods in history, the common theme being the iconic Liberty Bell.

“Any game in our library can go under this tournament package,” says Orchard, “and we feel very good about competing head-to-head with the competition with this system, not only in tournament but in regular-play mode. When not in tournament mode, these are some of the highest-performing games on the floor.” IGT’s showcase of games for G2E wraps up with a complete lineup of Class II games produced by two studios in Reno, and of course, new system products for the IGT Advantage solution, including the new Resort Wallet e-wallet solution, the Cardless Connect system that allows players to activate their player’s card accounts using their smartphones, and M5, a groundbreaking solution that allows operators to stream HTML5 content directly to slot machines, opening up a world of possibilities for promotions. The company also moves further into the electronic table game area this year, with the addition of Paul Baskerville, the new director of ETG product management who spent 20 years of his career in various table game-focused roles for TCSJohnHuxley. Live baccarat and blackjack products employ a stable of innovative side bets including Majestic Match, involving matches of the first two cards, two “bad-beat” bets in baccarat, and four separate blackjack side bets. “We’re focusing on how we can differentiate ourselves in the ETG market,” says Baskerville. IGT also will display its new sports betting platform, deployed in Nevada, New Jersey and Mississippi, and will demonstrate the benefits of its strategic business agreement with FanDuel Group. In all, IGT’s lineup for this year’s show reveals its progress toward recapturing the much of the market share it once enjoyed. “Core video has been a really strong story for us, and we have studios around the world contributing to that,” says Orchard. “Our Asia-Pacific studios are delivering great games, our studios in Graz and Belgrade are delivering great games, and of course, our studios in Reno are delivering great games.” IGT’s trade-show theme this year is “Your Best Bet.” Thanks to research and exhaustive live field testing of all new games, that bet is now more of a sure thing. OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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KONAMI GAMING Concerto Coda Konami launches a wealth of product for its Concerto line, plus a new cabinet perfect for the “Konami Experience” t is instructive that Konami Gaming’s tagline for this year’s Global Gaming Expo is “Play On.” The Las Vegasbased slot supplier, a subsidiary of Konami Holdings Corporation in Japan, has spent the past few years introducing a collection of groundbreaking form factors in the Concerto collection, and has continuously released a stream of content for all of them. This year, the company will “play on” with a wealth of new content for those new cabinets—the Concerto Crescent, Concerto Stack and the newest cabinet, Concerto Opus, featuring a massive 65-inch flat-screen monitor, previewed last year and ready for launch. At this year’s G2E, yet another form factor will be introduced, the premium KX43. The number refers to the monitor, a 43-inch, high-definition 4K display. According to Steve Walther, Konami’s senior director of marketing and product management, the “KX” stands for the “Konami Experience.” “It’s an experience only Konami can offer, with exciting game content, and easy-to-understand value propositions for play mechanics— like Strike Zone and Reels Up, where you see how greater investment opens up new opportunities for players,” Walther says. In addition to making it easy for players to invest more in the way of wagers to get extra features in the games, Konami continues to protect the investment made by operators in its products. “We’ve really put a focus on the investment that customers have made in our Concerto product lines, maximizing that through new lines, and new links like Power Boost,” he says. “We’re expanding content for Crescent and Stack, and now Concerto Opus, which features a 65-inch, high-definition 4K screen that runs some exciting linked and stand-alone product.” The new premium KX43—available on both leased and for-sale games—complements the Concerto line.

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

Concerto Opus features a massive 65-inch flat-screen monitor, previewed last year and ready for launch. It is very user-friendly, with two spin buttons, a built-in USB charger, a highpowered sound system, and a new LED button deck with a “touch-dash” button panel. “We see this type of cabinet fitting into a niche, but powerful, premium space on the floor,” says Walther. “It’s designed to engage players from afar, with the 43-inch display, unique content and edge lighting. We’re releasing content specifically designed for that box, focused mainly around links and stand-alone, symbol-driven progressives.” Konami is matching the variety of its hardware with a stream of content, much of it doubling down on the company’s knack for creative new game mechanics to augment the popular Strike Zone feature, which identifies an area within the reel array in which symbol-driven bonus events occur frequently. The higher the bet, the larger the Strike Zone portion of the screen, starting with two reel positions at minimum bet and rising to a three-by-four box in the center of the primary game. “Strike Zone has been a great mechanic for us, so we’ve built upon that,” says Walther, “but we’ve also found that some of our symboldriven, link-style progressives are starting to resonate well.” In that vein, the company is launching Money Galaxy, featuring a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get”-style

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

game mechanic, with three bonus rounds and rising multipliers applied to the awards through each round. It will be released to the market around the time of G2E. A follow-up to that game is called Thunder Arrow, with a similar style of game mechanic. “However, rather than waiting to reveal what the amounts are, all the potential win amounts are listed on the screen,” Walther says. “In the main feature, targets spin behind the possible awards, and when the targets land on a prize, an arrow flies straight into the target and the player wins that amount.”

Playing the Concerto New games for the Concerto Crescent, featuring a 43-inch curved monitor, and Concerto stack, with the 43-inch flat portrait monitor, are replete with new examples both of clever mechanics and unique progressive setups. Two sister games for the formats, Monster Sweep and Fairy Sweep, feature a unique mechanic in which the player looks to line up three symbols either horizontally or vertically. When that happens, the symbols sweep away and new symbols cascade into place. The goal is to create a chain of sweeps, which increases the chances for winning a progressive prize. “Not only are you looking for wins, you’re looking for wins that line up multiple symbols,” Walther explains. “Those symbols disappear, new symbols drop in, and you’ll see another lineup, and hopefully they cascade and chain again and again, and the more they chain, the more possible larger prizes become available.” Another set of sister games is Matsuri Kojiki Sun and Matsuri Kojiki Moon. These feature another unique game mechanic, called Fortune Bank. The feature is triggered by any winning combination, and with every win, credits go into the player’s Fortune Bank. At any time, the player can choose to activate the bank and play those stored credits in a separate highreward game with additional reel sets and random wilds in every spin. 78

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

When the Fortune Bank is activated, the player is spinning the reels for free, because Fortune Bank play draws on credits already earned. “You can activate it at any time,” says Walther. “You make the decision to either fill a little bit of the bank and play the normal game more, or build up a very big Fortune Bank and play it down all at once.” Another unique offering is Catch Four, which employs a novel, square screen with a four-by-four reel array, as part of the new Flash Reels 4x4 series. The reels spin sideways, and the goal is to catch as many fish as you can. “This has fast play, and it looks slightly different than a normal slot,” Walther says. “We’re always looking to innovate, to find new ways to play.” Highlighting the progressive offerings is Golden Blocks, a new series of linked progressive games on the core Concerto dual-screen upright and slant cabinets. Throughout game play, gold blocks randomly spin behind the reel symbols, and when the player collects eight or more of them, it triggers a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get”-style award adding together all the values. Another progressive product is Power Boost Inferno, a progressive link that can be placed over any number of slots using the KP3+ platform. “It really shows the breadth of the new linked progressive library Konami is offering on the Concerto upright and slant,” says Walther.

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On to the Opus The new giant-sized Concerto Opus cabinet is hosting more games with unique play mechanics. Such is the case with a new series called “Triple Sparkle.” The two inaugural game in the series, Solstice Celebration Triple Sparkle and Riches with Daikoku Triple Sparkle, feature a mechanic that complements Konami’s proven sparkle feature. Random sets of Action Stacked Symbols become framed at the start of each spin. When two complete reels land with frames, the symbols disappear and are replaced by new symbols. The Triple Sparkle game increases that to two sets of new symbols, potentially leading to huge wins, and symbol-driven progressive jackpots. The Sparkle feature is only active with maximum bet, but Walther notes that the games make that max bet affordable to encourage higher wagers. “Most players will take advantage of the max bet to activate the Triple Sparkle feature,” he says. “In Star Watch and Celestial Moon Riches, people increase from the minimum cost-to-cover bet because they want to take advantage of the Strike Zone. We anticipate on games like these, people will bet to the affordable max bet to take advantage of the Triple Sparkle.” He adds that the games are multi-denomination capable, for operators who

want to increase the average bet and for players “who want to invest more to win more.” Another highlight on the Opus cabinet is Treasure Ball, a linked progressive with yet another clever mechanic. “When you go into a treasure-ball vending machine, you put a coin in, spin it, a ball comes out, you open it up, and there’s where the treasure comes out,” Walther says. “We’ve captured that in a video format, so when you trigger the Treasure Ball progressive, all the balls inside the digital vending machine, so to speak, shake up, you spin the wheel, the ball comes out and reveals what the prize is—a credit award or one of the progressives, stand-alone and linked.” Banks of the game include an attract mode in which a 4K dragon flies between the various machines.

The KX43 Content for the new KX43 cabinet being launched at G2E also follows the winning Konami formula of innovative, easy-to-understand play mechanics. One such game mechanic is found in Vegas Rise, a game in the Ultra Reels OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018 With SynkConnect, instead of placing a card in the reader, the player can simply tap his or her smartphone at or near the card reader, causing the bezel to turn green to indicate the loyalty card is active and ready to track play. family, in what is known as the “Reels Up” series. Across the top of the 43-inch monitor are three progressive levels, ranging from a “Mega” to the top “Supreme,” resetting at $10,000. The base game is in a “ways-to-win” scatter format. “Reels Up” symbols on the first two reels expand the third reel by a random amount of spaces—blank symbols except for arrows pointing to the progressive on top. The same occurs when the symbols land on the third and fourth reels. If the reels rise to touch a bonus reel, it spins to award guaranteed credit prizes, and possibly progressives. “As long as you register winning combinations left to right, the reels go up,” Walther explains. “If they go up high enough, it will trigger a bonus reel that looks like traditional stepper reel.” Other games in the series include the new entry Expanding Egypt. “All these games can be linked together,” says Walther. “The progressive, graphics and movements really take advantage of the 4K display. This is the type of experience only Konami can offer—the movement back and forth, mystery, lots of things going on on the screen, and a fun play mechanic with great math behind it.” Other games designed for the KX43 format include Hoi Yun Lai, which Walther calls the “firecracker game.” “As you play, you get this unique mechanic where the firecrackers drop and win progressive prizes,” he explains. “It’s a great presentation on the screen.” Available on both the Concerto Opus and the KX43 is Diamond-izer, a game featuring beautiful artwork utilizing different-colored diamonds, wild symbols and classic fruit and 7 symbols. Konami also will display its specialty games, including multi-station products such as the Fortune Cup mechanical horse-race game, which is driving incremental play for operators, as well as the skill-based musical timing game Beat Square. Walther says these products are the result of Konami Gaming’s unique ability to partner with its sister companies—leading video game supplier Konami Digital Entertainment Company and Konami Amusement Company, producer of the most well-known arcade games in history. Finally, as always, in addition to all the new games, cabinets and unique mechanics, Konami will demonstrate advancements to its popular Synkros casino management system, highlighting Konami’s next-generation True Time Windowing, which makes it easy to stream promotional content to HD and portrait slot screens; and SynkConnect, a near-field communications (NFC) feature built into Synkros that can allow players to dispense with plastic loyalty club cards. With SynkConnect, instead of plac-

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

ing a card in the reader, the player can simply tap his or her smartphone at or near the card reader, causing the bezel to turn green to indicate the loyalty card is active and ready to track play. After play, the customer can either tap again to disengage or the system will do it after there is no activity for a set time. For players still using flip phones, the NFC system works with fobs, room keys and other devices. Players can also enjoy conveniences of the SynkConnect Mobile app, which allows the player to use a smartphone to access information on points, promotions and other information normally available only at a kiosk or the player’s club desk. There are more games in Konami’s G2E lineup that the company is keeping close to the vest until show time. But you can be sure those games will also feature clever mechanics, unique progressives and groundbreaking game play. It’s the Konami way.

