Sure, there are control rooms with one-way mirrors where product designers can carefully watch selected customers interact with their latest creation. But GameCo CEO and founder Blaine Graboyes has someplace better.
“I like to go to 10 North [the bar at the Tropicana Atlantic City] and sit in the couch near the bar and watch one of our carousels,” he says. “No one pays attention. I love watching people play the games, I love feedback.”
His company is rolling out what those in the hyperbole business have been promoting as the savior for casinos as we know them today. Yes, skill-based games.
Skill-based games launched in Atlantic City in late 2016. Early 2017 is an exciting – and crucial – time for GameCo, the first company to successfully put such attractions out for public consumption. GameCo calls the games Video Game Gambling Machines, and has trademarked “VGM”.
“We’re at the point now where I make the comparison to The Matrix,” says Graboyes, whose background is in entertainment, not casinos. “Neo is patched into The Matrix and learning at light speed.”
Meanwhile, news broke last week that GameCo had received certification from Gaming Laboratories International, which permits casinos in most gaming jurisdictions to offer the games. Graboyes is working on the rollout plan, with Connecticut and Nevada coming soon.
“We’re just learning so much right now. It’s really exciting to be in a position where games are on the floor, and we’re getting feedback. We’re really proud of the work we’re been able to produce,” he says.
The existing games are “Danger Area,” featuring fighting robots; “Pharaoh’s Secret Temple,” a Candy-Crush type game, and “Nothin’ But Net,” a basketball shooting game. The plan is to introduce about one new game per month. The next games in line are Vikings, based on the History channel TV series, and a shooting product inspired by the 1968 Clint Eastwood movie, “Hang ‘em High.”
The first game, Danger Area, gives players 45 seconds of play. To get to the break-even point, a player needs to eliminate six robots.
“You’re playing a real video game, and our average bet is in the $3 to $3.50 range,” Graboyes says. “Whether you win or lose, it’s fun.”
While the casino industry has used the word “millennials” to the point of cliché while describing skill-based game players, Graboyes considers the goal to be to entice “gamers.” He notes that the average gamer is 35, the average female gamer is 42, and many of his coming products feature widely popular entertainment bands and popular video games.
“We use a pretty simple test to qualify our target market,” he says. “We want them in the top half of household income, a video game player, being over 21, and going to casinos.” To illustrate the age spread, he says that group includes 6 million Baby Boomers, 8 million Gen-Xers, and 9 million Millenials. “Gamers are a psychographic,” Graboyes says.
In New Jersey, more than 60 percent of the players have been under 40. “That’s really great for the industry,” Graboyes says, noting that other data shows that 84 percent of those on his games play video games regularly, and 50 percent report they would not likely have gambled if not for the VGM. “That means 50 percent are incremental new revenue they wouldn’t have captured otherwise,” he says.
Graboyes says he is huge on feedback. As staffed “ambassadors” assist players on weekends at VGM sites, they conduct exit interviews.
“Every Sunday I wake up and go through the exit interviews, and we go through the studios and talk about improvements and games,” he says. “It’s really exciting to be at a time when we’re learning so much.”
For example, his staff noticed a need to make the games’ proposition easier to understand, so they added instructions. “We use the term ‘achievable.’ When we hear from players that they’re not necessarily sure what to do, we need to address that. There are extensive ‘help’ files but as we know people don’t read the help file or the manual,” he says. So designers injected more directions as the game loaded onto the screen.
They also learned that in the basketball game, “Nothin’ But Net,” it was better to make the game 12 shots – using a trackball and a button, like on a golf video game – than the 16 they started with. Points vary based on the distance of the shot.
“There’s a balance between the bet denomination and the value on the game,” he says. “We saw we could shorten up the game, which helps the casino and helps us.”
And while he wasn’t raised a slot guy, he notes there are some pieces of the industry that don’t need to be pitched.
“My take on the industry is that slot machines are perfect,” he says. “They’re pretty much 100 percent optimized. But I think it’s fair to say our games are 10, 20 percent optimized, and the more open we are to feedback, the more data we get and can optimize the game.”
And a casino site is optimal for gamers, he notes. “One of the things that’s really core to our thesis at GameCo is the casinos are the experts at hospitality,” he says. “And gamers are looking to be treated like a VIP and have their passion for video games validated. They’ll have drinks, meet like-minded people, and go to a restaurant.”
