Esports Goes B&M

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April 25th, 2017
Back Esports Goes B&M

I have just recently finished putting together a large Esports page for our sister site over at the Wizard of Odds followed up by a page for another one of our sites. Additionally, I wrote an Editorial on Esports for here published just last month. I became curious as to whether or not there would be any legal hurdles in states that have legalized sports betting in authorizing, licensing and regulating Esports betting and was surprised to find that it has already happened!

I usually do a pretty good job keeping up on Vegas news, so I am assuming that I caught wind of the development before and just hadn’t thought about it much. It might also have escaped my attention because Esports was not an interest of mine prior to my being asked to write a few pages and articles on it for our family of gambling information sites. In any event, as it turns out, the Nevada Gaming Commission authorized land-based sportsbooks to accept Esports wagering last year. In fact, the first Esports wager was accepted by Downtown Grand in November of last year.

If nothing else, this is an interesting development because it is a reflection of the times that we live in right now. What we notice about online gambling is that it has spent its entire existence, for the most part, trying to recreate the brick-and-mortar casino experience on a virtual platform. For the most part, the software providers do not attempt to create new table games, but rather, simply incorporate existing table games into their virtual software.

Furthermore, the goal of online slot machines is largely to come as close as possible to recreating the experience of playing a slot machine in a brick and mortar casino. The same thing can also be said for video poker as online casinos mostly offer a wide variety of games, denominations and number of hands played at a time.

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Online Casinos are also working to expand themselves into virtual reality software as the technology for that improves. The goal will be to immerse the player in an experience that is identical, at least from an audio and visual standpoint to a visit to an actual brick-and-mortar casino. It will be quite an impressive development if it pans out and if the connectivity exists for that to happen.

As it stands now, with the improvements to Internet connectivity and the much easier ability for live streaming videos to transmit from the Internet casinos to the players at home, Live Casino play has already developed and is almost an expectation at any major online casinos. For the time being, the main games offered are Blackjack, Roulette and Craps (The big three) but many online casinos have expanded in an attempt to offer other table games. Some of the games now offered, at least sometimes if not around the clock, are popular carnival card games such as Three-Card Poker.

Eventually, live casino dealer gaming could ultimately come almost entirely to replace the virtual tables and the virtual tables will become obsolete. That is even more likely when virtual reality gaming comes into the fray to partner with live dealers. There can be almost no doubt that the games that play like an electronic and bland version of the table games will not be of interest to anyone other than low bankrolled players who will want to stick with them because of the extremely low minimums.

However, Las Vegas offering Esports, through the William Hill family of sportsbooks kind of flips the script a little bit because it represents perhaps the first time that the brick and mortar casinos are offering something that online gaming did first. Pinnacle is probably the foremost site for Esports betting when it comes to both the sheer number of events that can be bet upon as well as the various types of wagers made. Pinnacle has offered Esports betting since 2010 whereas, again, Vegas accepted the first Esports live bet just six short months ago.

As if it were not enough that the betting platform for Esports was first to present online rather than in the physical casinos, it also merits consideration that Esports largely takes place within a digital environment. While it is true that there are a number of live broadcasts are streamed to people around the world, some of the events and games take place entirely within the digital realm.

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There may come a time when Vegas chooses to jump into the fray with casinos regularly hosting and sponsoring Esports tournaments that take place live. We can only hope that this potential new market continues to emerge and that the Vegas casinos give it a chance it deserves rather than abandoning it early if it does not quickly jump out to a strong performance.

The vast majority of Esports events take place entirely online, and for that reason, Vegas might be able to set up televisions and stations to broadcast the events if they become as popular as traditional sports betting. For anyone who has bet sports in Vegas, you will know that most sports books have ceilings running around the entire place covered in TV’s and entire walls covered in high definition TV’s so that the bettors can enjoy watching whatever game they have bet on. In fact, even non-bettors take advantage of this if they have games that they want to watch because they know there is a very good chance they are being broadcasted at the sports books!

Unfortunately for the sportsbooks, and for the industry of traditional sports leagues, on the whole, traditional sports is not picking up as many Millennials as they would like and the average age of the fanbase for leagues such as the NFL is trending older. The traditional sports are in no way meaningfully interactive, you just sit and watch them, and a new generation is going to represent a new type of casino player (if they play at all) and the casinos are going to need to find a way to appeal to them.

It is for that reason that such concepts as skill-based gaming have entered the fold. We see this with many start out companies employing games that invoke a combination of luck and skill. Many of these games have a video game element to them, as well. Also, we see games such as Gamblit Poker getting field trials and placements in a few casinos. Gamblit Poker necessitates the presence of multiple players and it is a fast-paced game in which players have to make snap decisions and grab virtual cards that show up to try to make a hand that beats the other players. This game incorporates touchscreen technology, luck and an element of skill as players try to make a quality poker hand but understand that they don’t have the time to wait for the perfect hand. It also helps if a very adept player can keep track of the sort of hands his/her opponents are making so the player has an idea of what the minimum hand it would take is to beat the opponents.