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

MERKUR American Made Merkur Gaming Americas targets U.S. markets with new games from its Las Vegas studio, Sunshine Games erkur Gaming has more than 40 years experience in the industry, but is in its infancy in the U.S. Merkur, the slot-manufacturing arm of Germany’s Gauselmann Group, stepped up its presence in this country with the formation of Merkur Gaming Americas in 2015. The new subsidiary led to the creation in early 2017 of the Las Vegas game design studio, Sunshine Games, which unveiled its first two games at last year’s G2E. Taco Tuesday and Amulet of the Pharaoh headlined the introduction of more than 100 games, which included multi-game mixes. Progress has accelerated rapidly since then, including the range of titles the company will show at this year’s G2E. Since the launch of Sunshine Games, Merkur has touted its American connection with the in-house mantra, “Designed in America, by Americans, for Americans.” “That addresses, head on, the sometimesheard objection to new, foreign-owned vendors that want to come to the U.S. gaming landscape, namely, NIH—not invented here,” says David Orrick, director of industry relations for Merkur, which will display over 120 individual games at G2E, highlighting eight new slots developed by Sunshine Games. Making inroads in the American market, Orrick says, depends on a strong showing at G2E, one of the key gaming shows, both in terms of size and attendance and also in terms of the new products and new game genres that exhibitors reveal. “We seek to attract and enthuse G2E visitors with the excellence of our product offering,” he says. “We always knew that the key to our success would be a blend of innovative, entertaining games and games that were familiar in feel and appearance to U.S. players. The games that we will show in Las Vegas have been created to meet those criteria, and we have every confidence that they will succeed. As well as new games, we will also unveil a brand-new cabinet innovation, literally as G2E opens its doors.” Charles Hiten, CEO of Merkur Gaming Americas, stresses that the focus on the needs of

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

“Clear proof of our progress is evident in the games that we will show in Las Vegas, and we confidently expect G2E to provide a launching pad for many new and exciting developments.” —Charles Hiten, CEO, Merkur Gaming Americas

customers and the experience of players will continue to propel Merkur Gaming to even greater successes. “Clear proof of our progress is evident in the games that we will show in Las Vegas, and we confidently expect G2E to provide a launching pad for many new and exciting developments,” Hiten says. The new games at G2E feature diverse themes and come from both international and U.S. game development teams. The U.S. side goes from an ancient Egypt theme (Jewels of the Nile) to the wildlife of the Savannah (Savannah Stampede), to the mysteries of Asian Towers, to the suspense of Secret Area 150 to Western Pacific. Neon Panther takes players deep into the jungle. The thrills of Crash Stacks and Big Deal Wheel will also be available to see and play at the Merkur Gaming booth, Orrick says. Western Pacific and Crash Stacks both pay deference to cash. “Cash is king, and these new titles highlight cash in a whole new way,” says Mike Halvorson, chief development officer at Sunshine Games. “Both of these games feature representations of U.S. currency as reel symbols, different dollar values being used as symbol variants, hence the homage to cash.” Says Orrick, “Big Deal Wheel is a true game innovation, one that we believe is something totally new in slot play. We firmly believe this game will be our star performer at G2E.” The game features segments of wheels as symbols, and the challenge is to complete the wheels on adjacent reels. That opens the Big Deal Wheel as a bonus feature, with wins depending on which symbols have been matched to open the bonus. “Plus, there are some really cool voice-overs as the bonus segment opens up. It’s the sort of feeling that is such a part of popu-

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lar television game shows,” Halvorson says. As the expanded offerings suggest, Merkur Gaming has committed to the U.S. market for the long term. “We have already seen that there is operator demand for our product offering,” Orrick says. G2E 2018 could be the best ever for Merkur Gaming, says Athanasios “Sakis” Isaakidis, chief executive, international and head of international product management. “We come to Las Vegas with great games and great products, along with our great people. Our multi-national team is strong, well experienced and totally focused on further development of our success.” When the 2018 games will appear in the U.S. market depends on a number of factors: site testing (ongoing at present), product approvals, required licensing and so on. “Considering those factors, and the good progress we are making in those various areas, we can realistically expect commercial activity—including installations —onwards into early 2019,” Orrick says. The next 18 months will see a lot more jackpot games that will come along with interesting bonus features to earn the jackpots. “Jackpots and jackpot feature games are something the players are really moving toward,” Halvorson says. “Everything in casinos is geared around linked or stand-alone jackpot feature games. As far as artwork on slot games, we will see a lot of Chinese or Asian content along with female-driven characters or the hero characters of games. It is about the players’ experience, giving the player a greater amount of interactively with the understandable hope of winning that big carrot at the end of the string.” Merkur Gaming’s parent, Gauselmann Group, was founded more than 62 years ago, and employs some 10,000 people in more than 40 countries worldwide. The company’s success, knowledge and experience are major assets in the constant research and development process that accompanies the creation of new products such as those that will be seen at G2E. Merkur presents a gaming portfolio that is multi-faceted and country-specific. “No matter what your language or culture, at Merkur Gaming, ‘We Speak Gaming’,” the company says in a release. A market leader in Europe, a well-established and successful supplier across Latin America and the Caribbean, Merkur Gaming will also expand its presence in Africa and new market entries across Asia in the future. “Interestingly, there has been demand for our new games from across Latin American markets also,” Orrick says. “The demand for more sophisticated gaming entertainment is gaining momentum. It is a development that we are carefully monitoring.” In addition to the casino-based slots, the Gauselmann Group has worked with online gaming company edict (without the capital E). The firm has been a reliable partner and specialist for high-quality, competitive online casino solutions since 1998. Via edict, the Merkur Gaming slot games are transmitted into the online space, as both cash games and fun games. —By William Sokolic

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NOVOMATIC AMERICAS V.I.P. Player Novomatic Americas uses U.S. research and development to methodically spread its footprint in North America t was six years ago that Austrian gaming giant Novomatic Group made its first drive to enter the North American market, establishing the company originally called Novomatic Americas Sales. When Novomatic, the undisputed leading supplier of slot machines in Europe—as well as an operator of thousands of casinos, game rooms and betting parlors—first brought its distinctive gaming equipment to the U.S., many were impressed with the Austrian supplier’s games and innovative hardware setups. Novomatic video slots had features like foot pedals that would switch the top and bottom video screens, so players could watch second-screen bonuses close up.

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

There also was the remarkable V.I.P. Lounge, which in one format has an actual easy chair for a player to sit in, with spin buttons strategically placed at the ends of the armrests to allow players to remain chilled out, and playing. The company now known as Novomatic Americas, headquartered in Mount Prospect, Illinois, still offers the best of those Austrian innovations, but the company is now ready to spread its footprint across the U.S., thanks to a growing slot development facility in the Chicago suburb. It also is thanks to a team of U.S. gaming veterans running Novomatic Americas. Rick Meitzler, the president and CEO, is a 40-year slot supply vet-

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“Look out for us at G2E— we have the right team, and I’m excited to show off our great product selection.” —Rick Meitzler, President and CEO, Novomatic Americas

eran, having spent 33 years with Bally Technologies plus a stint at Ainsworth before joining Novomatic in 2013. Kathleen McLaughlin, vice president of marketing and product management, previously had a long career on the operations side including eight years at Harrah’s/Caesars Entertainment, where she was corporate vice president of slot operations, and two years as managing director of global slot marketing and operations for Las Vegas Sands—as well as three years on the supply side as corporate marketing director for WMS Gaming. The U.S. development studio is headed by Matt Ward, who was executive director of product strategy and advanced solutions at WMS Gaming for 15 years, before joining Novomatic three years ago as vice president of product development. The U.S.-based game development began to pay off with last year’s hit

video slot From Dusk to Dawn, launched at last year’s G2E with personal promotion at the Novomatic Americas booth from Danny Trejo, one of the stars of the film. Ward says the game got off to a strong start, especially placed on the V.I.P. Lounge 3 cabinet, the largest, loungiest version. That and the other iterations of the V.I.P. Lounge, including the standard pre-

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

mium 2.32 version and the sleek V.I.P. Lounge Curve, will join other cabinets, including the Panthera 1.43 Curve and the immersive Novostar V.I.P. 3.50 cabinet with Python Chair, in hosting Novomatic’s new slots at G2E, which will include prominent U.S.-developed games. “Our studio here in Mount Prospect is fully up and running, and we will be showing four games out of this studio, as well as a number out of our studios over in Europe,” says Ward. Meitzler says establishing U.S. research and development was one of Novomatic Americas’ main goals. “As you know, we are the big dog in Europe, but we brought those games over here and they did not hit the numbers we thought they would for a couple of reasons,” he explains. “Europe is a male-dominated, smaller market, a multi-game market. The U.S. is more a female-dominated, single-game-style market, more time-ondevice type games. So, we had to establish a studio here that focused on those differences and developed games specifically targeted for the U.S. market.” Slot games are only one part of Novomatic Americas’ growth, though. A key focus for G2E this year is on electronic table games. Novomatic already has cracked the ETG market in the U.S. with installations at Foxwoods in Connecticut and Pechanga in California. Ward says the company will bring ETG product to G2E that has been developed with a stable of side bets designed for the U.S. market. “We’re getting our system that’s been around the world up to the U.S. standards, first of all, then we’ve been adding a lot of side bets, because the operators are asking for side bets,” Ward says. “We’ll be showing four different side bets at G2E.” Proprietary Novomatic blackjack side bets are combined with the spread bet concept from Cammegh on roulette, blackjack and baccarat. But on the slot side, U.S.-based casino slots are joined by other game types, particularly video gaming terminals for markets like Illinois and Pennsylvania. “We have had two distinct focuses this year,” says Meitzler, “the Class III market and the VGT market. That is a 30,000-unit market in Illinois right now, and still growing. We’re the third manufacturer in there behind Sci Games and IGT, and we’re penetrating the market extremely well. With Illinois going in the right direction, we’re also very active in the Pennsylvania market, which is a smaller VGT market with the truck stops. Next year we are lobbying again to try to get VGTs into all of the bars, similar to Illinois.” The product range Novomatic Americas brings to G2E features new Class III games, enhanced VGT game mixes, and series of advanced cabinets, progressive jackpots, ETGs, sports betting and system solutions, and online gaming solutions.

MacGyver Mania Heading up the U.S.-developed slot launches at G2E will be the company’s second branded game, MacGyver—based on the iconic 1980s series starring Richard Dean Anderson, not the recent reboot. 86

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

Housed on the Novostar V.I.P. 3.50 cabinet with Python Chair or the V.I.P. Lounge 2.32 cabinet, the immersive slot delivers all the quirks of Angus “Mac” MacGyver, the show’s main character, who solved desperate government problems but always came equipped with stuff like a Swiss army knife, duct tape, chewing gum and paper clips to help him. Housed on the Novostar V.I.P. 3.50 cabinet with Python Chair or the V.I.P. Lounge 2.32 cabinet, the immersive slot delivers all the quirks of Angus “Mac” MacGyver, the show’s main character, who solved desperate government problems but always came equipped with stuff like a Swiss army knife, duct tape, chewing gum and paper clips to help him. Bonuses and base-game features employ all those iconic items in reel symbols and bonus events. Ward says the MacGyver game was developed with a lot of help from players in focus-group settings. “We did some comprehensive research at one of our Midwestern properties, and the feedback was just unbelievable,” he says. “The way these guys developed the sound and the duct tape and the things they developed in this game was that they spent two days, nine hours a day, talking to people and really making sure we were doing the right game. And people loved it.” Ward adds that research showed the original ’80s version of the show was definitely the right choice. “People have very firm memories of MacGyver, and what it should be,” he says. “There’s a nostalgia factor for the original. Literally everybody knew MacGyver. There was not a single player, young or old, who didn’t know who MacGyver was.” Meitzler says MacGyver will be one of 24 new slot titles being launched at G2E. “Matt Ward’s Mount Prospect studio alone will produce about 10 new games, and we have two large studios over in

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Austria that are also working diligently on a lot of innovative content. New links, new looks, high-definition graphics, to meet today’s market requirements for the U.S.” McLaughlin says there will be 11-14 U.S. studio releases by G2E 2019. “Next year, we’re going to have almost 24 titles, and 11 of them are going to come from Matt’s studio,” she says. “It’s exciting, because now we’re getting a real swing at the plate with American-developed content for this market.” Another new introduction at G2E will be the Enchanted Fortunes progressive link, which builds off the Asian Fortunes game. “It will have a family of our games, in both linked progressive and stand-alone versions,” says Ward. Other progressives will be featured on the Panthera Curve and the V.I.P. Lounge Curve cabinets. “They all feature progressives,” explains McLaughlin, “and you can bank a game like Voodoo Fortunes and merchandise it as one theme, or you can take four or five different games and merchandise them together. They are very different games, with a common progressive bonus round.” Other games will be featured on form factors such as the Panthera 2.27 twin-screen cabinet, and the Panthera 1.43 and V.I.P. Lounge 1.43 that feature curved-screen 4K displays. The cabinets will showcase a variety of single games, including Dragon Hits, Prize of the Nile, Prized Panda, Princesses of War, Riches Ahoy! and Great American Wilds, from the Novomatic Americas Mount Prospect development team, and the Winfinity Games and 707 Games studios in Austria. The Enchanted Fortunes Linked Jackpot will show progressive themes from the Fortunes series.

