Inside Asian Gaming

Community Gaming Bringing People Together Slot play is becoming an increasingly social experience, reports James Rutherford A mid the torrent of electronic communications that is shaping this new millennium, the relevancy of the casino experience is coming to depend more and more on how well it succeeds in bringing people together in places other than the line at the buffet. What it comes down to are the games. It’s always been about the games. That’s where the gambling hall will best reflect technology’s increasing ability to conjure shared experiences for us (virtual ones and, yes, that other kind, too), and already it’s making for slot floors that are a little noisier than they might have been once, a little brighter and livelier and a lot more interesting. “I always tell people when I talk about community gaming, we had this first press publicity shot [for Monopoly Big Event], where we have everyone around, and it looked like a craps table, only with a slot machine in it,” recalls Brad Rose, director of game studios for WMS Gaming. “And I’d tell people, ‘Sure, we staged that, it was an ad.’ But what we’d then see was that people, complete strangers, when they’d trigger this bonus they’d start looking at each other. There’d be some high fives. There’d be this interaction that you’d never seen before.” Jason Seelig, executive vice president of sales and marketing for AC Coin & Slot, likes this table game analogy, somewhat modified in form. “When we looked at community gaming, we looked at blackjack as an example. The reason you feel lucky when you play blackjack is because some player at the table won.” This is how he describes AC Coin’s new Phat Cats game: twomachines under a single plasma display, the player who triggers the bonus goes to the overhead screen for the bonus event, the other player shares in the experience, but the winnings belong to one. “It’s very similar to sitting at a blackjack table,” he explains. “When the guy next to you gets dealt an ace, you’re excited. You could be sitting there with a 2. You see the guy next to you dealt an ace, and you’re excited for that guy. You want him to get the face card. You’re pulling for him.” WMS: Reeling them in In WMS’ hit game Reel ’em In! Compete to Win!, players at a bank of machines all go to the bonus round at the same time and compete in a“fishing derby”on the overhead display. Those who land the biggest fish will collect the biggest bonuses, but everyone is going to win something. Which is where comparisons to blackjack