Coming to a casino in Las Vegas very soon – Skill Based Pokies!
As Las Vegas evolves from hard-core gambling destination, to one more focused on leisure, night clubs, dining and shopping, casino operators are constantly looking for new ways to encourage people back onto the gaming floors of their hotels. One proposed development is “Skill Based Slots”, which are a marriage between Arcade games, and Slots, where players use a joystick to actually “play” the slot machine, rather than just a few buttons to make it spin. Its an exciting development.
As recently as this week, gaming regulators at the Nevada Gaming Commission held a workshop to discuss the rules needed for these games, and indeed how they were going to be properly regulated. I suppose once your progress from a simple machine spinning mechanical or virtual reels, to one that is more akin to Call of Duty or Farcry, things get a little more complex in the rules and payout calculations!
There is a strong appetite from operators to get this work done quickly, as many hotels are seeing Slots income fall faster than any other gaming income, and with millions of square footage devoted to slots in Las Vegas, its an important change which lobbyists and experts alike (often not the same people at all!) believe will be the most critical development ever in the history of slot machines, or pokies as we Aussies like to call them.
If casino operators are to deliver growth to their dwindling gaming drop, then innovations such as this are vital. So who knows in a few months or a year or so, you could be finding yourself in a Call of Duty Jackpot round, earning $1 for every kill and $10 for every headshot! What we’d like to see would be the creation of multi player mission games, where there are a number of machines in a circle, say 10 of them, and players can buy into the “game”. Players then play a death match style every-man-for-himself type game, where you win $5 for every kill, but lose $4.50 for every time you die. The casino makes $0.50 per death, players buy “credits” and when they cash out they take the standard ticket to the tellers and collect their winnings.
Could be a sight to rival the hooting and hollering of the craps table, if the game is also shown to the wider audience.
Lets hope we see this sort of thing very soon.