Pyramid Fortunes and Voodoo Fortunes have generated a lot of pre-show interest, says Meitzler. ETGs based on Novo Line Novo Unity II platform also will be shown. At G2E, automated, virtual and live versions of popular table games will be presented with two automated roulette wheels and a live baccarat table to demonstrate variations of the powerful system. “Novomatic has had great success in Europe with electronic table games since 1993,” says Meitzler. “What we have brought over here is a hybrid of that. This market gets much more dominant baccarat and roulette play, and in these games we have to get the percentages a little lower. So, we are focused on side bet offerings. We have a very successful installation at Foxwoods, we’re going into Pechanga next, and after that we are moving into Oklahoma.” Meitzler has big plans for Novomatic Americas. In five years, he says, “we will be competing with the big guys. The thing with Novomatic is that they don’t know how not to succeed. When the Professor (Prof. Johan Graf, founder and owner of Novomatic) goes after something, he does it right. He treats customers well. He gives people a fair trial and treats them well. We’re privately held, so we don’t have to report to a board. I think we will no doubt be right in there with the Sci Games and the IGTs in the next few years.” But that all starts with this year’s trade show. “What is most exciting as we are preparing for G2E 2018 is the amount of titles and cabinets that we have in the pipeline for 2019,” says Meitzler. “Look out for us at G2E—we have the right team, and I’m excited to show off our great product selection.”

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

SCIENTIFIC GAMES End to End Scientific Games uses its G2E booth space to illustrate its versatility in games, systems and interactive technology to help usher in the future of gaming cientific Games Corporation will arrive at the Global Gaming Expo with its usual diverse lineup of every style of slot game, great new game technology, new cabinets, table games, system products and interactive technology. But the company’s booth will be different than any you’ve seen from Scientific Games, or any other slot manufacturer, for that matter. If you can even call it a booth—it will be more like a set. Instead of the normal clusters of game groups scattered amid swarms of people, the Scientific Games display will be set up in a strategic, carefully planned way, organized to display the different styles of products in a way that will resemble a physical casino. There will be games, for sure, arranged in game styles as they would be in a casino. There will be a central bar. There will be tables to display Shuffle Master proprietary games. There will be a sports book, along with demonstrations showing how Scientific Games technology can be used to make bets from a slot machine or mobile phone. “We’re showing our customers how all SG product lines work together in the ever-evolving space of casino entertainment,” says Greg Colella, vice president of product marketing for Scientific Games. “That’s why we’ve designed the floor this way; that’s why we’re telling the story we’re telling, because we know that is where Colella calls it a “customer-first experience.” The booth will be separated from others on the floor, with a private VIP entrance for customers who can schedule private demonstrations or view regularly scheduled product presentations on two stages. The themes will be divided into four key messages—the introduction of the new TwinStar Wave XL premium cabinet, Larger Than Life premium products, Current Technologies and The Casino of the Future. “The booth will be a mix of public and private space,” Colella says. “We’re going to control access so we know who’s in our space, so we can more effectively communicate to our guests, and provide them a better experience in viewing our products. We’ll give visitors a bit of background and vision behind our four main product areas, and then our salespeople can focus on demonstrating those products one-on-one. “We think this will be a much better way for our customers to understand what SG is doing and where we are going.” Sports betting will be one of the company’s key focuses at G2E, with demonstrations of how its market-leading OpenBet sports wagering platform, acquired last year when SG bought the former NYX Gaming Group, connects to various interactive technology produced by SG Digital. According to Colella, everything in the front, public portion of the booth will be available to casinos by the first quarter or 2019 or earlier, including slots, tablegame products and ETGs.

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

Strategic Display While there will be much attention to Scientific Games’ new addition to the TwinStar family of cabinets, there will be new games featured on each of TwinStar’s existing form factors—the original dual-screen cabinet, the TwinStar 3RM stepper series, and the premium TwinStar J43 curved-monitor presentation. Highlights on the original dual-screen TwinStar cabinet include two new titles in the popular Lock It Link series. These games include a hold-andrespin bonus feature. When three hearts land in a row—each bearing a credit value—they hold in place for three free spins, and other hearts landing on the free spins trigger more spins. Each time an additional heart lands on the

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screen during the feature, the credit values on all the hearts rise. As long as at least one additional heart lands, the feature continues, the goal being to fill up all 15 spots on the three-by-five reel array. The two new featured Lock It Link titles are Huff Nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Puff and Hold On To Your Hat, both 243-ways-to-win games with two progressive and two fixed jackpots. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Lock It Link has been one of our premiere franchises on TwinStar, and it continues to do well,â&#x20AC;? Colella says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;One of the things weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve tried to do with Lock It Link is make the base games very distinctive, so youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see that Huff Nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Puff plays very different than Hold Onto Your Hat. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a hallmark of how we designed those first Lock It Link games.â&#x20AC;? The same type of hold-and-respin play mechanic is used in Loteria, the series of slots carrying the theme of the popular Latin American board game. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In the same way someone in the U.S. might recognize Monopoly, people in Latin America recognize Loteria,â&#x20AC;? comments Colella. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We integrated the Lock It Link feature on that theme. This game uses crowns like the Lock It Link series uses hearts.â&#x20AC;?

The two new entries in the Loteria series are El Barril de Fiesta and El Mundo. Both are progressive gamesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;two progressive jackpots, two fixedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and include the Lock It Link-style free-game feature.

Stepper Style Scientific Games has always been known for mechanical-stepper slots, particularly under the Bally brand. This yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s G2E display highlights the old and the new in steppers, with a focus on high-denomination games. As far as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;old,â&#x20AC;? Scientific Games is wrapping up a year-and-a-half program of porting classic Bally reel-spinners to the TwinStar 3RM. This yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s batch includes faithful recreations of two classic Blazing 7s variationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Blazing 7s Scatter and Diamond Line Blazing 7sâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;along with new themes In The Money and Diamonds and Devils. â&#x20AC;&#x153;These are some of the last of this style of game,â&#x20AC;? says Colella, who identifies them as traditional high-denomination gamesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;single-line, three-line or five-line configuration in dollars or quarters. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re also doing what I call more of a

OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

modern hi-denom game,” he says. “We’re starting to develop games like Wonder Woman at what is considered a more modern price point. High-denom games have traditionally been offered either in three-coin or five-coin versions, but many titles are now offered in higher configurations. You may see a nineline game that is high-denom. The other games serve the purpose of recreating some of the old hits. But if they’re compared to some of those nine-line games, they’re at a significant disadvantage. “So it was very apparent that we needed to develop a range of high-denom games at a higher price point.” New TwinStar 3RM games Wonder Woman and The Don, the latest in Scientific Games’ slot series based on The Godfather films, are both nine-line, nine-coin games. “We think of them as dollar games—they could also be quarters, depending on the specific market—wrapped in a theme that’s done particularly well,” Colella says. says. “The Wonder Woman game on the original Pro Wave cabinet was a popular game for us, and the TwinStar J43 versions are doing really well. This brand has been very good for us, so we decided to bring it in at the higher price point.” The Don on the TwinStar 3RM is the fifth slot under the popular license based on the 1972 film. Scientific Games also is launching new low-denomination steppers on the 90

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

TwinStar 3RM, including two new games in the Blazing Star series—reboots of the classic Bally games 24 Karat and Red & Black Sevens.

The Js Have It There are several new games being launched on the TwinStar J43 premium video cabinet, but one of the highlights will be a revival of the WMS title Raging Rhino Rampage. “This was a very popular WMS game on the original Blade cabinet,” Colella says. As in the original WMS version, there is a wheel feature in the game that gives players a chance to upgrade the wheel values—credit amounts, free games and progressive jackpots are included on the wheel. But the new J43 version of the game has a unique addition. “One of the things I like best about this game is it has what is almost a prop bet,” says Colella. “For $10, you can make a wager and actually go right into the bonus feature. You don’t have to play the game. It’s a little higher price point, but you know you’re going to go into the feature. In a casino, maybe you’re waiting for your table, or are leaving in 10 minutes for a show. You can go ahead and place a bet and play the bonus. I believe players will find that to be a lot of fun, and this is a theme that does great for us.” Also on the J43 are new entries in SG’s Asian Jinse Dao game series. Jinse Dao Dragon and Jinse Dao Phoenix are 243-ways games featuring two-level progressives with two fixed jackpots beneath them. “The best thing about these games is that they have a bonus wheel that includes free games and jackpots, but

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in the feature, it has a very straightforward, what-you-see-is-what-youget type of payout for the player. How many times have you seen a player say I don’t know what I’ve won or how I won something in this game? These simplify that for the player.” The J43 also will host two games each in the Blazing X and Leprechaun’s Gold game groups.

Premium Frenzy On the side, one of the highlighted J43 games is Twin Fire Frenzy, which combines the best features of three popular classic Bally titles. It is actually a follow-on to the game Twin Fire. “We released the original Twin Fire game a couple of years ago,” Colella says. “That original concept was a combination of Quick Hit and Hot Shot, which were two really powerful franchises. The new version still has that, but we’ve added a sixth reel, a “Frenzy Reel,” an idea from another game that was very popular, Bonus Frenzy.” The Hot Shot series features “mini bonuses” played out on miniature replicas

“The best thing about these games is that they have a bonus wheel that includes free games and jackpots, but in the feature, it has a very straightforward, what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of payout for the player. How many times have you seen a player say I don’t know what I’ve won or how I won something in this game? These simplify that for the player.” —Greg Colella, Vice President of Product Marketing, Scientific Games

of classic Bally reel-spinners. The Quick Hit series is the muchcopied progressive setup in which prizes on a progressive ladder are awarded for seven or more scattered Quick Hit symbols. The “Frenzy Reel” from Bonus Frenzy applies extra credits, multipliers and re-spins to winning five-reel combinations. Twin Fire Frenzy adds a wheel bonus and free games to the mix. “With this game, you’ll find that it always feels like something’s getting ready to happen, whether it’s a Quick Hit pay, a Hot Shot, the Frenzy Wheel, or triggering the bonus wheel, jackpot amounts or free games,” says Colella.

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GLOBAL GAMES 2018

“There’s an additional prop bet you can make on the game, called the Go Bonus, which essentially almost doubles your progressives, because it gives you a flat bonus amount on top of those jackpots.” Other premium games include a new entry for the Game of LIFE video series, titled Career Day, on two separate cabinets—one including a bonus wheel. There is an optional Bonus Bet on the game that triggers more frequent bonus events There are two new Pink Panther games, Mega Mariachi and Many Fortunes, featuring a Lock It Link-style feature in the base game and the four-jackpot setup with two progressives on top. “These are from our Australian studio, so they’re a bit more of a gambler’s game,” Colella says. “You see some nice swings in them, and you feel you have a chance to get ahead of the game.” Finally, the premium space on SG’s main exhibit floor will feature two new games in the James Bond series, Thunderball on the immersive Gamefield 2.0 cabinet and Goldeneye on the flat-table PRIZM cabinet, one of the first slot games on that unique multi-player form factor. “We’ve had roulette and poker-style games on PRIZM, but we’re now starting to transition to actually placing slot games on that platform as well,” says Colella. “Goldeneye will be one of the first.”

Behind the Curtain The private area of the Scientific Games G2E booth will showcase some remarkable new technologies, not the least of which is the new TwinStar Wave XL cabinet, featuring a 49-inch full 4K monitor. “Since it’s a TwinStar product, we can port content from all the different development sources under the SG umbrella—Bally, WMS, our international studios—the best of all those worlds,” Colella says. The new cabinet will feature Jin Ji Bao Xi, an Asian game from the same development team that produced the Duo Fu Duo Cai series and it flagship game 88 Fortunes. On the Bally side, the new cabinet will feature Dragon Spin Age of Fire and Cash Wizard World, both reprising popular titles, themes and characters. “We really take some of our best franchises from all the different areas

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

where we develop games, and we try to hand-pick those so we can get those platforms launched with very significant titles,” Colella says of the TwinStar Wave XL launch. “That’s worked well for the TwinStar J43 and the 3RM, so we’re going to steal that story.” But perhaps the biggest slice of new innovation might be Die Another Day, another new Bond game featuring a groundbreaking usage of technology—the Pepper’s ghost 3D illusion technique. A method of projecting a 3D image to a specific space, Pepper’s ghost is the same technique used to project the image of Tupac Shakur onto a stage, allowing the artist to appear to stage a performance after his 1996 death. More recently, it has been featured in the Michael Jackson One show at Mandalay Bay. The Pepper’s ghost technique is not new in itself—it was invented by illusionist Harry Pepper and first demonstrated with a mirror apparatus in 1862—but its use in a slot machine certainly is. Die Another Day will use the technique in a very Bond-esque way. For bonus features, the front of the TwinStar Wave XL cabinet will actually open to a secret chamber, and the player will gaze inside to view 3D images of Agent 007 and all associated icons of the Bond films. Colella is not revealing the specific events; you’ll need to get into SG’s private room at the show to find out. “One of the main things you think of when you think about the Bond movies are all the gadgets he had over the years, so we thought 007 as a whole is a perfect vehicle to introduce new technologies, or new techniques like Pepper’s ghost, to the gaming space,” Colella says. “The way it’s presented in the actual cabinet is particularly novel, and also very thematic to the overall 007 story. I think it’s something you’d expect to see out of a James Bond slot machine.” The innovations in the private area will round out a Scientific Games display like no other. “We’ve tried to create a space that looks like a casino,” Colella says. “I’m showing you ways to make wagers over here, new slot technology or there, or how to use our mobile wallet to tie it all together with transactions from across the casino. “We’re trying to show our customers we have the infrastructure to actually tie all these offerings together, and I think that is one of the big differences in the story SG is telling—the products we have, and what we’re able to deliver that most of our competitors can’t even dream about. And that really is what the show is about for us.”

