Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | August 2008 38 A t G2E Asia this year a senior executive responsible for slot operations at a Macau casino told an illuminating story. One day he was on the floor observing the behaviour of a party of visitors from the Chinese mainland. He noticed that although the visitors looked at some of the slot machines, none of them stopped to play. He decided to follow the group as they left theproperty,to seewhere theywent next. Sure enough they went to a neighbouring casino. As they came to an area with slot machines, an interesting thing happened. Customer care Amember of staff approached them and asked in Mandarin, if they would like to see how those particular slot games worked. There were nods and smiles,and before long, a group of visitors were happily playing the games, and bringing in valuable revenue for the casino. There’s more to this story than just good customer relations, says Sean Chang, ExecutiveVicePresidentofAstroCorporation, the Taiwan-based gaming equipment manufacturer. There are important cultural lessons, he believes. “If a Chinese visitor to Macau is an experienced player they will come straight to the tables. If they’re not really familiar with casinos, they may not dare to go up to the table and play the game. Probably they’ll start with the roulette first, and then the baccarat or sic bo, as they are easy to understand.” Familiarity It’s a similar story with slots, suggests Mr Chang. If the player doesn’t know the game, they may not risk trying it and will look around for something familiar to which they can relate. In other words, says Astro Corp., slot games must speak the same cultural language as the would-be customers. “In Macau the slots are all first class machines.There are no second grade ones. All the machines are new and the latest models, and yet we have seen earnings of slot machines growing very slowly,” says Mr Chang. Lost in translation “Themain difficulty is that all the games are western. Even if they have the interface translated into Mandarin, it doesn’t help,” he explains. “Why doesn’t it help? First, many of The Right Slot Asians love gaming machines—as long as the content is right, says Taiwan’s Astro Corporation Astro Corp Games like Shanghai Tycoon are very appealing to Chinese visitors, who easily relate to the historic elements