Henry had been given the task of balancing the casino's dealer and floor supervisor schedule. After several weeks, he had finally developed a plan that would properly balance the schedule so that all dealer and floor shift positions were staffed to handle the current business level during the various hours of the day and week. He also was able to schedule an extra dealer for each shift to cover any vacations or call-ins.
During these past months, we have been proud to share summary findings from the new WMS Active Gambler™ Profile survey, the industry’s most comprehensive examination of emerging trends shaping the gaming marketplace of the future. This pioneering survey has revealed four megatrends, each with profound implications for the future of the gaming business.
Having studied cycles and cycle sizes in the last few installments of the Vicious Cycle series, we now have more insight into how the cycle size is calculated and why certain machines have larger cycles. Apart from the geometric progression caused by an increasing number of reels, there is another important factor that can determine the size of the cycle. This is, of course, the number of stops per reel. However, this isn't an arbitrary value selected by the game designers.
High-priced watches are a tough sell in this Chinese enclave these days, but flashbulbs are flying off the shelves. While much of the chatter at the G2E Asia exhibition and conference in early June centered on the slowdown of growth in the world’s biggest gambling market, there’s no need to get out those feel-sorry-for-Macau violins just yet.
At any given time, somewhere in the world a Gaming Laboratories International employee is at work testing or certifying a new technology, responding to a regulator or supplier’s question, or sending out an urgent letter. This July marks GLI’s 20th anniversary, and the independent gaming-equipment test lab has come a long way—along with the rest of the industry—in the past two decades.
All throughout our history, Native Americans have had a special relationship with our environment. In fact, this relationship is the substance of our identity and the essence of our tradition and cultural values. Land, water, fire and plants are sanctified in our prayers and used as symbols during our dialogue with the creator.
Gaming companies have historically made a huge proportion of their revenue from only a small proportion of their customer base. A senior casino executive who did not wish to be named once told us that “50 percent of the revenue comes from only 1 percent of the customers.” This huge skew, combined with a massive overall reduction in wealth (the Dow Jones Industrial Average, for example, has gone down 36 percent in one year), places the key revenue drivers of gaming business at risk in today’s economy.
In this second installment of CEM’s exploration of all things networked gaming, industry insiders and innovators tackle open standards. Are they working? Are they enough? Join us as industry-leading contributors share their thoughts on open standards, starting with the Gaming Standards Association’s System to System and Game to System standards and how they will affect the future of the casino floor.
Back in 1976 I took my first job in the publishing world at the youthful age of 16. It was a summertime position working in the mailroom of a large international textile trade association in St. Paul. Eight magazines were produced there each month, but they were laid out manually with film and tape. It was very manual and a labor intensive process. There wasn’t any desktop publishing in those days.
Read all about the new Class III games here—IGT's Top Dollar Slots, Bally's Goldbeard's Treasure Doubloon Lagoon, AC Coin & Slot's Sparky's Cash Splash, Aristocrat's Jackpot Royale, SPIELO's Power Wilds, WMS' Time Machine, Konami's Jumpin' Jalapenos, Ainsworth's Royal Diamonds, BetStone's Lucky Money Frog and Multimedia Games' Petra: Lost City of Stone.