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Las Vegas Strip: Congruency and the Value Problem

The gaming industry has expended a tremendous amount of energy trying to solve a millennial problem that never existed, while completely ignoring the increasing value problem on the Las Vegas Strip that does. How did we get here? By Jeff Hwang

his time last year, we discussed: • The probability that the ongoing process of literally imploding the low-end hotel casino supply on the Las Vegas Strip and replacing it with almost exclusively four- and fivestar hotel casino supply has created an upward imbalance in the hotel supply, and this may be contributing to an increasing value problem on the Strip. • That the increasingly disproportionate lack of low-end hotel supply on the Strip and constant rising prices—in the form of the rising house advantage of casino games (where the house advantage of casino games has been on the rise for over two decades now); rising room rates, even before factoring rising resort fees; increasing taxes; new fees including paid parking; and other general nickeland-diming—may impact visitor volumes into the future by pricing out the low-end (the more populous end) of potential visitors. • That we might already be seeing signs of weaknesses when looking at non-convention visitors (generally tourists). Indeed, after jumping 3.97 percent to 35.9 million non-convention visitors in 2014, such visitors increased only 1.36 percent in 2015 before edging up only 0.56 percent in 2016, and then dropping 2.89 percent to 35.6 million non-convention visitors in 2017. And through June, non-convention visitors were down 0.38 percent for 2018. But now even the explosive growth in convention attendance seems to be facing resistance: Convention attendance is down 3.08 percent through June, which—if this holds— would be the first yearover-year drop in convention attendees since 2010.

Renderings of proposed expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center 94

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

LAS VEGAS VISITOR VOLUME Total Visitors Year

Volume

Convention Attendance Non-Convention Visitors Change

Volume

Change

Volume

1990 20,954,420

1,742,194

19,212,226

1995 29,002,122

2,924,879

26,077,243

2000 35,849,691

3,853,363

31,996,328

2005 38,577,717

6,166,194

32,400,523

2010 37,335,436

4,473,134

Change

32,862,302

2011 38,928,708

4.27%

4,865,272

8.77%

34,063,436

3.66%

2012 39,727,022

2.05%

4,944,014

1.62%

34,783,008

2.11%

2013 39,668,221

-0.15%

5,107,416

3.31%

34,560,805

-0.64%

2014 41,126,512

3.68%

5,194,580

1.71%

35,931,932

3.97%

2015 42,312,216

2.88%

5,891,151

13.41%

36,421,065

1.36%

2016 42,936,100

1.54%

6,310,600

7.12%

36,625,500

0.56%

2017 42,214,200

-1.68%

6,646,200

5.32%

35,568,000

-2.89%

-3.08%

17,509,200

-0.38%

2018* 21,017,900 -0.84% 3,508,700 Source: LVCVA *year-to-date, through June 2018

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In early August, David Schwartz—UNLV’s resident gaming historian— penned a boss piece on Forbes.com titled “Casinos Are Getting Nervous as Las Vegas Revenues Drop and Their Stocks Slump,” after Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts International “both reported soft numbers for the second quarter and predicted more headwinds in the third quarter.” Pointing to the weakening visitor numbers and suddenly declining room rates (before adjusting for rising resort fees, which is another topic unto itself), Schwartz noted that “many observers have been quick to blame the increased resort fees, paid parking, worse game odds, and other ‘nickel and dime’ tactics that have become common on the Strip.” While optimistic in the historic ability of Las Vegas to bounce back from adversity, Schwartz’s widely viewed piece reflects both the frustrations of Las Vegas visitors and the concerns of casino operators, particularly at a time when national unemployment is low and consumer confidence is high—typically indicators portending a boom in Las Vegas visitation, rather than the current situation. By the way, the number of times Schwartz mentioned the word “millennials” in the article? Zero.

The Death of the Millennial Problem At an Investor & Analyst Event on October 24, 2017, Caesars Entertainment presented the slide below. In one shot—and with little to no fanfare— Caesars effectively refuted the casino millennial problem by reporting its findings that millennials, in fact, are more likely to be both non-casino and casino gamers than the older Gen X and baby boomer generations.

To recap, the casino millennial problem started with the purported idea that millennials don’t like to gamble as much as previous generations (or perhaps just on traditional slots, depending on who’s telling the story), and as such the industry is facing a looming crisis as millennials mature into their prime casino gambling ages. The industry then spent the past three G2Es scrambling to solve this problem, rushing “skill-based” games to market without giving proper thought to what these games should look like, and without a proper gambling value proposition. As I’ve written a number of times, the house edge/rake on these initial skill-based games is too high, and that house edge/rake tends to be high to compensate for fundamentally slow game speed (in an attempt to recover profitability). Moreover, the gambling component of these initial games is often arbitrary and separate from the underlying games. As a consequence, without a proper gambling proposition, you’re stuck arguing that you should play these games because you are a millennial, and because millennials like video games. In a March 22 presentation at the first episode of the UNLV Gaming & Hospitality Education Series sponsored by Global Gaming Business, Caesars Entertainment Senior VP of Gaming Melissa Price noted that skill-based games were holding double the theoretical hold (i.e., the actual house advantage in practice due to poor skill was about double the already-high house advantage under theoretically optimal play), and that the games were generating 75 percent fewer repeat visits than slots and electronic table games (ETGs), with only 5 percent of players coming back for more. The early results should not have been a surprise to anybody. As I’ve mentioned before, the millennial problem was pushed despite the fact that not a shred of objective evidence was ever presented to support the idea that millennials don’t like to gamble (Google “The Millennial Problem: The Problem With the Casino Millennial Problem”). And in fact, common sense would dictate that the opposite was true. In other words, a tremendous amount of energy has been burned over the past several years in an attempt to solve a problem that never existed. How did this happen?

Source: Caesars Entertainment 2017 Investor & Analyst Event OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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“The current economic climate remains challenging, but we are still driving high occupancy at our resorts, which are in terrific shape. We continue to provide our guests with world-class customer service and a renewed value proposition.” —Jim Murren, Chairman and CEO, MGM Mirage, March 17, 2009

Congruency and the Millennial Problem In his 2005 classic The Game (a book read by many a millennial male), Neil Strauss related his rise to the top of a “secret society of pick-up artists”(PUAs), using such techniques as “canned openers,” scripted routines, and “negging the target,” among others. It’s probably a fair generalization to suggest that one of the biggest challenges that people on both sides of the dating market tend to have with such techniques relates to a concept referred to as “congruency.” The term congruency has been defined about a million different ways in this context, but you can probably intuit the meaning given some thought: Congruency is the extent to which your words, your actions and your behavior are consistent with your underlying being, beliefs and values. You are being incongruent, then, when you spit a line, run a routine, or make a move that doesn’t jibe with your personality. You’re also being incongruent if you argue against your own beliefs to suit another purpose. For example, if you believed the Earth to be roundish but insisted publicly for whatever reason that the Earth is flat, you are being incongruent. This is why we tend to distrust politicians, lawyers and salespeople (and it’s also why people with flexible enough principles to do these deeds will always be in demand). So as to the question of how we got here as an industry, there are only two real possibilities: • You believed there was a millennial problem, even without a lick of evidence to support the idea that there was one (incompetence), or, • You didn’t believe there was a millennial problem, but you insisted there was and moved to solve it anyway (incongruence).

U.S. Sports Betting: Congruency and Market Projection We’re not going to talk about sports betting here, but I will say this about market projections: Projections have a way of being overstated—certainly around these parts. If you’ll recall, it was only back in 2012 when gaming companies were citing Wall Street estimates pegging the potential online gaming market at $6 billion to $10 billion (for a refresher, Google “Sorry Mr. Online Poker. Nobody Cares About You”). The first two things you need to know about forecasting are: • Forecasting is inherently difficult. • There is a politic behind every number.

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

If you were to ask somebody, say, what the size of the sports betting market in the U.S. might be, what you need to be aware of is that the raw number that person might come up with (i.e., what the person actually believes) might be different from the number that goes into the report that gets made public (incongruence). The job of the forecaster may not necessarily be to be accurate or even honest, but to produce a number to serve a purpose (which sometimes may be for honest accuracy). If you’re in the media and you’re writing about this stuff, you want to be properly skeptical about the numbers you throw around. And if you’re reading what’s being written, you want to properly skeptical about the numbers being thrown around.

Congruency and the Las Vegas Strip Value Problem It’s been a good four years or so now since the proliferation of the Millennial Problem, and yet the fundamental problem on the Las Vegas Strip remains the same—a growing value problem. It is incredible the amount of energy that has been expended solving a millennial problem that never existed, while not a single meaningful effort has been made to solve the value problem that does. Now I’m going to leave you with nothing I haven’t said before. We need to come to grips with the fact that the market for casino gambling in much of the U.S. is fundamentally mature. The persistent rise in the house advantage of gambling games is fundamentally weakening the gambling product in the U.S. in general, and certainly on the Las Vegas Strip. Meanwhile, the rising prices and constant nickel-and-diming on the Las Vegas Strip are fundamentally weakening the overall Las Vegas product. As I suggested last year, I still suspect that the increasingly disproportionate lack of low-end hotel casino supply on the Strip is a major factor in the weakening Las Vegas value proposition. These are the problems that need to be solved. Crunching the numbers does you no good if you’re asking the wrong questions and missing the big picture.

Jeff Hwang is a game developer and president of High Variance Games, LLC. Hwang is the best-selling author of Pot-Limit Omaha Poker: The Big Play Strategy, and the three-volume Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha series. Follow Hwang on Twitter at @RivalSchoolX.

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Doing the

Numbers Does your data deliver? Probably not! By David Patent

e are drowning in a sea of data. Data was supposed to buoy our businesses—deliver customer insights, savings opportunities, soaring profits. We were supposed to be masters of our data. But the terabytes of information—slot machine data, table game data, marketing redemption data, labor utilization data, point-of-sale data, hotel spend data, customer survey data, even valet parking data—can be an anchor that drags us under because the data is often not properly harnessed or is misunderstood. Data for data’s sake is useless. Data should serve one primary purpose: Improve our business results by enhancing revenues, reducing costs, or keeping customers and employees happy and engaged. But this is not happening in practice. As many as 85 percent of modern data projects are estimated to fail, for many reasons, including internal politics, overambitious scale, and, most significantly, lack of the right data analysis skills. You may think that you have mastered your data, but unless you can answer these four key questions, you almost certainly have not. Do you know where your best customers are?

Every business wants to take great care of its best customers. We segment our customers into different tiers and give special perks to the top. But do you know where those customers are at any given time, and do you know what they really care about so you can reach them and keep them loyal? At one of my properties, we were having a difficult time moving the service score needle for our highest tier customers. Our company was obsessed with service. We surveyed our customers every day, and the top tier scores were weighted at 7-10 times an average customer, so it was critical to make them happy.

Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

We had what we thought was a great idea—provide an amazing experience in the high-limit room. We pulled out all the stops. We put our best employees in there. We prepared elaborate food menus with roast beef, shrimp and high-end drinks, and brought everything to them while they played. We had supervisors and managers come through to engage them, let them know we were at their service and ask if they needed anything. People loved it. But our scores barely budged. Why? Because at any one time, we might have had eight to 12 top-tier slot players and a handful of table game customers in that high-limit room, but more than 100 of our top slot players were on the main floor playing their favorite lower-denomination game, and having to fight for service with a sea of other players. We decided to dive deep into our survey data and found—based on a location code that was part of the survey—that there was one zone where a lot of our high-tier customers liked to play. Armed with this critical data, we attacked the problem anew. We increased staffing in that zone to reduce wait times, made sure we had extra attendants keep everything spotless, and reallocated some supervisor and manager time to that area. And guess what? Our scores skyrocketed within just a few weeks and set company records for score improvement. It turns out that knocking out the basics for a large number of customers made a much bigger difference than wowing a small number of these same valuable guests. Today, we can track customers in real time. By integrating this data with behavioral insights we can anticipate customer needs, deliver more meaningful personal interactions, and free up their time to spend it how they want. It is this combination of data gathering, analysis, and execution that drives real loyalty and keeps your customers coming back.

