Virtual reality will be an important part of the future of skill-based games that casinos will profit from as the athletic video games come to the marketplace, an esports executive said on the second day of the Casino eSport Conference.
Chris Olimpo, CEO of Arcadia Games, outlined that future Wednesday during the panel discussion: “The Next Level of Skill-Based Games.”
Arcadia has developed a platform that allows people to compete against their friends in a large-scale multiplayer arena. Olimpo said they have merged esports with real sports in video games in which athletes can compete using their bodies as a controller inside skill-based games.
“We are interested in the Casino eSport Conference because we see this potential for amazing sports betting that combines everything that’s really great about all the data and analytics of esports, but combines it with the visceral and highly engaging feeling of watching athletes run around on the field,” Olimpo said during the virtual conference. “Virtual reality is that next frontier and we are in the early days.”
Olimpo said people should imagine a younger generation going to casinos to gamble on sports that look like the movie Tron.
“Tron is a human body inside a video game competing in these athletic games,” Olimpo said. “That is what we built. We see a huge element of sports betting that is going to impact casinos and they’re going to latch onto this.”
Olimpo said that will appeal to Generation Z more than traditional sports, which has an aging demographic . Younger people prefer esports and like innovation, he said.
Mike Darley, CEO of skill-based slot maker Next Gaming, told the audience that while skill-based games and the esports genre blend, the industry is still figuring out where they overlap.
“This is the time we’re starting to understand the dynamics of esports and where the casino brick-and-mortar games and skill-influenced games converge,” Darley said.
Darley said the term “skill-based gaming” itself has evolved. When skill-based games were first released and casino operators were considering them, there was an issue of what they were.
“I think the term now that’s very appropriate is ‘skill-influenced’ games, because all of us have a similar product, but different focus,” Darley said. “The components integrated in the design of our games are influenced by skill components. In a casino setting, we couldn’t offer a fully skill-based game, because for those exceptional players, we don’t have a trigger in there to protect the casino and offer some randomness to the player. It wouldn’t work in a casino setting.”
Darley said esports is based on skill, which is different from playing against the game for a casino application.
“The feeling that you control your destiny is important with the younger audience, which plays a lot of video games and complicated games that challenge them,” Darley said. “It’s part of what we build into games we design and we want the experience to be aspirational. We want them to play to levels like they would on a video game and feel like they had some influence over the outcome, which you don’t on a traditional slot machine.”
While the casino floor has traditionally been slow to evolve, it does change over time and casinos are starting to become early adopters of skill-influenced games, Darley said. Casinos understand that as demographics change, products have to change with them or they’ll miss the market, he said.
“The operators are starting to understand they need to evolve the slot floor,” said Darley, who added that although current slots are cool and fun, they don’t offer the entertainment experience of influencing the outcome of the game.
“I wouldn’t expect that 10 years from now slot machines are going to be fully integrated with skill-based gaming,” said Darley, whose company features arcade-style games. “But the evolution of what we’re proposing is that the younger audience played games with their parents and grandparents and there’s an emotional connection.”
