Featured discussion: Is Darwin coming to the slot floor?
With interoperability comes the promise of choice for casino operators. Innovation and responsiveness play a key role in finding market share for new open-standard technologies. But is that a viable strategy for the casino industry? Are casino operators interested in the kind of choice that drives other markets?
Russ Ristine
Having spent the last 5 years working to help all of the leading edge vendors with their G2S implementations, we see the foundations of an amazing new gaming environment being created. Most EGM developers (and many system developers) are making big efforts to correctly implement G2S, in order to capture early market share in download, configuration, progressives, tournament and bonus applications. What is not immediately apparent is that an open networked gaming floor will provide an environment in which new system developers, using commonly available Internet development tools, will be able to rapidly develop new applications, transforming the casino. Imagine a gaming floor where you can add new gaming applications as easily as you can on an iPhone or Android Smartphone.
So, the products are being built, the networked gaming world is coming into being, but where are the operators? My perception is that they do not yet see the real opportunities that will be presented by this new environment. They’ve heard the stories of server-based gaming (SBG) for many years, but don’t realize thats merely the leading indicator. What is behind SBG is a gaming environment that’s as rich as the Internet – with multi-player gaming, dynamic tournaments, video conferencing between players (and also to their hosts), and a ton of other amazing experiences for the players that we can’t even envision. I’m sure that once these applications start to emerge – once you can choose from dozens of applications that will run on your floor – casino operators will flock to this new world (or else will watch as their players move to the casino next door…).
Marty Wegner
I think one of the key benefits of open standards on the casino floor is the increase in choice. Operators who make the switch will have so many more options available to them in terms of vendors, consultants and contractors. Open standards makes it so much easier for great ideas to be developed and deployed.
I don’t know if the industry will get to the point where “two guys in a garage” is the norm but I think we will get very close to that. And that is exciting.