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Ask yourself:

Are there situations where your customers might be coming in for a different reason than you think—perhaps when you have some kind of promotion or sale? What are the implications for how you manage them?

Ask yourself: Are you digging past the obvious to not only find your best customers at any time but also learning what you can do to make their entire journey positive and memorable? Do you know why your customers are coming in today?

Gifts can be a big draw for casinos. They were our lifeblood at two of our regional operations. We handed out everything from dining ware to bedding sets to bobbleheads of local sports heroes. The beauty of gifts is that the perceived value can far exceed the actual cost of the product. We typically bought at $14 to $18 per item but most gifts had a $50 to $100 “retail value” to our customers. The problem we faced was that customers were also redeeming a lot of free slot play on gift days—Sundays. It seemed like a waste of money. Why should we let them “double dip?” So, we decided to black out Sundays and make the free play offers valid on other days to drive an incremental trip. That Monday, with the new program in place, I eagerly looked at our free play redemption for Sunday, excited to see a reduction from the typical $120,000-$130,000. Sure enough, it was down significantly—by $40,000 or so. Unfortunately, our revenue was also down over $100,000—not a good trade. Maybe this was a fluke, and one week does not a story make. But for the remaining Sundays that month, we saw the same pattern of lower free play but also lower revenue and profits. Why? To find out, we did some digging into the data. It turns out that a lot of our Sunday customers who had been redeeming gifts were not coming for the gift. They came for the free play, and Sunday was the only day they had free during the week. Since they had the gift offer as well, they redeemed it—who doesn’t want a freebie? We looked back at redemption patterns from these customers and saw that they were heavily weighted to Sundays, even on days when there were not gifts, so the data was there all along to figure this out, but we had not done the homework in advance. By going with the obvious theory and plunging ahead, we solved one problem but created a bigger one. Without the free play offer, those Sunday customers did not have the right incentive to visit, as they were not motivated by the gift. We fixed the problem by restoring the Sunday redemption option and looked for other ways to reduce free play. But we cost ourselves by making assumptions based on the face value of the data. Today, we can even better use data to understand the drivers of customer behavior. When doing our analyses, however, we need to have a keen eye, and we must look in advance to understand those motivations. Once you do, you can avoid costly mistakes and drive the behavior you want.

Do you know the best measure of success for your products?

The No. 1 metric for slot machines in the gaming business is “win per unit per day” (WPU). We base many of our decisions on finding games with a higher WPU. We use our data to track the “house average,” and segment our games into tiers based on how they perform relative to house average. But, surprisingly, WPU is not the best measure of a game’s value to your casino. Operators waste a lot of money and valuable time every year chasing higher WPU numbers. Slot directors have all kinds of WPU-based metrics to judge their games. I have often heard things like, “For a leased game to get onto my floor, it needs to do at least three times house average,” or “every quarter we look to convert or replace the bottom 10 percent of our floor based on WPU.” I have also had countless capital conversations with slot directors focused on finding games with a higher WPU to replace low-WPU games. The slot directors declared victory a few months later showing great new WPU numbers compared to the old ones. Most often, though, the new games with the higher WPU simply reallocate coin-in that was going to the other games on the floor. They do not change your customers’ behavior—make them play longer, visit more often or drive new business—and your overall revenue goes nowhere. How do you know a new game really helped you? To answer that, you have to dig into the data and look beyond the WPU numbers. Analyze the behavior of your customers who played the old games and see how it changed after you replaced those games. Did they start coming more often or spending more per trip? Who is playing those new games? Is it customers from segments that you were struggling to attract previously—maybe millennials or certain high-end customers? Or is it the typical demographics that most games are designed to attract already, that late 40s-to-mid-60s female customer? Manufacturers aggravate the problem by producing too many games that appeal to the “middle.” They know that operators want games that will produce heady WPU numbers, so they chase the broad demographics, looking for a big hit—similar to how the old network TV model worked. Before cable, streaming, Netflix, Hulu and on-demand, TV shows had to score big ratings to drive high advertiser rates. The networks paid more attention to certain demographics, such as 18-to-45-year-olds, but if a show could not garner 10 million or more viewers, it would not be green-lit. And the result was a lot of relatively bland big network programming that did not take risks and was careful not to offend, lest it alienate any significant portion of the viewing audience. Today, TV content is in a much more specialized and compelling place. There are more good shows than most of us have time to watch, and on multiple platforms. Shows that appeal to narrow audiences making it onto Netflix, Amazon or even YouTube never would have been produced 15-30 years ago. The big broadcast networks can hardly compete on quality, garnering only a small percentage of Emmy nominations and suffering significant ratings declines. By providing high-quality content for viewers, the insurgent competitors like Netflix are winning. And you can do the same by knowing what each of your customers wants and providing it to them. Casino floors are not that crowded most of the time. The core slot customer can almost always find a game they like. We need to deliver compelling games for other customer segments to bring in more new business and grow the total casino market. Digging into detailed customer ratings data shows that there are clearly games that keep customers coming back, while others, even if they perform well from a WPU perspective, do not grow the business because they do not create the right customer experiences at the game. OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com

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Ask yourself: Is the highest revenue always the best outcome for a particular product? Are there longer-term considerations when thinking about revenues like sustainability and how to ensure repeat business? Hint: There are!

Ask yourself: Are there other instances where customers want a certain end result but the obvious answer is not the right answer—maybe fast service but an interaction that does not create engagement? Critical To Success

Do your customers really want what you think they want?

When we talk to our slot customers, the thing we hear the most is that they want “time on device” (TOD). Everyone wants their money to last and no one likes to lose everything quickly. Slot manufacturers know this, and they have often responded by making a lot of games designed to preserve the player’s bankroll. There is a huge problem with this approach, however, when it comes to experienced slot customers. These games are boring. While some customers are OK with just killing time and some less experienced customers often gravitate to these “dribbler” games at first, customers tire of them and walk away eventually, so time on device actually goes down. Most slot customers want that roller coaster—where they can win a meaningful jackpot, get ahead of the house at some point and make their decision whether to press on or cash out. Over time the success of manufacturers like Aristocrat—with their higher-volatility approach to game design—bears this out. Average time on device is significantly higher for these more volatile games because people reinvest their winnings back in the game, hoping to win again and again. The “time on device” math models usually produce the opposite. Armed with this insight from a rigorous look at our company data—because it is not just volatility, but other factors as well—we started quantifying the number of “big winners” and “small winners” each game tended to produce, and started allocating our slot capital to increase the number of winners on our casino floors across the company. So, when you hear something from your customers like “I want time on device,” believe it, but do not assume that they necessarily know what that means. TOD is totally determined by the customer, and if the game is exciting, they will keep playing. If it does not have enough thrills for them, the majority of savvy customers will walk away. You will need to lay out your floors with the right mix of high and low volatility depending on what your customer mix looks like.

100 Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

You cannot run a successful enterprise today without leveraging data and using it to guide your key decisions. Properly harnessed, data can be an incredibly powerful tool to understand and predict customer behavior and drive efficiencies at every level. But it takes the right approach, talent and time. Human beings are complicated, and their behavior often defies neat demographic labels. Proper leveraging of your data and digging deep to understand customer motivations will allow you to better predict future behavior and anticipate your customers’ needs, give you a significant advantage over your competitors, improve customer loyalty, obtain and retain new customers, and grow the overall market.

David Patent is the CEO and founder of Patent Enterprises, a big-data analytics and advisory company that specializes in delivering innovative problem-solving expertise to gaming and hospitality companies, domestically and internationally. Patent has 17 years of executive, operations and data analytics experience in the gaming industry.

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Westward Ho Westward Ho Sports betting moving into Indian Country By Dave Palermo

astern states reacted quickly to the U.S. Supreme Court repeal in May of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), enacting legislation to permit wagering on professional and college sports.

New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Mississippi all established legal and regulatory frameworks for sports betting. The landscape promises to change dramatically following the midterm elections in November, when several Midwest, Great Plains and Western states—many dominated by American Indian casinos— begin taking up the issue. “We think it will be two to three years for a majority of states to pass some form of sports gambling,” Sara Slane, senior vice president of the American Gaming Association, told HartfordBusiness.com. “Within five years, you’ll have the vast majority of states with it.”

Tribal Tribulations Arizona, Alabama, California, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington, Wisconsin and North and South Dakota have substantial tribal government casino industries. Many tribes see legal sports betting as an opportunity to attract younger customers disinterested in slot machines and wedded to smartphones and skilled gambling. Advancing technology and mobile and iGaming are viewed as crucial in the evolution of tribal gambling. “You have to concede that’s a transition that is going to happen, eventually,” says Chris Stearns, a Navajo and member of the Washington State Gaming Commission. “It’s the wave of the future.” A number of the 240 tribal governments operating casinos in 29 states are working their legislatures to get in on the action. Spirit Lake Casino & Resort—one of five American Indian casinos in North Dakota already allowed to offer sports betting with the Supreme Court repeal of PASPA—is one of several tribal government gambling operations anxious to get into the business. The tribal-state compact Spirit Lake and other North Dakota tribes signed with the state permit them to operate sports betting now that PASPA is overturned. Spirit Lake tribal officials are in partnership talks with William Hill US Race & Sports Book, an international wagering company. “I don’t think it will be a full-blown sports betting operation,” Slot Director Jason Thompson says of the 650-machine casino and 120-room hotel. “We don’t have the capability to do that.” “I think we’ll integrate it” into a bar-restaurant, Thompson says, a project that awaits a May tribal vote to allow alcohol in the casino. 102 Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

The Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi is trying to determine if sports betting will be an option at its Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel near Cedar Rapids if Iowa allows commercial casino sports betting

A sports book requires a major investment in staffing, technology, data and marketing. Yet, a book generates only a 2 percent to 5 percent profit margin. It’s a risky, expensive, labor-intensive business. Most tribes lack the resources to operate distinct books. Those that get into the business will likely incorporate betting windows in sports bars or install kiosks. The risk will be left to third-party operators like William Hill. “It’ll be a plug-and-play thing,” says a tribal regulator who requested anonymity. “We’ll provide the physical area where they put their stuff. The company will take care of all the details—set the betting lines and take the risks— and the tribe will get a percentage.” The Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi, operators of the Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel 50 miles west of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is awaiting legislative action in 2019 on a bill to permit sports betting. “We’ll explore all our options,” General Manager John Apacki says of the 1,300-slot casino and 400-room hotel, the largest of three tribal gambling operations in the state. Apacki doubts sports betting will generate much revenue in a rural state with no professional teams and 19 commercial casinos competing for the wagering dollar. “Given our market and the fact this is going to be new to the state, there should be an interest in it, locally,” Apacki says. “But as far as extended interest, I don’t see that. It’s just going to be another amenity as in keno, race books, bingo.”

Progress Will Be Slow The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians—which shares the state’s casino market with 34 casinos—became the first tribe to take sports wagers on August 31.

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The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians were the first tribe to open a sports book at their Golden Moon Hotel and Casino at the Pearl River Resort in Philadelphia, Mississippi

Phyliss Anderson, chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, which operates the resort, was on hand for the ribbon-cutting, and said the introduction of sports betting at the casino will be a nice added feature for guests. “Anytime we improve at the resort, it’s always special,” Anderson said at the ribbon-cutting. “We’re always looking to expand for our guests and to bring amenities for customers to our resort.” Sports betting legislation in states with tribal casinos has been slow to emerge, partly because many Midwest and Western states require constitutional amendments through ballot initiatives to permit wagering on professional and college sports. An additional, major obstacle is that tribes operate casinos under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) and tribal-state compacts, a complex set of federal and state laws and regulations that restrict expansion of legal gambling.

The tribal-state regulatory agreements, or compacts, usually give the tribes statewide or regional exclusivity to operate casino gambling, often in exchange for a share of revenues. But the compacts limit the type of gambling tribes can offer their customers. Many states are contemplating allowing racetracks, card rooms, taverns and lotteries to offer sports betting, claiming tribal compacts do not include wagers on professional and college sports. Protecting gambling exclusivity and limiting competition is a primary focus of the tribes with the repeal of PASPA. “Absolutely,” Mark Fox, chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes, operators of the 4 Bears Casino & Lodge, says of speculation North Dakota legislators will authorize expanded non-Indian gambling. “We are always trying to be on our toes in anticipating expanded gaming in the state that will somehow diminish our own operations,” Fox says. “We are very much concerned about how the state will approach the issue.” Troy “Scott” Weston, chairman of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, also warns legal sports betting will prompt a ballot initiative to expand nontribal gambling in the state, currently limited to casinos in Deadwood. Seven tribes operate 11 casinos.

