Singapore's Airport Sets Passenger Record in 2011

The Casino Journal reported in its February issue that Singapore's airport passenger traffic rose 11.4% in December, continuing the positive trend since the opening of their two casino resort complexes. For the entire year, Singapore's Changi Airport handled 46.5 million passengers. As a comparison point, Las Vegas McCarran Airport handled 41.4 million passengers, well off its high of 47 million in 2007, before the financial meltdown.

A large difference, of course, is that Singapore is a key air traffic hub in south Asia, with a large amount of business being conducted in Singapore proper. Las Vegas' key attractant is the tourist/gaming industry.

Regardless, it is another point of proof to show that expansion of gaming to Singapore was a smart move, paying immediate dividends. You can reference other posts regarding Singapore gaming here, here and here.

Game Flow Concept Applicable to Fantasy Sports Contests?

Jeff Jordan in a May 2011 article in Casino Enterprise Management discussed a concept he called "game flow" to highlight a new way of evaluating slot machine performance. In a nutshell, game flow is a zone of optimal balance between challenge and skill. Now skill in a slot machine context is more akin to figuring out all the bells, whistles, spinny things, bonus games and payouts as opposed to really figuring out how to improve your performance playing a game. Slot machines by their nature really don't have a link that correlates to a player's skill, unless you think putting a $20 bill in a money acceptor is a skill.

What is a good zone or flow for one person will deviate between people. Jordan states, "Flow is designed for purposes of this framework as the mental state in which a player is absorbed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement and sensation in the play characteristics of the game." [1] So it is a bit like Goldilocks - it's just right. But each person has their own Goldilocks standard.

Taking Jordan's flow concept, can it apply to fantasy sports contests? To an extent. Typically fantasy sports contests take much longer than a particular pull of a slot machine handle (nowadays a press of a button), or even a slot machine gaming session. But the breakdown of the consumer's behavior is applicable. Jordan teaches four basic elements:

1. Game appeal
2. Trial wagers
3. Game flow
4. Game loyalty

These elements can be mapped into a fantasy sports skill game context. Game appeal could be the published rules, entry fee and prize schedule. Trial wagers of course would be the entry fee (or lack thereof). Game flow would be the management of the player's fantasy team during the tenure of the contest. Finally, game loyalty would be the player's post contest assessment of his/her experience and desire to play the same contest next time.

As fantasy sports games branch out into more frequent games, even daily in some cases, the concept of game flow will become more important to consider.

The online version of Jeff Jordan's article can be found here.

Citations:

[1] Jordan, J. (2011, May), Leveraging a Game Flow Framework to Evaluate Game Performance, Part 1, Casino Enterprise Management, 61.

References:

Jordan, J. (2011, May), Leveraging a Game Flow Framework to Evaluate Game Performance, Part 1, Casino Enterprise Management, 60-61.

History of Las Vegas in a Cool Graphic

The Las Vegas Sun has a great graphical history of Las Vegas on its website. You can find that link here. Now the time period covered by the map ends in 2007, so it misses some of the new facilities, such as the Aria, Cosmopolitan, Encore, etc., but the early days of Vegas are captured quite well. That is the real value in the map - the history and seeing how the facilities evolved over time.

The map covers the strip, downtown and the valley, and in each decade tab, there is a time period overview that has bullet point historical items of note. It's definitely worth a look! Kudos to the Sun for putting this together.

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.