Gaming Genres Continue to Blend

The APCW is reporting in its latest video (embedded below) the trend of the merging of skill gaming and wagering, particularly social gaming and online gambling. The Zynga story, which I have posted previously here, is mentioned as well as information that Caesars Entertainment is looking at expanding into social games. I strongly encourage the reader to regularly check out the APCW site and its videos, which are quite informative and entertaining.

Over time, expect some of the most successful gaming companies to offer a mix of skill games and wagering games, to perhaps even include sports betting. The advent of large scale online sports betting in the United States will likely be the last to come, but the trend is for expanded, rather than restricted gambling.

As reported in an earlier post, gaming can be explained pictorially as a spectrum of offerings, from simple card and board games played for fun, to casino games played for money. It should not be a surprise that gaming companies are opening themselves to the full possibilities of gaming that they can offer.

New Legislation Introduced to Regulate Skill Games

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey introduced S 3616, the Internet Skill Game Licensing and Control Act. This bill aims to legalize skill games such as poker, bridge and mahjong. Since the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), there has been calls for the relaxation of restrictions on games that have high skill elements, such as poker.

Although the hope would be that this bill is worked on during the lame duck session of Congress, after the November election but before the new year, my guess is that this bill will not be addressed, due to the seriousness of the recent turmoil in the financial markets and economy. Nonetheless, this does show that the desire is there by some in Congress to undo some of the draconian elements of UIGEA.

PoketFives.com has more details on this development, plus some quotes from the Poker Players Alliance. With governments looking for new revenue sources, it only makes sense to regulate these games, which now are being run from jurisdictions outside of easy US reach. Let US players play these skill games, which they enjoy, and allow them to be run in the US, via operators that are regulated and licensed. In this scenario, everyone "wins."