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“You have to concede that’s a transition that is going to happen, eventually. It’s the wave of the future.” —Chris Stearns, a Navajo and member of the Washington State Gaming Commission, on tribalcasino sports betting tribal-state compacts necessary to operate sports betting. Current agreements are in perpetuity and do not include revenue sharing. Tribes may, however, “We hope to bring forward a ballot proposal for negotiate a separate compact to cover sports betting. a constitutional change in 2020,” Mike Rodman of “The tribes are doing their due diligence sepathe Deadwood Gaming Association told KOTA rately,” says John McCarthy, executive director of TV. the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association. The “They want to create casinos in the cities up leadership will meet in September. “We’ll share the and down the two interstates in South Dakota,” information and hopefully make a decision as to Weston says. “Indian casinos are never going to surwhether we’re going with it or not going with it,” vive.” McCarthy says. The legal debate over exclusivity has caused de“Sports betting almost always leads to internet lays in enacting sports betting legislation in Congaming. We’ve been opposed to internet gaming,” necticut, where the Mohegan and Mashantucket McCarthy says, fearing it will lead to expanded Pequot tribes share the casino market. commercial gambling in the state. IGRA and the compacts are also blamed for de“This is not in keeping Three large Wisconsin tribes—Oneida Nation, lays in enacting legislation in Michigan—where with California’s Forest County Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk Nathree Detroit casinos share the statewide market longstanding policy tion—are expressing only mild interest in sports betwith 13 tribes—and Oklahoma, where 31 tribes of limited gaming, and ting, weighing the risk of renegotiating favorable operate some 130 casinos ranging from travel plazas we will vigorously terms of extended compacts with the slim margins to upscale resorts. oppose this measure.” of sports betting. Arizona tribes operating 27 casinos are standing —Mark Macarro, chairman of the “The Ho-Chunk Nation is considering whether fast on exclusivity provisions in renegotiating comPechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, it is worth the investment to have sports betting bepacts that currently pay the state about $80 million pledging to oppose any fore it would ask the governor to reopen the gaming a year. referendum legalizing sports compacts to allow it,” tribal public relations officer And at least some New Mexico tribes are rubetting off tribal land Collin Price told Urban Milwaukee, an online pubmored to be taking the legal position that their curlication. rent agreements include sports betting. Most states “The nation’s initial analysis shows that the revare demanding the pacts be renegotiated. enues generated from sports betting being reported in the national media may not translate into the Wisconsin tribal casino setNot An Easy Process ting.” A proposed ballot initiative for the 2020 election in California would perSports betting legislation in Wisconsin would require a ballot initiative to mit licensed gambling operations, including the state’s 62 casino tribes, 75 amend the state constitution. card rooms and racetracks, to operate sports betting. Washington legislators are normally opposed to expanded gambling in The initiative is being pursued by political consultant Russell Lowery the state, where tribes operate 29 casinos. Ron Allen, chairman of the and the group Californians for Sports Betting. Most believe the initiative is Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Council, says tribes are more interested in pothe product of the card room industry. tential marijuana sales than sports betting. “I don’t think the vast majority of tribes are going to want to see that A few of 11 Oregon tribes are interested in pursuing sports betting. The ballot initiative proceed on its own without some counter proposal that prostate lottery contends it already has the authority to offer wagering on sports, tects the tribes’ interests,” says Steve Stallings, chairman of the California in that the state was exempt from PASPA. Nations Indian Gaming Association. Attorney Gregory Gemignani, who conducts sports betting seminars for “Right now our position is we do not support expansion of gaming in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas International Center for Gaming ReguCalifornia. We’ll wait to see how things develop.” lations, says classes are often heavily attended by tribal regulators. “This proposed measure would bring Vegas-style gaming to nearly 100 “Tribal participation has been relatively high,” Gemignani says. “But locations and urban areas throughout California,” Mark Macarro, chairman tribal views vary. They have a common understanding. I don’t know that of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, told the Los Angeles Times. “This they have a common desire to get into it.” is not in keeping with California’s longstanding policy of limited gaming, “I think tribes are being cautious,” says Jana McKeag, a tribal consultant. and we will vigorously oppose this measure.” “It’s a big commitment. I’m glad to see tribes being very deliberative.” Eleven Minnesota tribes operating 19 casinos are hesitant to renegotiate 104 Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

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READY? Thef ut ur eoft abl egameoper at i onsi sher e! Fi ndoutmor eaboutt hel at es taddi t i onst ot heBr a v o pr oduc tl i nes panni ngPi t , RFI D, Pok er , Cage&Anal y t i c s .

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Arming By Brian Wyman

Analytics

The study of data is wide-ranging, but a focus is necessary to achieve goals

e’ve all heard the buzzwords: data science, big data, machine learning, analytics. But in with operators both inside and outside of gaming, there’s a lot of confusion about what these

terms mean. This is understandable, as simple web searches turn up a lot of different definitions and examples. But to be certain, while we can agree that as an industry we do an excellent job of collecting data—marketing, gaming, pointof-sale, hotel, labor, financial—there is still a large opportunity to leverage that data to improve operations. In this article, I’ll share my perspective on how analytics as a discipline is evolving in the industry, and some not-so-obvious areas where a good analytics program can provide value. And how, as author Rob Neyer so eloquently puts it, operators can “ride the analytics horse to profitability,” and not “follow it with a shovel.” One of the most common questions I’m asked is, “How do we get started? I don’t have a huge budget.” I’ll address that, but first I think it’s helpful to provide a framework for the different ways we use analytics, and how that relates to your business.

Four types of analytics, and how we’re evolving as an industry “Analytics” is a broad term, really referring to any program to analyze and utilize data, so it’s helpful to break analytics down into subcategories. While there are many ways to do this, I prefer the following quadrant-oriented picture of analytics:

The left-to-right axis ranges from analysis of past events to analysis of future events, with the latter being prediction-based. Bottom-to-top we are moving from the who-what-when-where to the why and the how, adding intelligence to our information. These axes cut analytics into four major categories:

Descriptive analytics This category includes summary data and gives a lens into “What happened?” Examples include daily operating reports and marketing campaign summaries. Descriptive analytics answers questions such as, “How much coin in/win did we do?” “Who visited the property?”“What time of day did we peak?” “How many redeemers did this campaign have?” “What was our hotel occupancy versus the same day last year?” Seasoned operators have well-defined processes for descriptive analytics, and most key leaders within the company receive topline information that they use to manage their areas of the business.

Diagnostic analytics This category takes descriptive analytics and layers in the “why?” and the “how?” This typically blends descriptive analytics from different sources, and it requires a few things to really achieve success. These include a strong data analysis team and excellent communication between analyst teams and operations, as this data scientist reminds us:

Diagnostic analytics often stem from questions such as “Why was the coin-in so low this weekend?” or “Why was the slot hold so low last month?” or “Why was EBITDA so low last month?” (Yes, these questions are thematic, as analytics teams know all too well!) Answers start with descriptive analytics—first verifying that indeed the observation matches the data and preparing a summary versus prior month or year. The diagnostics then can lead analytics teams into the usual: weather, calendar, marketing, competitor programming, events in town. But it also can lead down paths such as looking at year-over-year game mix, hotel bookings and yield curves, restaurant covers and COGS, and labor. Collaboration with operators here is key. If the analysts aren’t creating 106 Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

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models that operators understand, the operators canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t build confidence, and analysis goes unused. All analysts understand that their recommendations wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always be followed, but helping analysts understand the processâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;how and why decisions are being madeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;allows analysts to begin anticipating questions and thinking like an operator. Learning how operators approach problems helps analysts generate qualitative improvements to their models and analysis and provide insights and confidence to decision-making.

Learning how operators approach problems helps analysts generate qualitative improvements to their models and analysis and provide insights and confidence to decision-making.

ble yield strategies and tell you that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d increase profitability by raising a few of the $10 minimums to $15 and staggering table openings instead of opening six new $10 blackjack tables at 8 p.m. Friday like clockwork. Similar techniques aim to optimize the bundles of offers in a monthly mailer, product mix on the gaming floor, and room rates. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re at the â&#x20AC;&#x153;descriptiveâ&#x20AC;? phase, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re on par with most of the industry. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got a good â&#x20AC;&#x153;diagnosticâ&#x20AC;? analyst, hold on to her for dear life. And if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re pushing the envelope into machine learning and advanced predictive or prescriptive models, well doneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re at the forefront of the industry right now.

Predictive Analytics In predictive analytics, analysts predict future scenarios. We already do this during budget season: What will our revenue be next year, and how will it spread? Take what we spent last year and add 2 percent. That is a prediction. These can be very useful predictionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;if unsophisticated. What will a patron spend the next time she plays? Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s use her 12-month ADTâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;this is another prediction. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to realize that we only care about past play for its use in predicting future play and behavior. If we somehow knew that next month, the patron would play at half her ADT, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d adjust reinvestment accordingly. Maybe we could make better forecasts of future play using seasonality, around tax season or the holidays. Maybe the patron has been declining for some time, yet redeeming all of her free play, so we should cut the patronâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s offers before she becomes unprofitable. Enter machine learning. Machine learning, a subfield of artificial intelligence, is the process by which computers process data to â&#x20AC;&#x153;learnâ&#x20AC;? without being explicitly programmed. For example, computers can â&#x20AC;&#x153;learnâ&#x20AC;? spending habits by season and day of week, or the attributes of new card signups that lead to no return visitation. Both can help you market more effectively. These techniques are ubiquitous in the tech world, but there are very few analysts in gaming doing this sort of work.

Predictive Analytics in Practice Most of the examples we see about advanced analytics seem grandioseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;value every patron at the individual level, predict every tripâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth, provide the right incentives to optimize profit. And there is a lot of value to be extracted from the marketing data we have. But analytics can help in all areas of the business, and here are a few examples to illustrate the point.

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Prescriptive analytics Think of prescriptive analytics as scenario-based predictive analytics. Predictive analytics answers the question, â&#x20AC;&#x153;What is the likely outcome?â&#x20AC;? Prescriptive analytics takes this a step further and answers the question, â&#x20AC;&#x153;How can we intervene to get the best possible outcome?â&#x20AC;? From here, we can start to make great business decisions. For example, we can predict what our table revenue will be on Friday based on historical data. This assumes no changes to operations. A prescriptive approach might look at all possi-

TRIVIA.COM ŕś&#x153;ŕś?ŕś? ŕś&#x2022;ŕś&#x2014;ŕś&#x203A;ŕś&#x153; ŕś&#x2DC;ŕś&#x2014;ŕś&#x;ŕś?ŕś&#x161;ŕś&#x17D;ŕś?ŕś&#x201D; ŕś&#x203A;ŕś&#x2DC;ŕś&#x2014;ŕś&#x161;ŕś&#x153;ŕś&#x203A; ŕś&#x152;ŕś&#x2014;ŕś&#x2022;ŕś&#x2030;ŕś&#x2018;ŕś&#x2013;ŕś&#x203A; ŕś&#x2014;ŕś&#x2013; ŕś&#x153;ŕś?ŕś? ŕś&#x2DC;ŕś&#x201D;ŕś&#x2030;ŕś&#x2013;ŕś?ŕś&#x153;! 3OHDVH FRQWDFW -HII &HOO (PDLO -HII)#7HQ [ FRP OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com 107

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Slot Maintenance In exploring the exception codes that machines send to the slot system, we saw results similar to the following:

Slot Machine Card Reader Daily Exceptions Over Time

Guest and Employee Satisfaction Surveys Predictive modeling can assist with analysis of survey data as well, answering questions such as, “How much difference in overall guest satisfaction does a hotel satisfaction 5 vs. a 3 rating make?” Or, “What responses can we use to predict turnover from employee surveys?” Or, “What indicators in free responses are precursors to a guest defecting?” These are all quantifiable with the right modeling techniques—again, you already have the data.

An Analytics Roadmap

This plot shows the number of times per day that a card reader failed to read a swiped card. Everyone sees the large spike, of course, but the real feature here is seeing hiccups before the catastrophic failure. These hiccups allow us to predict the card reader failure, and we can send a technician to service the device before it causes several days of poor guest experience. Oh, and imagine this is the bill acceptor.

