For decades, slots games have been all about the luck of the draw, or rather spin. You put your money into a machine (or online casino), push the spin button, and pray to the heavens for big money.
But these days, many players look for more skill from their gaming ventures. This is especially true of the younger generation, who grew up on skill-based video games. So casinos have adapted, and as the Press of Atlantic City recently wrote, they’re adding more skill to slots games. Here’s one excerpt from the article:
Players in the United Kingdom will soon get a chance to make real wagers after sinking a battleship, knocking a character off a perch, or playing a word worth a triple-word score.
In Mexico City, Merkur Gaming is testing a slot machine that has players sit inside a cozy, futuristic-looking orb much like sensory heavy arcade video games.
It’s all part of a push to offer more skill-based, social games to attract younger players while retaining more traditional games for women in their 50s and 60s — the most lucrative players.
Of course, there’s a fine line between catering to younger crowds with skill-based, video game-like slots, and alienating the older crowd. So manufacturers and casinos will have to be careful about balancing the amount of skill slots that come out in the future, versus the more luck-based games that often appeal to older people.
But one thing is clear: the slots industry is evolving once again to keep attracting fresh players. The last big change came in the 2000s, when manufacturers began adding more advanced video elements and bonus rounds to slots. And now it appears that featuring more skill elements is the newest development. Will this eventually leave some slots games playing almost like Call or Duty or Mario Party? We’ll have to wait to see if this ever happens. But players can at least expect to have more control over the outcome of the game.