At the recent Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, Aruze Gaming exhibited a range of products that showcased the company’s innovations.
But two games stood out, combining nostalgic memories of childhood play with an emerging trend toward active gaming, where players do more than just push buttons. Go Go Claw is similar to the claw games found in arcades and Rock, Paper, Scissors is the casino version of the playground game kids use to settle disputes.
Along with the company’s revamped version of Shoot to Win Craps — with a plastic dome encasing two tumbling dice — Aruze Gaming C-Suite Leader Rob Ziems said the games highlight the company’s state-of-the-art approach to active play games.
“I think operators, because we’re so innovative, they look to us to provide them with a differentiator,” Ziems said. “It’s an interesting relationship with operators. They get excited to see what we’re providing, and I think we do a pretty good job of providing operators with things they didn’t know they wanted, but they’re really happy to get.”
As a gaming supplier, Ziems said it’s important to understand that casino operators want to optimize their floor space with games that are going to attract patrons. It’s also important to understand the variety of customers who frequent casinos – those who like high volatility games and “bet a lot to win a lot” versus those who prefer low volatility, “not winning much, but winning often” and who gamble more for entertainment purposes.
“You have to cater to your most aggressive gamblers and your entertainment game players,” Ziems said, adding that Aruze is set up to serve both constituencies because of its ongoing practice of innovation.
“We are really good at taking games that exist and making them a little bit better,” he says.
An example of Aruze’s ability to add luster to traditional products is its Roll to Win Craps. Traditionally Aruze has been an electronic table gaming innovator, but Roll to Win is a hybrid between the traditional table game and an ETG. Featuring a real craps table, Roll to Win replaces chips with digital touch betting. The game features one dealer instead of three, with support for that dealer provided by artificial intelligence that reads and tracks the dice.
“This is a new move for us,” Ziems says. “We’re basically providing a traditional table game. We learned a lot as the product was out, we learned from our customers as to where we can make enhancements.
“I’m really excited about what our R&D team has done there. It’s pretty sophisticated.”
