Slot machines occupy a rare niche in entertainment, as a type of game that has a potential audience of just about everybody – not just the middle-aged women commonly associated with the pastime in the past. It’s a trait that owes a great deal to design work and licensing; whether Game of Thrones or gardening, American football or Spider-Man, slot machines increasingly target the interests of players rather than their physical traits.
Outside of video gaming, slot machines are arguably the nation’s favorite type of game. Even within the confines of the casino, 48% of players favored slots over every other experience (the second most popular game, blackjack, earned a paltry 16% of the vote and just 5% opted for roulette). But why are the numbers so heavily skewed towards slot machines? The answer, strangely enough, is one of modesty.
According to Statista, a quarter of slot machine players chose the game because it’s unlikely to embarrass them with a complex ruleset, while 24% of casino-goers believe that slots are less demanding in terms of pace and pressure. Actually getting people to sit down at a slot machine is more a question of visual marketing though: how do you catch the eye of somebody who might otherwise wander over to the blackjack table?
The Liberty Bell
Thematic slots – games with characters or images from pop culture which follow certain themes – are central to the current appeal of slot machines. While slot machine design is not a particularly modern invention (slots have had names at least since Bally’s 1963 game, Money Honey, and images like horseshoes were present on the very first machine, the Liberty Bell, back in the late 1800s), the idea of branding games with movies or superheroes is relatively new.
For instance, online Microgaming casinos carry any number of the company’s 850 games, a catalog that includes Jurassic Park, Playboy, Terminator 2, and Battlestar Galactica-branded titles as well as original IPs like Thunder Struck II, the post-apocalyptic game Lost Vegas, Jungle Jim, and Hot as Hades. A slot playable at Microgaming casinos, Mega Moolah, currently holds the world record for a single payout, at 6.37m euros.
Playtech, which offers an alternative to Microgaming casinos, recently swapped one superhero monopoly for another when it ditched its popular Marvel slots for a range of DC-based games based on the Batman vs. Superman, Suicide Squad, and Justice League movies, as well as the 1960s Batman TV show. It’s a bold move but one that’s likely motivated by uncertainty in the Marvel Cinematic Universe from 2020 onwards – there’s nothing announced after the as-yet-undated Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
Millennials
Slots with relevance to popular culture do their own marketing. However, there’s a growing need to appeal to millennials (people born after 1982) in the casino industry and adopting youngster-friendly themes is an obvious step towards that ideal; after all, a Call of Duty or Tomb Raider based slot game has much greater relevance to people in their twenties than something like Dragon Dance or Robo Jack.
The quest to drive down the age of casinogoers has also borne fruit in unexpected ways; namely, by borrowing heavily from video gaming. In the future, slots are likely to become something else entirely, retaining some luck-based elements but ultimately resembling games like Candy Crush, Angry Birds, and Battlefield. Millennials like games of skill, and enjoy being rewarded based on their own ability; slots simply don’t scratch that itch.
There’s less of a branded element in skill-based games but it’s not really necessary. A game like Danger Zone, from genre pioneer GameCo, has similar mechanics to modern first-person shooters – and that’s its appeal. Pharaoh’s Secret Temple is a match-three title while Nothin’ but Net is a basketball simulation. GameCo hopes to gamify genres as disparate as racing, hidden object, and even multiplayer online battle arena titles – MOBAs.
With no precedent for skill-based slots in the industry (only one exists online, the Space Invaders clone, Max Damage and the Alien Attack), it’s difficult to see whether they’ll prove the millennial honey trap they promise to be but, until Nothin’ but Net reaches the casino floor, careful branding remains an important tool for games developers; it keeps casinos on-trend with the latest TV and offers a jumping-on point for new players.
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