Are you ready for virtual reality slots? by Frank Scoblete
Today’s casino games—both tables and machines—can often be traced to children’s games of the past. Children’s dice games, card games, and gumball machines evolved over time into adult craps, blackjack, poker games, and slot machines.So, what will the children of today like to play when they reach the age of majority? A fascinating question, which I will answer for you…in due time.
Slot machine expert John Robison gives us a hint: "The most sophisticated computer technology to be found in casinos today is in the virtual reality games in the arcade. Kids of all ages drive Indy racing cars and battle imaginary opponents with laser weapons every day. Even though the technology exists to build a new slot machine that would make today's slot machines look like Model T's in comparison, no slot manufacturer has built such a machine."
But they will. They will, and we are going to take a premonitory look at tomorrow’s casino…today.
So strap yourselves in, ladies and gentlemen of the present, because like H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, I’m going to take you on a ride into the casino of the future. And remember, today’s child will be tomorrow’s casino player. Most of his games won’t be like ours…
See this little room off the beaten path of "Casino 2020"? There is a single craps table and a single blackjack table, with pasty-faced dealers standing rigid at each. They seem frozen in time. Both tables have a thick layer of dust on them. The roulette wheel has cobwebs and there’s a spider making his leisurely way from red pocket to black pocket to red pocket to black pocket. Note the sign over the table games—which take up a mere 30 feet of floor space: "Wax Museum: Casino 1999."
No one is in the little room; no human has set foot in it for months, not even to clean it. Not a player, not an executive, not even a poor lost soul. The room lies like a minor pharaoh’s tomb, unadorned. See the forlorn machines that are propped up against the back wall? They are no longer lit, no longer shiny, and all have a patina of dust—Elvis, Monopoly; Red, White and Blue; Megabucks, Wheel of Fortune, Reel ‘Em In, Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild…They look rather drab don’t they? The sign says: "Turn of the Century Slots."
Over there in a far off corner of this far off room stands a Liberty Bell, the very first slot machine ever invented, now a rusting hulk, and right next to it, equally rusty, and rather quaint, a Bally’s electromechanical slot machine which once dazzled the world with its modernity.
The air conditioning doesn’t even work in this room anymore. Why should it? No one will ever visit this place again.
Close the door of the past behind you, ladies and gentlemen; wipe the dust from your feet, because we will now enter Casino 2020…
Like a vision from inside the mother ship of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, see the thousands of humans choking the casino floor. They don’t see us; their heads sport helmets.
There are bizarre machines of every shape and size. Some look like crystal coffins, with players literally entombed in them. Others look like ancient phone company switchboards, with players connected to them through their headsets. The players bob and weave, bounce and squirm, and some even shiver and scream.
Over what? Something you can’t see or hear or feel. Something that is taking place in their heads.
See those small rooms within the great main room—rooms within rooms? Some players are entering and exiting them. These are private "virtual games" for adult tastes, games with names too avant garde to mention, whose functions are too private to say.
Check those carousels, where eight, nine, or a dozen players are all connected to the same device, their heads bopping, often in unison. These are the "virtual entertainment" kiosks, where you can be on stage with your favorite performers. Want to sing a duet with Gork Armour? You can. Want to have a little nostalgic fun with a some golden oldie? You can sing with Ricky Martin.
Now listen...Over and above everything. What you hear is a din, a cacophony of sound, "oohs!" and "aahs!"—a deafening chorus from the master maestro known as adrenaline. Now look... Always you see the lights and colors and all those machines. A Luddite’s nightmare!
New Wrinkles on Old Games
The sign says: "Poker Room."
This is a carousel with hundreds of people connected by headsets to a domed machine. You are looking at a "virtual reality" poker room. The players you see here are playing seven card stud, Texas Hold’em or any one of a dozen poker games that they can select. They are playing poker on a machine, true, but not against the machine’s pay table (as in those dull and ancient video poker games). Instead, Casino 2020 players are playing against other people; real, live, breathing people connected to the same system.
Notice how the players mimic the motions of physical play; how they lift their hands, or move as if they are throwing down cards. In fact, in the game they are playing, they are doing just those things. It’s virtual poker.
Oh yes, it’s the same game that people played on felt tables in long-ago casinos, except now the players take turns dealing the cards and they play against other players in casinos all over America. That’s right, you can be playing against a guy in a Michigan Indian casino, a lady in Las Vegas, two fellows in Atlantic City and, a woman in Mississippi...all at the same time.
You don’t know them, they don’t know you, but you know their temporary name, given to them randomly by the computer: Wyatt, Hickok, Belle and the like. And you can get a bead on an individual’s play if he plays long enough. You can bluff. But when a person disconnects from the machine, the next time he plays, he has a new persona, and a new hope.
You might be wondering how the casino gets the edge in a game like this. Well, just like poker in the old days, the casino takes a small percentage from each virtual pot. The computer disperses the money to the casinos where the player is giving his or her action. It isn’t complicated. It’s easy as pie, and the casino doesn’t have to pay a dealer.
At Casino 2020 you can still play the traditional games that folks at the turn of the century enjoyed There’s virtual blackjack where you can hold the cards in your virtual hands and scratch for a virtual hit, but no one knows who’s scratching for what because every player at the table is anonymous. Remember what turned off many players to blackjack in the 20th century? Other players who gave advice freely and forcibly. It’s now a thing of the past.
There’s virtual baccarat as well, complete with beautiful shills in alluring dresses. All that shouting is coming from the virtual craps tables. All those players sitting in a circle at that 10-foot faux pair of dice are wired into the game. The guy who’s moving his arm back is rolling them bones! He has a good release. Everyone’s cheering, so he must have made his point!
What makes virtual craps so much fun for the player, and so lucrative for the casinos, is its speed. There is no waiting for human dealers to pay off the players or collect bets; it’s all done in the blink of an eye. There are easily triple the number of rolls in an hour of virtual craps as there are in an hour of the old craps. And the casinos never have to worry about pesky rhythmic rollers offsetting their odds. And "wrong bettors" playing the "don’t" side of the board don’t have to worry about frowns from the "right bettors." Happy anonymity in virtual reality!
Virtual roulette has a different spin, however. Here the player is the ball. As the ball spins around and around the turning wheel, the player’s vision is from the ball’s perspective. Unless, the spinning makes a player dizzy, in which case he can opt for a more traditional viewpoint.
But Casino 2020 has gone way beyond the traditional games.
Remember that 12-year old that you saw playing all those wild, bloody and action-packed video games? Well, he is now 32, and he has a history of interactive game play, coupled with a desire for real financial risk. The casino must now cater to a new generation of needs.
How? Why at the new breed of virtual reality games. Continued on...
