When a research paper titled “Introducing the Fun Economy” was released in October of 2023, Andrew Cardno, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Quick Custom Intelligence (QCI), took more than just a casual interest in its findings.
A visionary with vast knowledge of the gaming industry and the technology that drives it, Cardno was immediately captivated by realizing just how the global sectors of this new frontier encompassing tourism, sports, entertainment, leisure, and hospitality applied directly to the evolution of casino resorts.
“The critical aspect of what is happening in gaming is that it has evolved from a casino industry into an entertainment industry,” Cardno said. “When you think about what a casino was 20 years ago and imagine opening one like it today, it simply would not be competitive in the current market.”
QCI is at the forefront of investing in the so-called Fun Economy. The company last month launched its Data Community platform in Australia. It connects venues, retailers, and destination districts into a single interoperable ecosystem. The platform enables real-time insights, personalized engagement, and seamless digital-to-physical experiences.
“Customers expect an integrated, digital experience,” Cardno said. “That expectation is precisely what QCI is delivering.”
“Introducing the Fun Economy” was the result of joint research by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Zero Labs. It revealed that the Fun Economy was 13.7 percent of the world’s GDP, which was $100.7 trillion in 2022.
“The Fun Economy has doubled in the last five years,” Cardno said. “It is growing at roughly $2 trillion annually and could represent an even larger share of the global economy in the years ahead.”
QCI Player is designed to support Fun Economy initiatives through a centralized digital platform. Its content management system enables real-time updates and configuration changes, while providing guests with mobile access to account information. Built on a secure, modular architecture, the platform integrates with existing property systems, allowing operators to scale and adapt functionality as needed.
“QCI Player is, in reality, a customer-facing integration platform, but the customer-facing aspect is just the tip of the iceberg,” Cardno said. “It touches every other aspect of the business and brings it all together. It has been an enormous development effort for us, and the demand has been substantial.
“We are particularly strong at enabling different systems to communicate effectively with one another. The data experience must be consistent across platforms. There is tremendous activity surrounding this product.
“You will see a significant depth of new QCI product releases across a variety of areas. It is an exciting time for us.”
Cardno is seeing significant advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the last six months, to the point, he said, “AI models are now functioning like extremely capable agentic agents, or intelligent ‘creatures’ if you will. It is a bit unsettling.”
“We have three fully agentic development teams working on new products, teams that are not comprised of people rather AI,” he continued. “The acceleration of technology that is coming out of AI is remarkable. We are looking at productivity levels inside of QCI that have increased close to ten-fold. In another year or two it should be 50 to 100.”
Cardno is a modern-day ‘frontiersman’ in the AI field and says that together with Dr. Ralph Thomas, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of QCI , “We are leading the way”.
“It is remarkable to consider that we are now operating at two orders of magnitude beyond what was possible just a year ago,” Cardno said. “After decades in software engineering, I can fully appreciate the scale of the transformation underway.”
“All of the skills I learned about software engineering design and product management, you place AI in the middle of it and everything changes. What you are going to see is an enormous number of new products. We have announcements coming out about new releases in different areas that are extremely exciting.”
Cardno sees the Fun Economy as a fragmented market, observing, “There are two aspects about the entertainment space that are important to understand. The first is that casino resorts themselves are fragmented, and because of this, guests are coming to expect digital organization.”
Speculating exactly what the catalyst was for guests of casino resort properties to attain this level of sophistication in what they expect in the fun experience, Cardno believes it is a natural evolution, albeit an unplanned one.
“People like to do fun things, and they have been doing more and more of them,” he said. “There are more choices, more entertainment options. We are spending more on entertainment, QCI is positioning itself to be prepared and ready. Fun is at the center of our business. We are a Fun Economy company.”
“Sports stadiums, parks, downtown city areas, and yes, casinos, all share the same characteristic of focusing on how we live and how we play. A world with more fun is going to be a good thing. We are in a fun industry. We should be feeling really excited about it.”
