internationalcasinoreview
REPORT
There is something called the Gartner Curve that shows how we react to new technology first with excitement, then react negatively to the hype before learning to appreciate the real functionality of what we have. At ICE Totally Gaming, suppliers
demonstrated how we are now on that slower upward slope with some incredible ideas of real practical value. It added to the most positive show experience in years. Hugh Sorrill reports.
Farewell Earls Court: after decades hosting amusement and gaming shows, the industry is moving on
ICE Totally Gaming leaves Earls Court on a high
goodvibrations ICE 2012 REPORT
Upbeat, confident and suc- cessful. That was how Clarion, the organisers of ICE Totally Gaming 2012, charac- terised the last industry event to take place at the ven- erable Earls Court exhibition centre before the move next year to ExCel on the other side of London. There was certainly a
much more vibrant atmos- phere than in recent years: with crowded aisles and, more importantly, crowded stands, the preliminary figures showing a 6.3 per cent increase to 21,555 don’t seem far wide of the mark. It is by far the most inter- national gaming show in the world, but it is also the most comprehensive, with a full
18 March 2012 •ICEreport
range of gaming products from betting, to online, to street, to VLTs, to casino slots, to tables. And the reason there was more of a buzz was that with many of these sectors now overlapping, ICE is now embodying the zeitgeist.
The convergence of online and offline casino gaming was extremely noticeable, with most of the slot machine manufacturers now either ready with or working on online game content. It goes a lot further and deeper than that, however, with all the major OEMs offering customisable online and mobile platforms that offer true multi-channel operational capability. While the online gaming
world is well established in various hubs, the legislative
environments in Europe and the US at the very least are still muddled or restrictive or both. One path towards clarity and an open market is to link online gaming to land- based licences, providing a simple-to-understand point of taxation and regulation that should be appealing to governments, something that is very much in the game plan of organisations such as the European Casino Associ- ation. It also provides a model that could be useful in establishing, at last, an effec- tive and legal online channel in the US. Casino operators, understandably, are very keen on an idea that would help secure their future and strengthen their brands. Mobile gaming applica-
tions are also now develop- ing into something more
interesting that simply another way for people to spend money on games, largely due to the develop- ment of tablet computers. The smoking bans that have proliferated around the world have had a dispropor- tionate and dramatic effect on casino revenues: the new promise of mobile gaming is that it releases the player from having to sit at a machine - or even a gaming table, thanks to a new appli- cation from TCS John Huxley - where they may not be allowed to smoke, but can still enjoy playing in those areas where smoking is per- mitted. Even outside. The technology of online gaming is very much in evi- dence here, in terms of the networks required, but also the technology developed
over the last 15 years that has seen live games relayed to satellite terminals - the satel- lites have got somewhat smaller and more portable, that’s all. Similarly, the networking possibilities offered by the cloud are huge: the IGT Cloud was the biggest launch in this sphere at ICE but IGT is by no means the only company that uses this tech- nology to boost operations and improve the customer experience. The benefit for operators using the cloud, of course, is that they can get all the functions of a powerful networked system without the capital outlay. Technology is permitting
far more flexibility than ever before and offering the player the greatest choice in how to play than ever before.
This focus on the player is
a hugely important trend in the modern gaming indus- try. It extends beyond chan- nels and into the functionality of the games themselves.
The most obvious
example of that is the rise in the multi-game machine, on which players can choose which games to play. Opera- tors consistently report that multi-games are their best- earning machines. The increasing trend is to make players aware of the volatil- ity of the games they are choosing - to make it explicit indeed - and help them make that choice: Spielo’s diver- sity is of note here, as is Goldify2, which although not a multi-game, offers clear choices in terms of game style.
2012
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