Turnover We all know how costly turnover is. In some recent work, we were able to observe strong correlations between drive time to work and call-outs, noshows and turnover. If you’re saying “well, duh!” then I’d ask: Does your hiring team favor a candidate that lives a shorter distance over a similar candidate that lives farther away? How would your hiring be different if HR said “your first-choice candidate is 40 percent likely to turn within a year, and your second-choice candidate is only 10 percent?” Consult with your HR and legal teams before building this model to ensure that you aren’t at risk of violating any labor laws, but these models can mitigate staffing issues from hire-time. “But what about all the employees I have that live far away today?” Well, if drive time is an issue, make sure you’re creating an environment your team members love— maybe car pool incentives as a “green” initiative or weekly gas card giveaways for high performers. Involve your HR team and your marketers—they get guests to drive in every day. And for your property, it may not be drive time. Maybe it’s closeness to the competitor, or something else, but you have the data and just need to view it through the right lens.

Scheduling Use prediction to optimize scheduling. Most of your hotel check-ins are the afternoon? Then you probably don’t have as many front-desk staff members on grave as you do on swing. But are you more efficient on grave or on swing? How many check-ins and check-outs did you process per hour of labor? With maximum efficiency, you’d process the same per hour of labor on all shifts. Even with labor as the most expensive line item in many casino budgets, most properties cannot answer this type of question. With the increased pressure on margins, it’s important for operations to seek efficiency, and this is a great place to start. Develop hourly “key volume indicators” for each position, and see how efficient your labor is. 108 Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

“So where do I start? I can’t afford a data scientist!” Fair question. Here are some simple steps that organizations can take to begin to incorporate analytics into existing processes: • Develop a list of questions: Maybe you’re inspired by some of the examples above, or maybe you have burning questions about your own organization. Develop a list, polish it up, and ask management to support the effort with a resource. We’ve seen a lot of success with “10 percent time”—allowing an existing analyst to work on a project outside the ordinary scope of her duties for 10 percent of her time, say, Friday afternoons. Many analysts will even work an extra four hours if given this opportunity. • Get alignment from management: None of this works without a commitment from the executive team. They need to buy into the process, and this also creates urgency and importance for the analysts. • Build reports: These can be in a business intelligence tool like Tableau, or simply executed in Excel. The goal is to develop reports that help operators do their jobs better. If the reports are hard to read or poorly designed—perhaps just a table of numbers—you won’t get adoption. And adoption is key. I’m a reports expert, and I still work with a designer every time I build a report. It’s that important to develop something people want to use. • Start with the P&L: Don’t think that “analytics” must be fancy. We’ve had major successes just working through operators’ P&L statements. Compare properties if you have two or more, or versus prior years if you have only one. Find out how your spend mix has changed and why. It’s very easy for unnecessary expenses to remain hidden for years. • Don’t start with software: With commitment from management, targeted questions, resources to work on these problems, and metrics to measure success, you’re ready to evaluate software to make your team’s life easier. Without these things, you’ll have a beautiful Ferrari in the driveway and everyone will be looking at one another wondering who can drive a stick. • Focus on the methodology: “How much did we generate because of the giveaway?” is a common question, and a common answer is, “Well, we had 1,000 redeemers, and they averaged $150 ADT. The gifts cost us $20 each, so we netted $130,000.” But this ignores how many of those 1,000 patrons were going to play without the gift. Or maybe some of them played less because of the long line for the gift. Or maybe some people came in on Thursday for the gift and as a result we lost their Saturday trip. It’s not easy to develop a framework for how to answer these questions, but having analysts who think through the questions to challenge current thinking and processes is a great start. And this must be collaborative—remember, we’re all on the same team: Team Profit. Analytics can be used to enhance every area of the business. Arthur Neilsen, of Nielsen Media Research fame, once said, “The price of light is less than the cost of darkness.” Expect the reliance on analytics to grow in the coming years as the industry continues to turn on the lights. Brian Wyman, data scientist and senior vice president of operations and data analytics at The Innovation Group, holds a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Michigan. Wyman works with clients to transform their data into actionable insights and bottom-line financial results. Along with The Innovation Group’s analytics efforts, Wyman oversees the group’s sports betting advisory services and its Las Vegas office.

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CUTTING EDGE by Frank Legato

Jackpot Value Product: AnyBet Manufacturer: Ainsworth Game Technology

nyBet from Ainsworth has created buzz at Class II gaming properties around the country. The new Class II linked progressive jackpot has been spotted in Oklahoma, Indiana, Arizona, Louisiana, Washington and beyond. Soon it will be seen even more, as installations are scheduled in most major Class II markets. AnyBet offers every player on a casino floor the chance to win life-enhancing jackpots. No matter the line count or bet level, anybody can win with AnyBet, thanks to patent-pending bingo card technology from Ainsworth. Additionally, AnyBet jackpots have been configured to hit at a higher frequency than many competitors’ products. The Silver Link version, available for 25- and 30-line games, resets at $5,000 and $250. The Gold Link version, available for 40- and 50-line games, resets at $10,000 and $500. “The players have really picked up on it,” said Ainsworth Director of Marketing and Product Management Mike Trask. “AnyBet was a real winner for everyone involved. The players will like it, definitely the casinos will like it as the revenues are increasing, and the popularity of the game looks good.” The link can be placed on dozens of Ainsworth game titles available on the A600, A560 and A560 SL Noir cabinets—including proven performers

Progressive Tables Product: STAX Progressive Solution Manufacturer: AGS

t G2E 2018, AGS will showcase STAX, its groundbreaking new table-game progressive solution. STAX offers five multi-level progressive jackpots, including a large and life-changing top award, any of which can be won with an optional side bet. A Must-Hit pool, which displays the Mystery Must-Hit Progressive Declared Value to players, adds anticipation and excitement as the jackpot grows. The STAX dynamic, double-sided display features light-up bet sensors and a table-style dealer interface for prominent viewing by the player and ease of integration into the casino pit. This uniquely customizable innovation in table-game progressive solutions links up to five progressive pools across the game floor, setting it apart from other table progressives which typically only offer three progressive pools. It also features a reserve concept for each pool, thus enabling built-up reserves to contribute to reseed values. Adding up to five levels enables a single game theme to be both life-changing and, at the same time, deliver smaller, more frequent jackpot awards to

110 Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

like Action Dragons, Rumble Rumble Bison, Dragon’s Heat, China Gold, Rumble Dragon and Rampaging Bull. At minimum bet, players have one chance to win the top AnyBet jackpots. As players bet up, they get more and more chances to win AnyBet prizes. For instance, on a 50-credit minimum game, a player wagering 50 credits would receive one additional bingo card to compete for an AnyBet Jackpot. If that player wagered 100 credits they would get two progressive bingo cards; and at a 500-credit bet, would have 10 chances to win the AnyBet Jackpot. For more information, visit agtslots.com.

keep players in their seats. The high-level jackpots can reach more than $100,000, while the lower-level pools offer higher-frequency hits on the same table. Since all five pools are progressive pays, player excitement and engagement are higher than under a fixed paytable solution. STAX also offers a significantly unique concept to table-game progressive systems—the ability to incorporate a Mystery Must-Hit pool—driving player excitement and anticipation. Other features include customizable automated tiered contribution rates as meter values increase, thus building up healthy reserves. STAX also includes a web-based reporting and configuration platform, enabling detailed data accessibility across a casino enterprise. Because players are required to wager an additional side bet to win the progressive, they will invest more in the game—driving casino revenue. And STAX creates tremendous excitement, generating an “if you don’t play, you can’t win” mentality and building dramatic player anticipation as the jackpots increase and the “MustHit” promises potentially large rewards. For more information, visit PlayAGS.com.

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MARKETING

Signs of the Times Do customers tune out the digital wave or are signs still an effective way to get your message out?

igital signage has become so ubiquitous that most consumers—as well as many marketers—don’t even realize how evolved this medium has grown, often missing out on the power it has. If you’ve been around since we moved sign stanchions from place to place, you’ve seen displays transitioning from backlit to LED, LCD and plasma. With every year, screens are getting wider and wider, yet slimmer and sometimes even flexible. Video walls that used to be a “wow” feature are now commonplace. The trend of content personalization and interactivity has spread to digital displays as well. Sensors on displays will adjust messages and creative according to real-world conditions. Raining? Then the content will respond by showing indoor activities. If it’s sunny, maybe the images will be your pool offerings. Like all technology, digital signage is getting smarter in more ways than just content, and VSBLTY—a Carlsbad, California company with years of experience in software, retail, and casino marketing—is leading a revolution in the industry. Company founder Tim Huckaby has been responsible for delivering innovation to many Fortune 100 companies. You’ve probably seen his tech in action even though you didn’t know it. Huckaby (through another of his companies) created the “Magic Wall” that CNN has used for election-night coverage to track progress and aid in projections. Now, Huckaby has embarked on a new journey to the consumer level that started when he asked, “What if you could actually measure everyone who looked at an advertising message? What if you could track how long they interacted with the message? What if you added to that measurement age, gender, emotions, and sentiment?” Soon, the company was deploying the new technology in a very ordinary place, your grocer’s freezer. Selected by a leading company trying to increase sales of their frozen seafood, the VSBLTY technology was tested at a Midwest retailer. Imagine digital signage as the freezer door. The results were more than expected, not only lifting sales in targeted SKUs but for the entire category. “And that was only the beginning,” says Huckaby. “Where we are taking the tech today, with arti-

112 Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

By Julia Carcamo

ficial intelligence and machine learning, will truly make digital signage a transformational medium for many public venues.” VSBLTY has developed a technology called FacialAnalytics, which combines the power of facial recognition with real-time cloud-based analytics to identify people in milliseconds—alone, in crowds, and in motion. FacialAnalytics reveals typical demographic profiles, such as age and gender, as well as mood and emotion, in addition to interactivity, length of engagement, number of impressions, and even the percentage of people looking at the sign. Additionally, the company’s Vector technology can aid in public safety. Signs equipped with the software can view crowded public spaces, identifying persons of interests (including banned customers) by cross-referencing a variety of databases. In seconds, Vector notifies security to mobilize, intercept and prevent. Ongoing software enhancements include object recognition and machine learning, allowing users to identify weapons that may pose a threat. This object recognition technology has groundbreaking implications, putting the company firmly at the intersection of marketing and security. VSBLTY’s SaaS solution can turn a regular passive digital display into a proactive digital display. Since initial tests, VSBLTY has quadrupled the deployments of their software across major retail locations worldwide. The technology has been vetted for arenas and entertainment venues and is currently in place at the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Additionally, VSBLTY technology has been deployed at NASCAR venues, amphitheaters and specialty stores. When Former FBI Unit Chief Jeffery Muller assembled a security detail for the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, he asked VSBLTY to join the team. With the show’s multiple points of ingress—waterways, aerial, underwater and pedestrian—and with thousands of attendees and billions of dollars of inventory to protect, the goal of prevention is challenging at best. With VSBLTY technology, Muller created a perimeter that used machine learning to warn the command center if there was a potential threat. Rather than guard towers, attendees saw everyday-looking digital signs. So, now you’re wondering, how does this im-

pact me? Glad you asked! Two years ago, Salvatore Semola, a veteran gaming operator, was doing what most of us were, walking the floors of the Global Gaming Expo, meeting with existing and potential vendors and reuniting with friends and co-workers. One of those meetings was with a longtime friend and associate, Jan Talamo, a brand and marketing expert. They briefly discussed a new technology venture that Talamo was helping spearhead as its chief creative officer. Semola knew it could be a game-changer for a casino operator. Now as president and chief operating officer of Gun Lake Casino, Semola is piloting proactive digital displays. “I saw a real opportunity to use the technology of our digital signage to keep our guests more engaged, drive frequency, help make them safer, and also aid risk management on the casino floor,” says Semola. In their initial meeting, Semola ensured everyone participated: IT, security, marketing, surveillance, and risk. The forward-thinking casino executive wanted a true “casino-wide” test to see if his hunch was right. He knew everyone had to buy into the idea, and they did. The property has deployed four kiosks with interactive touch screens to measure guest engagement, dwell time, patron counts and sentiment to determine if people are happy, frustrated, angry, or exhibiting some other emotion. Additionally, the property has implemented the company’s Vector and Advanced Object Recognition software to match guests on the floor against databases of persons of interest (such as the DAP list) as well as identifying assault weapons and handguns brought onto the property. “If I’m right,” says Semola, “this technology will be standard issue on casino floors in the future. It will change the way we view unrated play, protect us from visits by disassociated persons and create a better customer experience. Moreover, nobody will know it is even there.” All of a sudden, you’re looking at your signs differently. Julia Carcamo has held property and corporate leadership positions at medium to large casino companies. She is currently president of J Carcamo & Associates marketing consultancy. Contact: julia@jcarcamoassociates.com.

