A few years ago, Microgaming released what many people expected to be the first of a headlong splurge of a new type of slot/arcade game hybrid. That game was Max Damage and the Alien Attack and it promised a new era of gaming for casino enthusiasts.
Fast forward just a couple of years and the expected deluge of games hasn't quite happened. Indeed, for the Max Damage sequel, Microgaming reverted back to a traditional slot format for the second game in the series.
So why haven't skill-based casino games caught the imagination? Especially when they seemingly offer so much potential and likely appeal to players?
The answer lies very much in two key areas; that dictated by player skill or knowledge, and the random element of chance that lies at the heart of almost every popular casino game.
Player Knowledge/Skill v Chance
The key conflict here is that between how you reward a player's knowledge or skill at a game fairly, while still making it affordable, or whether you inject an element of chance into the proceeding which greatly diminishes the prospect of the player being able to earn a big reward through their skill alone.
In the Max Damage game, players played an arcade-style game with their rewards randomly generated depending on the number of aliens that they managed to shoot.
The problem with this is that you can easily have a scenario where a player becomes proficient at the game and can progress through it skillfully, yet only receives a small bonus despite mastering the key elements of the game.
On the other hand, a complete novice could start to play and get lucky with a bonus and win a comparatively large amount of money, despite not being particularly proficient at the actual arcade style gaming.
Now for fans of slot games and games of chance, this is not a problem, but for the many people who enjoy arcade gaming, the idea that you may be disproportionately rewarded and that your skill at the game will have no bearing on how much you win, is a problem.
These players want games where their ability to progress in the game will lead to them gaining rewards for their play.
However, casinos are well aware of the risks this could potentially carry. Players can become extremely skilled at games and if a casino offered a large reward for players who were able to achieve a certain level, then the highly skilled players could play the game time and time again and earn potentially limitless rewards.
Of course, this is a totally unfeasible prospect for the casino and thus the dilemma exists between what skill-based or knowledge-based players and what the casino can provide for them by means of an effective form of challenge where the player feels that they are rewarded.
This is why these types of players are not easily persuaded to try many casino games. Let's take slots as an example. These games are based around a random number generator and as such, there is nothing the player can do in terms of skill, knowledge or strategy to influence the outcome.
The same is true on many other games, such as roulette where the player cannot influence the result.
There are some casino games which do operate an element of strategy, video poker and blackjack are good examples of this where strategy can be used and where a players skill and understanding of the odds and strategy can help them play more profitably.
But it is important to understand that even in these games, strategy can only start to pay dividends when judged over the longer term and it tends not to have an immediate impact within a game. There's still nothing a player can do to improve their cards in blackjack, but they can use strategy to know when to draw another card or whether to keep the cards in their hand.
The key to developing a perfect arcade-style casino game that not only appeals to the arcade-style gamer, but also is still profitable for the casino to host is perhaps one of the biggest challenges faced within the industry today.
So how could this be addressed?
A blueprint for skill-based casino gaming?
What is clear is that a game that is based on skill alone is never likely to see the day in a casino because the risk is too high. A casino would not spend hundreds of thousands developing a brand new game, only to find a handful of players master it within a short space of time, win pots of money from the casino and force the casino to shut the game down as they are simply too good at it.
So a random element has to be central to the arcade game experience in order for it to be viable at the casino; the question is, just how random should that element be?
We already see in some slots that random elements, such as Wild symbols and multipliers, can increase a players basic win. Perhaps a similar strategy could be used in an arcade-style game, in keeping with the game play, in order to ensure that the game still appeals to arcade players, but has enough of a random factor to make it viable.
Imagine a car driving game, where a player has to travel from point A to either point B, C or D. Each point will earn the player an increasing cash prize if they reach there within the time limit, but the higher the prize, the more hazards a player will face on the way.
The game would then progress with the player driving the car to their chosen point on the map aiming to beat a stated time in order to win cash, however there could then be random elements within the game (road closures necessitating diversions, car crashes that necessitate an exchange of insurance details, punctured tyres, people crossing the road etc). Which could influence how likely the player was to complete the task.
The random element here would be the things the player encounters when driving and these could be weighted so that sometimes it is impossible for the player to reach their destination within the allotted time.
Indeed, the difficulty going for higher prizes could be ramped up so that many players could win the smaller prize easy (similar to the many small wins on an online slot), but that very, very few would win the top prize when the player selects the longer journey.
This is just one way that elements of the two genres could be fused. The key to cracking this potentially new niche is finding the right balance between arcade gaming and casino profitability. The first game that manages to achieve this fine balance well, will likely herald a new dawn of casino gaming.
Next Post: What are some of the differences between slot machines?
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