Inside Asian Gaming

Oct 2007 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 31 market we have to try and be general across the demographic as much as we can. A smaller manufacturer might want to attack a particular demographic. That effort to find a niche in the market might be their strategy.” What is true is that while all slots may be entertainment, there’s no escaping their internal logic. Anthony Baerlocher, who spent many years as chief game designer at IGT, once remarked:“There are two basic elements to any slot machine: the art and the math.” The science of chance The fact that within the gaming industry, slot machine play is differentiated from table play for being‘mathematical’is slightly disin- genuous. Table play is of course also linked to mathematics and probability. This is why casinos ban practices such as card counting at tables. It’s just that with slot games the level of volatility and play style can be pre-programmed by scientists within the general framework of random number generation. With table games the parameters and combinations are so wide as to constitute, for all practical purposes, what we traditionally call ‘chance’. But the ability of the slots sector to distinguish its offer on the grounds of mathematics rather than ‘chance’ could have profound implications for the future growth of the slots industry. It has already enabled slots to enter markets closed for political and cultural reasons to traditional table games. China’s video lottery terminals (VLTs) are in essence slot machines, churning out random combinations of numbers, offer- ing pre-programmed odds of success, but with the aim of giving a cut of the takings directly to social welfare schemes run by the state, rather than indirectly to society via the taxman, as occurs in Macau. Are slots really gambling? Raja Petra Kamarudin, a controversial Muslim social commentator in Malaysia, re- cently even went as far as to suggest that playing slot machines may not be ‘haram’ (forbidden) for Muslims. He said: “I can almost hear the gasps of the Islamists who probably think I have just gone utterly mad. Well, I am using logic and common sense in arriving at my fatwah (de- cree). And my logic and common sense tells me, since playing slot machines is not gam- bling, it is therefore not haram. “And why do I say this? Simple! Slot machines are fully computerised and pro- grammed so that the machines win at all times—allowing a few minor wins to the player to get him/her excited enough to play more.This is not a game of chance.” Slots may not involve chance as we understand it in table games, even if the commentator does have his tongue rather firmly in his cheek. Slots players do though have choices about how they in- teract with the machines when it comes to issues such as doubling bonuses or choosing lines to hold. This ability to in- teract with a game is ultimately what cre- ates its human appeal. If slot makers and casino operators can combine that functionality with content appealing to a new generation of players reared on arcade games, and perhaps more crucially find ways of marketing the offer to them, then Asia’s ‘hungry tigers’—as slots are referred to in Macau’s local Cantonese dialect—may really have a chance to step out of the shadows cast by the forest of table games.