The first time I (legally) set foot in a casino was in the early 2000s, when I and some of my high school buddies who had just turned 18 snuck off to the Shooting Star Casino in Mahnomen, Minnesota.
After a quick stop at the ATM, we dashed onto the slot floor like kids in a candy store. After burning through $50 in less than ten minutes on a superhero-themed slot machine, I realized that if I was going to lose my money, I’d rather do so in the pit – where, playing table games, I could at least have some control over the outcome and have fun in the process.
Since that first visit over a decade ago, slot machines have not played even the slightest role in my decisions about trips to casinos. Being able to compete against my friends, develop my own strategy of beating the house at blackjack, and seeing legacy hair bands in concert is what has kept me coming back.
You could say I fit the typical description of a millennial casino-goer – more interested in the social and competitive aspects of gameplay than the sheer thrill of gambling.
When I and virtually an entire generation reject the games that make up the bread and butter of the casino business, there is a good reason for the business to be alarmed. The painful reality is that the players of the future are not attracted to the games of the present.
“When in a casino, the 35 and younger demographic are much more likely to take part in non-gaming activities and may not necessarily gamble and prefer blackjack over slots if they do gamble,” wrote Alex Bumazhny, an analyst at Fitch Ratings, in a post last week.
The reason is not a mystery, he says. Millennials have grown up with far more entertainment options than Generation X-ers or Baby Boomers. They are more likely to take up fantasy sports, do social gaming, or play at Internet casinos or on an Xbox than plow money into a slot machine.
Nevada’s move last week to authorize new skill-based slot machines is a step in the right direction to addressing this issue. While New Jersey and various Indian tribes have recently been experimenting with these types of games, having Nevada on board is critical because it gives game manufacturers a scalable market. It also provides a large enough sample size to test to what degree Candy Crush-themed slot machines are a solution to casinos’ millennial problems.
Last summer I had an opportunity to try out a skill-based machine that was still under development at the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement in Atlantic City. The game was a hybrid between Aladdin and the Sonic the Hedgehog video games I used to play on a Sega Genesis. I flew around on a magic carpet earning points by scooping up treasure, while the underlying algorithms added the luck element by either boosting or lowering my total points. My score could then be included in a contest against other players.
The game was certainly much more dynamic and engaging than a standard slot machine, which, even when adorned with fancy bells and whistles, is still just a slot machine. But I did not walk away feeling convinced that games like this one would be a magic elixir. Rather, it seemed that casino and game manufacturing industries were just discovering what Nintendo and Atari figured out three decades earlier.
But such games could be successful in the right millennial marketing strategy because, at the end of the day, the millennial gamer wants to feel connected and empowered. He has perhaps an unreasonably high level of self-confidence from being told his entire life that he is above average and can do anything he wants if he sets his mind to it. So rather than being told what to do, he is keen to figure things out on his own and then showing the world how great of a job he has done.
It is also important to remember that millennials are well-connected and well-informed. They are smart enough to realize that casinos should be seen as a form of entertainment rather than a way to get rich quickly. They understand that the reason there are far more slot machines on the casino floor than table games is because casinos make most of their money from slot machines. They also know that if they play those slot machines consistently enough, they will surely lose their money. How much fun they will have in that process is a critical question.
The introduction of skill-based and social games in casinos is a much-needed development towards winning back millennials who may have defected to other forms of entertainment. Still, it is hard to see this trend being the silver bullet that solves the industry’s demographic problems.