CONNECTING INDUSTRY LEADERS AT THE HEART OF GAMING IT ALL STARTS HERE Set yourself up for success at Global Gaming Expo (G2E) – the largest gathering of global, commercial, and tribal gaming professionals in the world. Take advantage of new educational content that is fast-paced and actionable and experience first-hand the new products and innovative technologies showcased on the expo floor. G2E has everything you need for your casino floor and across your entire operation – from traditional casino fare to non-gaming amenities and digital products - G2E is where your business growth is accelerated.

2018

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CLICK BAIT

How social media has become a powerful tool to market By Dave Bontempo your casino and company

ocial media forms a new communications arena. Its vast universe brings gaming a potent new force. As the connective thread for younger generations and a blooming asset to boomers, it’s an essential vehicle for marketing specialists and ad agencies. Harnessing this platform means connecting to the instant judgment of customers in a world of shrinking attention spans. Click—see it. Click again—buy it. This market segment does not evaluate the beauty of a print ad, or a one-minute television spot. A message has one opportunity to grab and hold. Within this realm, digital ads hold unique stature and responsibility. They can supply instant, real-time product information, but can’t be disruptive enough to trigger services like Ad Block. They must subtly entice people used to ad-free content like Netflix and Hulu. Their overall value, for gaming and other industries, is estimated at $40 billion, and the tools to thrive with them may spark unconventional methods: sell the product while hiding the ad, use video, engage satisfied customers in a chat. Specialists wrestle social media like it was a Rubik’s cube. Move it one way and see the potential of video, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Twist it another and realize these options can collide with, and blunt each other. This is an interesting period. Social media hasn’t replaced traditional relationship strategies like classic advertising, customer service and face-to-face contact. But gone are the days when digital ads were banners on a website. Search-engine optimization, website content, email marketing and mobile capability emerged. Laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones became vehicles to carry an advertising message, or a promo. A gaming industry spanning several marketing eras—from direct mail and personalized hosting to couponing and player tracking—must respect the new world of visual excellence.

Seeing Both Sides of the Coin Tina Delaporte, vice president of media for Red Square in Mobile, Alabama, sees a double-edged reality for the social-media marketing world. She has touted the benefits of Google, Facebook and the iPhone in recent years. 114 Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

“Social media and video viewing are the two most popular online activities, together accounting for more than a third of all internet time,” Delaporte says, citing a comScore 2017 Cross-Platform Future in Focus analysis. “Aside from the crazy amount of time all of us spend with social media, what excites me most is its low-cost point of entry and self-serve, ease-of-use campaign creation and execution. These elements of social media have allowed smaller advertisers such as regional gaming properties to have an impactful effect by testing advertising in a timely, cost-efficient manner.” With digital advertising, combining off-line and online metrics is a natural progression, she says. First-party databases that were typically used to segment players and execute direct mail pieces can now be used in conjunction with third-party data for a multitude of digital marketing tactics. The digital realm, however, faces challenges. “It remains rife with advertising obstacles,” she says. “Some of the main issues that continue to plague ad campaigns are fraud, viewability and brand safety. Advertising industry groups such as the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC) are working diligently on these issues. While there’s been much progress on some fronts, such as a large reduction in fraud and improved viewability

“Aside from the crazy amount of time all of us spend with social media, what excites me most is its low-cost point of entry and self-serve, ease-of-use campaign creation and execution.” —Tina Delaporte, Vice President of Media, Red Square

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standards, brand safety seems to be a trickier solve. ing. She has been a president of the Southern Nevada Hotel Concierge Associ“These are consequential marketing issues, for if the basis of digital measation and performed senior executive roles in Las Vegas, including executive urement is fallible, an advertising ROI is, at best, unclear.” director and chief concierge, in casinos that included Venetian, Palazzo and the Within the digital area, seeing is believing. And not seeing means not buying. Cosmopolitan. Bell-Holland simultaneously owns and operates both Re“Frustrated by transparency issues, Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer of sortcierge MD (Las Vegas’ first designated house-call medical group exclusively P&G, notoriously cut $200 million in digital ad spend in 2017,” Delaporte rededicated to the concierge community and servicing tourists at luxury resorts calls. “His issues seem to stem from the large swing toward digitally focused on the Las Vegas Strip) and the Ava Rose Agency, named after her children. campaigns. Mr. Pritchard stresses the importance of continuously cultivating “Social media has evolved tremendously over the past five years,” she says. new customers, using full-funnel marketing including broad awareness media. “It has gone from organic posting to offering a multitude of methods for Similar concerns are now being expressed by chief marketing officers across all brands to reach their audience. One thing social media has recently implecategory advertisers. “Two years ago, if you would have asked any marketer to explain his or her digital strategy, you would have gotten a random digital walk versus a strategic understanding of where digital fits in their brand-building model. You have to be continuously bringing people into the top of your funnel,” she adds, quoting an anonymous source cited in a Nielson CMO surveyed for a report. The audience they target keeps getting younger. Two youthful sets of patrons, in fact, constitute a powerful block. “Generation Z is the largest generation, accounting for 26 percent of all persons in U.S. TV homes in February 2017. Combined with millennials, these two generations represent almost half of the U.S. population,” Delaporte says, referencing a Nielson Total Audience Report from 2017. Unlike most Las Vegas properties, regional gaming typically has an older audience, she adds. Mil. lennials may be off-target now for those casinos, but not in the near future. All advertisers should referSuccess in the gaming industry requires maintaining the upper hand. Businesses cannot take full ence media usage stats per demo quarterly. advantage of opportunities without effectively managing legal and regulatory matters. “U.S. smartphone penetration eclipsed 80 percent RMC can help with this aspect of your business. Our experts have more than 35 years of collective in 2016, but growth is slowing as market adoption experience in the casino gaming industry and assist clients on a multijurisdictional basis. Not only concludes its ‘late majority’ stage,” Delaporte asserts. do we understand the intricacies of regulatory guidelines, we stay abreast of the latest state, federal

SUCCESS IN THIS INDUSTRY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LUCK

Grasping a Broad Spectrum “Social media is a single part of an overall strategy in any public relations campaign, and although it is not the end-all-be-all when it comes to driving business, it is a vital part of an overall marketing and advertising strategy,” says Tyra Bell-Holland, founder of the Las Vegas-based Ava Rose Agency. “Brands that are still slow to adapt to the digital shift are missing out on many opportunities, and soon that shift will be forced. “I have several clients who ‘don’t speak’ social media or see the value. I always love this challenge! My analogy is that social media is not a ‘language,’ and when according to statistics for 2018, 77 percent of the world’s population is speaking this language but you are not, well, then you are missing a big slice of opportunity.” Bell-Holland has enjoyed a front-row seat for the convergence of gaming, luxury and hotel brand-

and local gaming laws to ensure your business is in total compliance. RMC works with a network of local legal and regulatory advisors to build a compliance model that is cost sensitive and effective. You can trust RMC. We work with integrity and always strive to meet your needs efficiently, helping you stay ahead of the game. Our expertise is comprehensive and includes: t .VMUJKVSJTEJDUJPOBM TVQQMJFS MJDFOTJOH t (BNJOH DPNQMJBODF QMBOT t $PSQPSBUF QMBOOJOH t (PWFSONFOUBM BOE SFHVMBUPSZ NPOJUPSJOH TFSWJDFT t /FX HBNJOH UFDIOPMPHZ MBCPSBUPSZ TVCNJTTJPO QSPDFEVSFT t (BNJOH SVMF BOE SFHVMBUJPO ESBGUJOH t $PNNFSDJBM BOE /BUJWF "NFSJDBO PQFSBUJPOT

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OCTOBER 2018 www.ggbmagazine.com 115

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“The most effective form of digital advertising on social media is influencer marketing...We see big brands, including casinos, partner with influencers all the time.”

mented is the ability for brands to engage with their audience on a live basis. And the advanced targeting techniques and ana“Whether that be utilizing Facebook live or lytical information they offer help create more Instagram stories, this content is raw and in the effective marketing efforts. moment, providing authenticity and really allow“Whether that’s through targeted social ing someone to engage and connect genuinely. media campaigns or geofencing digital ads, casiSome major corporations are taking advantage of nos are using these data-rich advertising meththese features, and some aren’t. It’s hit or miss in ods to not only reach guests more efficiently but Las Vegas. Every time I think I cracked the code, also improve future marketing campaigns.” —Tyra Bell-Holland, Founder, it’s on to the next methodology.” In the casino realm, modern marketing efAva Rose Agency, Las Vegas Influence peddling has a new connotation in forts use data available to make more informed this context. It does not pertain to a lobbyist or decisions, he adds. Digital advertising allows an someone trading favors from a well-placed position in operator to learn more about the audience than traa company. Figuratively, this is not about twisting arms, ditional advertising methods. but perhaps twisting a phrase, finding a niche. “Its influence shows up to casino guests and players through the daily ad“The most effective form of digital advertising on social media is influencer vertising they see, and we also frequently provide marketing training and asmarketing, specifically in Las Vegas,” Bell-Holland indicates. “It’s so effective besist with promotion creation for casinos,” Kuyper indicates. “We leverage the cause it is a form of native advertising (site content and an ad blended together, most forward-thinking digital tactics for the benefit of our casino clients. cleverly designed to look like editorial), just on steroids. Brands, such as casinos, One example is our development of a unique ‘digital bounce-back’ program are able to partner with influencers that are on-brand with what their messaging that keeps the casino’s brand, message, and/or offer in front of players for a entails, and they’re able to then advertise to their target demographic without specific time frame after they have visited the property. Traditional direct mail making it feel like an advertisement at all. bounce-back programs are expensive to execute, as you know, but this digital “We see big brands, including casinos, partner with influencers all the time. option is affordable and has a strong ROI for our clients.” Some casinos have even enlisted a department exclusively for influencer marketKuyper believes digital bounce-back programs and text message marketing ing, aside from their standard social media teams that they’ve built.” (SMS and MMS) will be key to bringing guests back. Social media actually imAnd which vehicle is winning? pacts the vetting process. His company has found that reputation management “Instagram,” Bell-Holland says. “Because the app is photo- and video-centric, has an increasingly important role in deciding where they’ll play. brands are more inclined to share everything on there. We also see a variety of in“The guests want to read positive online ratings and reviews about a fluencers on Instagram, whether that be foodies, travelers or mommy bloggers. casino before visiting,” he says. “Casinos should start solidifying their reputaThese are the people that are influencing and shaping the way social media is portion management and review generation strategies as soon as possible, if they trayed today, and they are the ones that are driving business. Most influencers can haven’t already.” no longer be found on Twitter; that is the biggest trend we are seeing.” Matt Entringer, the company’s director of brand strategy, favors a numBell-Holland says lessons from related industries, like restaurants, can benefit ber of tools. He likes search engine marketing (SEM), which serves text ads the gaming world. on the Google search network, targeting top-four placement on Google “One major success would be the launch of the Stove, a local brunch restausearch engine results. By using SEM campaigns, keywords and ads can be tairant and tea house in Henderson, Nevada,” she says. “In just under two months, lored to target your audience with specific promotions and specials. this tucked-away local eatery has gained over 1,000 followers on each platform. Entringer also advocates investing in a local SEO, saying wrong data costs The communal conversation was sparked through sharing moments and by paU.S. businesses more than $10 billion in annual sales revenue. He considers trons sharing their testimonials. Although professional photos are great, utilizing display marketing another strong player. Contextual advertising displays ads user-generated content is the way to spark engagement. And, the biggest rule is on websites whose content directly correlates to a related product or service never to buy followers. I have spent countless hours building a venue’s credibility you offer. Audience targeting allows one to serve ads to a group of users based for clients and investors cleaning up platforms with paid followers. It builds dison who they are and what they like. It also gives operators the ability to extrust.” clude groups of people if their interests don’t align with what is being offered. Knowing one’s audience also means avoiding generalizations. It is widely The Digital Reach assumed that digital ads and all social media pertain to a younger, technologiDarren Kuyper, the senior vice president of Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based 44i cally savvy audience, but that’s no longer a blanket statement. The social (interactive), says the social media and digital advertising footprint plays a larger media core demographic is skewing a bit older, meaning there are two differrole in casino marketing each year. ent audiences to address in terms of content, Entringer notes. His marketing agency works with Midwest casinos across all digital and tradiThree companies, from the Eastern, Midwest and Western areas of the tional channels, and has a strong niche with tribal properties. United States. They all have a focus relevant to their region, but must also “Over the last four to five years, we’ve noticed more casinos shifting their know more than their geographic market. marketing budgets towards digital channels,” Kuyper says. “Today, there is a vast They must draw eyeballs and then foot traffic. For those who succeed, array of digital products that help casinos reach current and prospective guests. the rewards are lucrative. 116 Global Gaming Business OCTOBER 2018

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