As with Esports, it is difficult to say how the players will receive these partially skill-based games and games such as Gamblit Poker. Only time will tell, but hopefully, these early offerings do not cause the casinos to abandon entire concepts if they do not prove to be popular right off of the bat. That would be unfortunate because, sure enough, if the developers keep trying they will eventually find a game that strikes a chord with the fickle generation known as Millennials.

Esports might be yet another thing that will draw Millennials into gambling. The interesting thing to see, and that the casinos and developers have noticed is that the crowd of people in their 20’s or early 30’s largely do not come to Vegas for the purpose of gambling anymore. The majority of such people seem to be there for the partying and clubbing atmosphere rather than for the purpose of gambling. While that may work well for beverage sales and occupancy rates, people on the casino side of the operation would still like to attract such individuals as potential players; they just have to find a way to do it.

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The problem is that the market is going to change dramatically in the next few decades, especially since these Millennials become even more set in life and have even more disposable income. It is not going to do Vegas well to ignore an entire demographic completely so, fickle though the Millennials may be, the city is going to have to find something that is new and interesting for them.

There was recently a story about a new game presented and demoed at a gaming conference. Whereas at one time, the developers and presenters would have had the rapt attention of the participants, the younger crowd was too busy staring at their phones to have any interest in what was going on.

Another thing that we might see happen is purely skill-based games come into existence without a luck element at all. While it is true that the State of Nevada, and most others, have a minimum jurisdictional return in place, it would be a pretty simple matter for the game to give that amount back to the player as a refund if the player performs really poorly. In the meantime, if the scores are based on a player’s performance, then they can create games that will adapt based on the performances of former players that will then require even better performances to beat.

Nanotech was an example of a company, unfortunately, mired in financial problems, that was working on such a game. The product they were rolling out was a Vegas pinball game in which a player would play for an average length of about a minute and could customize how much he would like to have the opportunity to win based on the amount bet. After the pinball game was finished, depending on how well the player had performed, a circle would be shaded in with a win area. After that, a spinner would go (which was the only luck component), and the player would win his chosen amount if it landed within the shaded area whereas the player would lose his bet if it did not.

The game was well-received at the Global Gaming Expo, but again, there were a number of financial problems that the company experienced that caused the development of the game to come to an end. We can only hope that someone else comes up with a comparable product because I believe something like that might have a chance.

The interesting aspect of the game, and how it kind of ties back to Esports is that it was very much like the type of game that one might find in an arcade or as an online game. We might even eventually see a game similar to something like Candy Crush, or any other number of popular mobile app games, which might be played on a for money basis. In the meantime, we have already seen several of those titles, such as Poppit, cross over from play-for-fun gaming to becoming part of a slot machine bonus game and title.

If you stop and think about it, that is the way it has always happened and is not unusual at all. Pop culture continually crosses over into the world of gambling and it has traditionally done so by way of slot machines. There are many classic movies, such as Wizard of Oz, Titanic and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that have crossed over into slot machines. Even board games, such as Monopoly and Scrabble have had slot devices made to imitate them.

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Furthermore, not all of the themed slot machines are based on old-school titles and pop culture references. Many of these slot games invoke things that are out there currently and even some TV shows that are still coming out with new episodes. There are slots for The Walking Dead, The Big Bang Theory, Sex & The City and any other number of television shows.

Even Playboy has found its way into the casino with a slot machine (prior to Playboy going non-nude) manufactured and distributed by Bally that operates very similar to a Quick Hit machine.

The sight of these games evokes familiarity within the target market for such games and it is for that reason that the people targeted want to give them a try.

To attract Millennials, the developers of gaming devices are going to have to grow along with them and develop games and devices that are evocative of the sort of things that they have enjoyed and grown up with. It is for that reason that I suspect that many games in the live casino environment will be built to invoke the elements of social games and phone apps that are so popular today. Additionally, I wouldn’t be surprised if games come out in the future that take advantage of the developments in the world of virtual reality such that VR headsets might be something that we see in the casinos within the next decade or so.

The aspect of the older crowd that makes them easy to please is that they grew up with television and movies. In other words, are used to being entertained by way of simply watching things happen on the screen. It is for that reason that many customers Generation X and older are perfectly content to sit down in front of a slot machine and simply press a button and wait for the result to happen. At the same time, though, the new slot machines hitting the floor today have developed along with the tastes of such people. It is for that reason that traditional single and three-line slot machines are replaced by graphically impressive machines in the live casino environment.

In that sense, a significant portion of the current market quickly grows bored with traditional slot and video poker machines and new features and better graphics are necessary to continue to compete with other manufacturers and draw such players is.

