Inside Asian Gaming

7 6 generation are concerned, I think it’s not cool to be trendy, to be honest with you,” he ex- plains. By way of illustration,Mr Steelman points to his 23-year-old son, who is part of “what we call the millennial generation. They are like none other. “First off, they’re all in great shape. They work out. They have perfect teeth, because they’ve all had braces. They groom them- selves, they believe in their heart of hearts that they will visit every single place in the world, including going to the moon. So, con- sequently, they don’t want to be in any faux thing, in a replica. “So what do they want to be in? They want to be in a building that makes them feel good about themselves. That makes them feel powerful.That makes them feel their age – young.But they don’t want to be in a trendy spot. It’s a little bit like a lot of people. They don’t’ want to buy the trendiest jeans, or the trendiest watch. “The age of the trend, as we knew it as baby boomers growing up, is probably over. We’re more in the iPod generation now. So we have to design our casinos accordingly. You have to realise a project takes five years to be up and running.” By that time, the pre- vailing trend will be long over. “Face it, we have been through many times in history when modern has been ‘in’, and the classical rules of architecture are kind of thrown out,” continues Mr Steelman. “There’s also one other issue with modern ar- chitecture which in the entertainment busi- ness we’re somewhat concerned with. Mod- ern architecture tends to look like an office. What does an office look and feel like? Work. Do work and gambling go together?” So how do you tone down the trendi- ness? “You go back to Palladio,” answers Mr Steelman. “You start following his rules of architecture. Proportions, scale, mass. Creat- ing dynamic people-watching spaces.” Mr Steelman stresses the draw of people-watch- ing, which he fosters at Sands Macau, for ex- ample, by creating visible eating venues with views of the gaming tables. Copycats Inside Asian Gaming has witnesses many el- ements of Paul Steelman’s designs, particu- larly those at Sands Macau, imitated around Asia. In Macau, people wandering into for- mer monopoly casino operator Stanley Ho’s new Grand Lisboa often observe that its sta- dium-style main gaming floor resembles “a cheaper copy of Sands, with heaps of feng shui elements thrown in,” as our marketing columnist, Octo Chang, pointed out in the March issue of IAG . It is interesting to note, therefore, that the stadium-style casino was inspired by Mr Steelman’s visit to the old Lis- boa about seven years ago. “When I sat down there and gambled one day, I was gambling and these people were watching me. And I said gambling here is more of a spectator sport. That’s why I said we should do the stadium casino.Be that as it may, I didn’t take too much of a chance here. I have high ceilings, and I have middle ceilings, and I have low ceilings. I have all the ceiling heights. So if it failed miserably, I still would have been covering my bets. But in order for us to do that we had to invent certain things, like those ‘G-wings’ [above the individual ta- bles], because it would have been too bright without them.We have a patent on those, by the way.” One sinking copycat theme we were spared from was a Titanic casino. In 1998, in the wake of the movie’s tremendous box of- fice success, Mr Steelman recalls“a guy called me up, and brought in a drawing made by a sign guy. Here was the Titanic casino with melting ice in Las Vegas. That year I saw four people come in with the Titanic Casino idea. “People tend to copy success, but here’s the difference between people who copy success,and people who learn from it.People who learn from success advance it.They learn and then they advance. “People have an idea, and they think the idea is worth some money. But believe me; Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson have a million ideas. So they’re not going to buy any idea from anyone else. Steve Wynn, over a period of time, advanced. He advanced The Mirage to the Bellagio. He advanced Bellagio to the Wynn. He always advances. He always learns from what he did, what’s worked and what didn’t. “The difference with guys like Sheldon and Steve is that they don’t really want to copy anything.” Of course, “Sheldon’s doing a big copy job with the Venetian, but it’s his Venetian and he’s advancing it.” Shelf-life The other problem with theming is that it shortens the life of a casino property.A casino property generally lasts about fifty years, and “typically in the casino architecture business we renovate every seven years. I’m general- ising here – The Mirage didn’t renovate for fifteen years, and Bellagio might never reno- vate. But the bottom line is you’re changing to make them confused either. If you make them confused, that’s a problem, because when people are confused they tend to stay shorter. “If you look at the Sands, the floor plate is a series of curves. Curves are natural. Why do we all love curves? Curves are in nature, they’re in us. None of us are made in straight lines. So consequently, if we are in curved things, we feel like we want to stay longer.” Other rules Ensuring there are curves aplenty is one of around 70 rules of casino design Mr Steel- man has accumulated over the years, with many of the rules based on rigorous studies of consumption and gambling behaviour. Mr Steelman says “my rules are taken se- lectively from all the clients I’ve worked for over the years.Let’s face it,I’ve worked for the geniuses of our industry,” including major US operators Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn, Showboat Inc (acquired by Harrah’s in 1998) and Station Casinos, and European giants Swiss Casinos, London Clubs International and Rank Group (which sold its Hard Rock business to the Seminole Tribe of Florida in December 2006). Yet it is not just the giants Mr Steelman gleans insights from. “One of my favourite guys was a guy called Andy Tomkins, who used to run Lady Luck downtown [in Las Ve- gas]. “When you work for all these guys, you start to understand that no single one of them has all of the answers.You take the best of what you get from each of them.“ Among the notable rules is making the exits – “not just the exit signs, but the ac- tual exits,” stresses Mr Steelman – clearly visible, since studies have shown this keeps gamblers playing for five minutes longer, on average. Mirrors are avoided in gaming ar- eas, otherwise once a gambler sees himself and “realizes he’s not James Bond,” he’ll bet with less exuberance. The colour blue is also notably absent, since it is regarded as “cold and discouraging,” whereas reds, golds and earthen tones help to promote feelings of warmth. These rules are all manifested at Sands Macau, which has become one of the most successful mass-market gaming venues in things. Now, if it’s too themed, then you really have to go after it,and really change it.It costs you so much money because you’re chang- ing in an active building. Can you imagine if theWynn had to virtually shut down big seg- ments of the casino to renovate it?” Curving towards diversity In the late ‘80s, Steve Wynn had a vision to create the first casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip to place as much importance on dining and entertainment as on gaming.He charged Paul Steelman with realizing that vision at The Mirage. Ever since, PSDG has worked on creating casino properties with increasingly diverse non-gaming facilities. “Casinos are fun when they offer are a multiplicity of experience, a multiplicity of choice, and when you leave it, it’s very impor- tant that you see and you feel like you have not seen it all.We want you to come back.” In order to make visitors feel like they have not seen it all, Mr Steelman relies on curves.“We don’t make any straight lines, be- cause if you can’t see everything, you don’t experience everything. But we don’t want The Macao Studio City mall “Face it, we have been through many times in history when modern has been ‘in’, and the classical rules of architecture are kind of thrown out,” continues Mr Steelman. “There’s also one other issue with modern archi- tecture which in the entertain- ment business we’re somewhat concerned with. Modern archi- tecture tends to look like an office. What does an office look and feel like? Work. Do work and gambling go together?”