With all of the ballyhoo about millennials, video games are more on casino operators’ minds than they were a few years ago. There’s a recognition that they are a popular form of entertainment; there’s a recognition that casino gaming has to somehow adjust to the popularity of video games; but there is not, as of yet, real understanding of the role that video games play in society. Until we have that understanding, attempts to make casinos appeal more to “gamers” by making slots more game-like or introducing gambling elements into games or by holding esports tournaments will not be successful. It is hard to hit a target you can’t see, and it is hard to appeal to an audience that you don’t understand.
So Simon Parkin’s Death by Video Game is a great book for casino executives to read, whether they are veterans of Summoner’s Rift or San Andreas or they’ve never played a game.
The book begins by sharing five incidents of literal “death by video game,” when young men in Taiwan and China died after playing video games for hours on end. Since the first such incident (Calumet City, Illinois, 1982), death by video game has a been a persistent, if statistically rare, cause of death. Parkin uses it to explore who video games are more than time wasters; they are, in his estimation, time killers. There are many parallels to casino gaming, where players perform repetitive actions for hours on end with little in the way of tangible progress outside of the occasional lucky win. But there is something drawing people in. “The allure of the video game, and the ways in which it salves our internal problems and instincts, are myriad,” Parkin writes, and he could be writing of casinos just as much as video games.
So what does Parkin think makes video games so attractive? As with anything, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. In his chapters, Parkin runs down some of the most common motivators. One is success: driven by ego (healthy or not), it feels good to put your name at the top of a high scores list, or merely to be one of the best at what you do. Another is order: life itself is distressingly unfair and chaotic, with good intentions rewards even less frequently than hard work. Video games have rules that, if they are not always just, are at the least consistent, and that is attractive.
Parkin’s gamers and game designers are also interested in exploring and discovering new things; finding a community to belong to; solving mysteries; rebuilding themselves after personal tragedies; being more empathetic towards others; and even making the “real world” a better place.
Can any game on a casino floor offer even a fraction of the possibilities found in video games? Possibly, some of them can. Certainly poker, blackjack, and race and sports betting offer a chance for mastery. Other table games beguile with their order. Slot machines, it is often said, offer escape, but they also provide the satisfaction of uncovering “new” (to the player) achievements, from a bonus screen to a royal flush.
Of course, the flipside to attractive, immersive gameplay is that some people will take it too far. Those who literally play themselves to death are the most extreme cases, analogous to casino-goers who leave their children in their cars while they play or those who have lost everything to gaming addiction. But the point of video games, like casino games, is entertainment, and unlike movies or TV shows, there is usually no natural stopping-off point. Quite the reverse; games are designed to keep players riveted to the screen, whether it is to complete the next quest or take “one more turn” at a strategy game. This is their strength, but also their weakness, as anti-video gamers have chiefly focused on the time-killing aspect and alleged bleed through of video game violence to the real world in their criticisms. Again, this is something that casino game designers and providers should be sensible to as well; it is good to make games and casinos attractive, but probably not a good idea to play up their addictive potentials.
Reading Parkin’s book makes it clear that, although the gameplay is digital, there is something very real about what video games do. The dollar amount spent on them may be smaller than that spent on casino gaming (approximately $25 billion/year vs about $70 billion/year) but devotion is measured in more than money spent. Even beyond forays into skill-based gaming, casinos have much to learn about video games, and Parkin’s book is a great place to start.
