In this interview with CalvinAyre.com’s Becky Liggero, Marcus Yoder of Gamblit Gaming explains how nostalgia plays a key role in luring younger players to gamble.
Popular arcade games in the 80’s are slowly making a comeback as the generation that grew up playing these games in the ’80s now has the disposable income to allow them to purchase the machines they loved for their home.
That wistful yearning for the happiness felt in the past years is now driving operators to gamify these classic arcade games. The nostalgia that these classic video games evoke is the key that will help operators unlock the potential of younger players.
Marcus Yoder of Gamblit Gaming said that they are now seeing more gamification of games as operators integrate the 80’s games into their offerings to lure millennials to gamble.
He recalled that only a few markets were willing to experiment with these games a year and a half ago. Yoder even lumped them into a category called the coalition of the willing.
Fast forward in the future, he said that “pretty much, everybody is part of the coalition of the willing. People are ready to experiment with these games.”
“The first two games that we brought to market were in Nevada, in Oklahoma, and in California. The key aspect is we made these for younger players and 65 percent of our game players are 21 to 39. So those are not your slot players,” Yodor told CalvinAyre.com. “We know this because we have done 6 hours of exit interviews of our games. Our lovely ambassadors ask the question, ‘how old are you’ 6000 times. So we are seeing this hit into the market that we are getting into.”
At the moment, Yoder said that Gamblit continues to work the great games studios around the world to gamblify popular video arcade titles from the past few decades and bring them to their own machines inside casinos, including Pacman.
Yoder said Gamblit and Bandai Namco, which is the company behind the phenomenal 80’s video game, have an agreement that gives Gamblit the license for the use of the Pacman brand.
“We just keep on gathering these fantastic game titles that we have. In Pacman, we’ve estimated that over 10 billion people have played it in some capacity. We’ve got this game, Cut the Rope, that has a billion downloads. Six million people play it every day,” he said. “It’s been on two out of five smart phones on the planet, so people really know how to play this. We are going to continue in that vein and work with the great game studios around the world to gamblify those games and bring them onto our machines inside the casinos.”
