The gaming industry is always trying to innovate, but it’s not always easy. During day 1 of the G2E Asia @ The Philippines in Manila, the Gaming Innovation Roundtable, moderated by Michael Zhu, SVP of international operations planning and analysis at The Innovation group, looked at the opportunities and challenges of doing something new in the gaming industry.
Clinton Long, Sales Director of SG Gaming Asia ltd, started by noting the roadblocks to innovation. Strict regulations can slow down new ideas from getting rolled out. But more importantly, players aren’t always willing to embrace a new thing. Charles Seo, Product Management Director of Asia at IGT, agreed with this notion and said players decide which innovations win.
But then Long got to the exciting future of facial recognition, which he sees as a game changer. Bonuses, preferred games and more can all be tied to a players face, and offered to them at any game or terminal. Even more, developing artificial intelligence to detect emotion can help operators address problems early.
Roger Lwin, Vice President of gaming operations, City of Dreams Manila, Melco Resort Leisure Corporation, then noted that he sees potential to keep innovating in the area of Electronic Table Games (ETG). Due to their lower price point and faster action, they’ve done very well in the Philippines.
Long then addressed the slow roll out of skill games, which has yet to prove itself as a money maker. The hope is that as millennials get more spending money, games developers will get the math and mechanics right to really hook new players. SEO noted that the focus on younger players might be misguided though, as the largest group playing skill games in the Philippines has been 40 year old women.
Finally, Seo noted that not everything needs to be rolled out on a casino floor to see how it does. With online gaming, games can be released much faster to a website, and tweaked as necessary to see what works. This is a strategy successful developers can follow to avoid the huge bomb of a machine attracting no customers.
