Casinos eyeing Video Game Gambling

The casino gaming industry is constantly evolving and moving away from their reliance on bulky slot machines and classic table games. Currently, this transition includes getting more involved in online gaming. But some industry insiders believe that the near future could also include some video game gambling too.

Writer Doug Elfman recently wrote about his knowledge on the subject, which comes straight from David Chang, formerly of IGN and currently the chief marketing officer for Gambit, a company that designs real money video games. Elfman, Chang and several Vegas Strip executives discussed the budding move to video game gambling, and here’s a look at how their conversation went, as per the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

“Come on,” Chang said. “Anybody under my age — I’m 41 — doesn’t really find slot machines all that attractive.”

Then he showed me a gambling video game on his phone. It looked like a left-to-right platform game.

“I’m clearing the level. And when I kill our little zombie cat, I’m presented with a chance to wager,” he said.

I asked him to describe the casino video game future of 2020.

“Ideally, you would take this system with you wherever you go,” he said. “While you’re waiting in line at Tao, or waiting for your girlfriend or boyfriend to get dressed, or while you’re gambling.

“We think it’s a little too much to ask to get these (young) people to change their behaviors to engage a gambling machine and sit down.”

Video game gambling apps would work like this:

You would a free app game (a shooting game, puzzle game, word game, or role-playing game) on your phone in, say, Iowa.

You fly to Las Vegas. Your game app recognizes you are in a gambling-legal Wi-Fi zone and sends a notification to your phone, reading, “You can now play this game for real money.”

Theoretically, people could gamble on app games even at the airport, if the airport gambling operator wanted to take part.

“In Nevada, it has to be Wi-Fi constrained within a gambling establishment,” Chang said.

Las Vegas and America are already behind.

“In the United Kingdom, you’ll be able to do this online, anywhere you are, this year,” Chang said.

Chang went on to say that the holdup right now is a “chicken and egg problem,” where software companies won’t create the games until deals with casinos are in place. And these deals are still being formed in America while the legality is being ironed out.

One more point needing to be addressed is that electronic ewallets must be in place for players to deposit and withdraw money. The hope is that it will one day be as easy for people to deposit money into their gaming s as it is when buying an iPhone or Android app.

Once all of these issues are settled, video game gambling will become closer to reality. But until then, there’s a lot of work to be done to make this happen.