Are casinos still popular? Sure they are. New establishments continuously pop up around the world. While the events of 2020 were not kind towards this industry, experts forecast that it will quickly get back on track, rebounding in 2021 and posting global annual revenues of $592 billion by 2023.
However, younger generations remain disenchanted with classic casino games and show little interest in playing them. Today’s young people have grown up engrossed in PC, console, and mobile gaming, enjoying complex gameplay and often riveting storylines. Thus, they do not have the attentiveness necessary for boring table action and games where chance is the only factor that leads to wins.
To combat this generational divide, many developers have turned to skill-based gambling machines. These are titles where players can actively participate in each round’s outcome. Online slots are the most popular game in any online casino’s arsenal because of how easy they are, and these new casino video games intend to perform just like a slot machine. However, instead of spinning a reel, you get to shoot enemies. Note that skill will only play a minor role in affecting a title’s payout percentage. The first-person-shooter aspect is for entertainment purposes only, and the chances of you winning money remain relatively similar, despite your level of skill.
Danger Arena, First Person Shooter Gambling Machine
In 2015, Nevada decided to adopt new rules that allow casino floors to feature what the industry now refers to as skill-based games. A few months later, at the start of 2016, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement followed suit by passing temporary regulation governing the implementation of such games in the Garden State.
In April of 2017, New York-based company GameCo pioneered the original first-person shooter casino game – Danger Arena. The game made its debut in Atlantic City at established venues such as Caesars Casino, Harrah’s Resort, and Bally’s Wild Wild West. While most laypeople would label it as similar to Call of Duty or Halo, gaming veterans would not make such a broad statement. They would describe it as a cel-shaded shooter reminiscent of 2009’s Borderlands or Ubisoft’s 2003 classic XIII. For the uninformed, cel-shading is a non-photorealistic rendering that makes 3-D graphics appear flat. It mimics a comic book style by giving the visuals a paper-like texture.
Danger Arena is playable on a carousel platform, which houses three VGMs, or video gambling machines. Each VGM has two screens, a game one and one for the paytable. You play using an Xbox-like controller, and the goal here is to eliminate as many enemies as possible, or Danger Bots, as the game calls them. Your prize depends on your bet amount and the number of eliminated bots. Each combat encounter lasts approximately 45 seconds, and if you kill ten bots during this period, you get the highest possible round payout multiplier.
Danger Arena has over ten thousand maps that load at random, each with a specific difficulty level. There’s a power-up feature that gives you a protective shield and a cash prize. The payout percentage on this machine varies between 89% and 92%. Meaning, depending on your skill level, the casino will have a house edge of somewhere between 8% to 11%. That is an equivalent return-to-player to what most jackpots slots boast.
Visually, the game is decent, and it’s a nice switch of pace from the classic reel-spinner format. That said, even the best players will not achieve payouts that will vastly differ from those accumulated by slot enthusiasts. The controls and the gameplay here are both a bit choppy compared to modern-day shooters. So do not expect your swift reaction times to lead to robot kills worthy of a highlight video. Gameplay-wise, everything feels like something from the mid to late-1990s.
What Other Skill-Based Video Game Gambling Machines Are There?
Cover Fire
With the original first-person shooter casino game out of the way, are there others in this sub-genre? Well, yes. One of the more played FPS titles comes from Nevada skill-based powerhouse Gamblit, and it’s titled – Cover Fire. Developed by Genera Games, it is an attempt at transferring an established mobile game onto casino floors. Currently, the app has over 50 million installs on Google Play, and it won the Audience Choice Award at the 2017 Indie Prize in Berlin. In it, you play an experienced soldier who goes up against a megacorporation and its robots. You can shoot enemies using a touch screen, and each time you take out a robot, you receive a payout. Cover Fire has graphics on par with other popular shooters, and it incorporates big-boss battles and a ton of maps. Same as with Danger Arena, it is also available via a carousel tri-station platform.
Into the Dead
Into the Dead is another smartphone game that has a gambling version thanks to Gamblit. Released in 2012 for Android and iOS devices, this title got its casino counterpart in 2017. It uses the same control system as Cover Fire and is a mirror copy of the mobile variant. You run across vast maps and shoot hordes of zombies. It is a survival-horror shooter, where like the previously described title, you do not control where your character moves to, only which zombies he shoots. The minimum bet here is $1, and the max one is $5. It is a visually pleasing affair that can produce a few jump-scares, as if you do not fire in time, the zombies will bite and make you one of them.
Stepping aside from the FPS category, other skill-based machines worth exploring are Zombie Heat, Nothin’ But Net, and Space Invaders. The first is a Synergy Blue product that makes no bones about copying the Neo-Geo ever-green Metal Slug. Nothin’ But Net is a three-point shooter game from GameCo, where you get to have some basketball fun utilizing a unique pressure-sensitive button. Space Invaders is what you think it is, a slot variation of the popular TAITO arcade machine released in 1978. Nevada-based Scientific Games made sure that it includes bonus levels that copy the original arcade gameplay.
Casino Player Reactions
As Baby Boomers and Generation X members grow old and continue to nourish their love for slots, casinos believed that they would have to appeal to Millennials to keep revenues from falling. A recent Synergy Blue poll showed that 50% of gaming establishments mainly aim to attract gamblers over 40-years-old and that Millennials are only the focus of 22% of gambling operators. Thus, when the skill-based experiment got set in motion, expectations were high, but the outcome was disappointing.
The attempt to branch off and appeal to younger demographics proved a valuable learning experience for casino owners. They discovered that people have to search out skill-based machines in a sea of slots. Which on a gaming floor is not as easy as it may sound. Furthermore, young players with high expectations for these games were sad to find out that they only slightly differ from traditional reel-spinners. In most cases, skill-based machines featured payout percentages that were worse than regular online slots. In the digital sphere, the industry-standard return-to-player hovers around the 96% mark. Some reel-spinners even push this percentage up to 98%.
Most older players had no intention of testing this new genre, and they looked at these machines as more complex slots. The small selection did not help either. Thus, these factors led to casinos yanking them from their floors. Those that were left have yet to catch on. They are nowhere near the popularity of all the other gaming options available. Despite this, the Synergy Blue poll claims that seven out of ten gaming representatives plan on adopting more skill-based titles as a way to add variety.
To Wrap Up
So, a skill-based video game gambling machine is, in essence, a slot that is masquerading as a traditional console or mobile game. These machines incorporate mathematical models that make it impossible for you to beat them in the long-run. Your expertise will only slightly improve your chances of winning, but the casino will always have the advantage. If you want to go after big wins, playing online slots is a far better alternative. Digital platforms have low overhead costs compared to land-based establishments. Therefore, they can afford to return more bet funds to players.
That said, the industry is not giving up on these games. Some believe that the multiplayer format could be their saving grace. Yet, in that case, who would want to go up against someone that’s super-skilled and can consistently beat others?
GameCo and other companies continue to put out games. As is common in the industry, these machines have to go through a several-month trial period before receiving wider distribution within a corporation’s network of venues. GameCo receiving approval in July of 2020 to launch skill-based gambling at New Jersey’s digital platforms could be a massive game-changer. This news came six months before the company debuted its Esports betting solution for the US market, expanding into sports wagering. Both events could have a massive impact on the industry.