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Other traditional forms of gambling are also losing steam as the customer base interested in them, literally, dies off. It is for that reason that horse racing has been on a slow and steady decline and usually does not draw a lot of new interest from the younger crowd. Furthermore, other forms of wagering, such as greyhound racing, are almost entirely dead. The eulogy is being written as I type this.

Of course, many of these games have to have greater house edges working against the players and require higher minimum bets simply because of how much they cost to develop and produce. Furthermore, many of the newest slot machines have a focus on comfort rather than mere pragmatics and many gamblers are not content to be crammed like sardines by rows of standup slot machines in which they are sitting elbow to elbow.

It is the case with even slot machines that are popular titles, but have reinvented themselves with a focus on player comfort and complete immersion into the game using both expansive features and high-tech graphics. Part of this full immersion is slot machines that would take up an area that used to be enough to house three or four slot machines. Many of these machines, such as the new Sphinx games, have high backed chairs similar to what might be found in an office or a computer room. In the case of Sphinx 3D, even the chairs themselves are a part of the game as they will vibrate when the player hits a big win or enters into bonus games.

Also declining are the games in which simple bells and whistles are enough to entertain the players. The Sphinx game takes a player on a journey through caverns and desert foothills on the way to the player’s bonus games. The leading to the Free Games screen is more than mere bells and whistles but is rather an all out aural assault on the player’s senses. Despite being in a casino filled with other gamblers, cocktail waitresses, the radio, bands and bars, the player often feels like it is just him/her and the machine. The machines themselves create an almost cocoon around the player and immerses the player’s senses completely. Forget about windowless casinos with no clocks so that the player loses track of time, the goal now is for the player to lose track of both time and space and to feel as though he/she is all alone with the machine.

buffalo 3d

The Buffalo 3D games also work similarly with a huge screen bigger than most TV’s that people have in their homes and a fixed chair is stationed the perfect distance from the device for the player to observe the full screen. When a player hits a good play, virtual buffaloes charge out of the machine right at the player as the game counts up the player’s win. In the meantime, the sound of hooves backed by the traditional Buffalo theme music plays and the chair itself vibrates as it would be an actual herd of buffaloes roaring at the player. From a graphical and immersion standpoint, the machines are singularly brilliant in their design and make the player want to play more just to continue the experience. Whether a player wins or loses is almost secondary.

Those machines might still not be enough to attract the younger crowd, however, because the actual mechanics of the game are still those of a traditional slot machine. They may be immersive and graphically impressive, but they are not anything that these people have not already seen many times over already. Furthermore, while immersive, they fail to be in any way meaningfully interactive for those who have now grown up interacting with technology as opposed to merely observing it. At the end of the day, the player is still ultimately just hitting a button and waiting for a result to happen. Younger players might acknowledge, “Yeah, that’s pretty good,” but will grow bored and want to move onto something else after about ten minutes.

The formula hasn’t been perfected, but the developers will have to keep throwing out a new idea until something sticks. It might even take a wider range of ideas with greater minimum bets to facilitate the associated development expenses to find something that will interest players. The problem is that it is difficult to throw something new at people who have grown up with access to just about every form of entertainment under the sun. These people can switch from one game to another and one task to another almost instantly given the power of the internet. They can play a social app, send a text message, reply to an E-Mail and open up a story to read all within a minute.

They are going to be a tough crowd to draw in and keep in place because the fast pace of society has essentially made Attention Deficit Disorder the default as opposed to an aberration. The result is that these people are going to be difficult to excite, the best that the developers can hope for is just to keep them minimally interested. There are other things these people would rather be doing, and after they do those things for two or three minutes, they’ll think of something else that they would rather do.

As Esports becomes more mainstream and is considered a viable entertainment form that eventually cements itself into the culture, concepts such as Esports live betting may perform strongly. The thing that the casinos are going to have to do is the opposite of what the Millennials they are trying to target tend to do...the casinos will have to remain patient and just give it time.

Another potential avenue of development for casinos is to introduce some player vs. player game that has both elements of skill and luck. While Gamblit Poker is an example, and we will see how that does, I am envisioning some sort of electronic video game style game in which two or more players can place bets and compete with one another.

The problem with such an idea, and the concern that many may have is that skilled players will eventually become too good at the games and it will become widely known that taking them on is just being a lamb throwing yourself to the slaughter. That’s going to be a difficult paradigm to break and that is why the games are going to have to have enough of a luck element, such as poker, to cause everyone to believe they at least have a chance to win.

It will be an interesting next decade for casino gambling as they try any number of new things in the hopes of targeting the Millennial market. It remains to be seen whether or not they will be successful in their endeavors, but the one thing that is certain is they either have to try or die.

“reflection of the times that we live in right now”

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