Video Casino
One of the features we designed for the interactive television platform was a video casino module. It was to played for real money against the guests account. They could purchase credits, charged to their account, win real money and cash out their balance resulting in a credit to their account.
We designed a video slot machine, including a couple of slots bonus games similar to what you see on physical slots machines in casinos, and a video poker section with five different video poker games.
The video slots presented an interesting challenge because of the required animations. To match a gamblers expectations with what was available on the casino floor, we designed a five reel, three line slot machine with a 12 different symbols and a number of combinations of winning lines. The set top boxes and smart TVs that were the guest end-point did not have enough physical resources to truly animate graphics smoothly for spinning slots reels that would each stop on different random symbols.
The set top boxes and smart TVs were good at streaming video however, and could draw in a static graphic quickly provided it was pre-cached, so our solution was to display a background video of the slots spinning continuously and when the reels were supposed to stop we used a random number generator to place individual graphics of the reel symbols on top of the video in the positions of the 15 visible symbols. This would create the illusion to the user of the reels having stopped (albeit a bit abruptly) and give the feel of an animation that was actually a combination of a continuously running video with static graphics overlaid on top of it.
The video poker games were more straight forward as the card graphics and so forth simply appeared or disappeared.
For the video slots game, we chose a theme (pirates) and created some bonus games around it, but in theory it was theme-able via skinning, and one of the 12 symbols was a property logo that we changed per client.
For the video poker game, we consciously styled it in a sort of crude 1980’s video game graphic style, since believe it or not that is pretty consistent with actual video poker machines on casino floors even today.
We got both the slots and video poker games certified by the Las Vegas Gaming Commission to certify that they were fair and legitimate. The video casino was initially deployed on Norwegian Cruise Line® and Costa Cruises S.p.A. ships, where they could be played once the ship was in international waters. They were later deployed at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, NJ, which required a special law be passed by then Governor Chris Christie to allow gambling within the casino’s hotel rooms.
Casino Cashier and Game Selection User Flow
When the guest selected the casino module from the application’s home page, they first arrived at a landing page where they could manage their account and choose a game to play.
There were a lot of considerations around security of the module, both to prevent possible hacking of the games as well as to ensure that no one under age was able to access the gaming module or that the same user wasn’t playing in two places at once.
For the age based scenario and for the scenario of a user being signed into two places at once, user flow was a part of this security. Upon module entry, the age of guests in the room was checked possibly resulting in a prompt to enter a PIN code or to call the front desk to unlock the casino module for this room, the gaming credit balance of each guest in the room was retrieved, and back-end call was made to determine if any of the guests in the room was already in the casino module on another TV.
We then prompted the guest to select their name, whereupon they landed on the casino’s landing page with options to choose a game, purchase credits, cash out their credits or change players.
The flow chart here describes this UX flow.
Video Casino Entry Screens
Here are some of the module entry screens that resulted from the module entry flow, as skinned for Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. A lot of the layout in the interactive television platform was driven by the fact that the guest had to navigate with a remote control via up/down/left/right and select, so you couldn’t arrange things as you might in a website or touchable app.
Video Slots User Flow
Video Slots Animation
Video Slots Graphic Elements
Video Slots Payouts
YouTube Video of News Item About Video Casino at Borgata
Video Poker Graphic Elements
Video Poker Payouts