Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Pennsylvania casino CEO bets on new slots
Move part of $6M makeover of hotel
PHILADELPHIA — Eric Pearson, chief executive of the 483-room Valley Forge Casino Resort in suburban Philadelphia, is going on a shopping spree, buying 60 new slot machines to accompany a $6 million refurbishment of the hotel.
“We have purchased in the past three months more new slot machines than we did in the previous almost five years combined,” said Pearson, 34, who started in October. “Five years is a long time to play the same game, so we’re bringing in new product.”
Valley Forge’s new slots will be variations of the current type because those are the ones permitted under the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. But in the wider world of gaming, change is underway.
Question:
Answer: Skill-based slot machines are a merging of video games that you play for fun, whether on your smartphone or computer, and that slot machine experience. So your skill can have an effect on the outcome. It’s like if you play “Tetris” or “Candy Crush,” if you have more practice and you’re a better player, you can improve the outcome through your skills. Q: A: There’s a game I played where you hold a controller and it feels like an Xbox or PlayStation controller. It’s a shooter game. You’re a robot and you’re running around a whole arena. There are other robots and you’re shooting your blaster beam at these robots. Based on how many robots you tag, that determines your payout.
Q:
A: We’re not high luxury, and it’s not a goal of ours, either. You have properties like the Bellagio (in Las Vegas) that are all about the epitome of luxury. Then you have properties where luxury is not the focus, but they provide a great experience and a quality product, and that’s more of what our set is. The property is an interesting complex. We have a healthy balance of where our revenues come from. Q: A: If there’s a new slot machine that’s out, I’ll usually try that out. If I’m out with my friends, usually we’ll play blackjack or roulette or craps.
Q:
A: For a five-year-old casino, we have an incredibly professional experienced table game staff; they’ve been dealing cards for a very long time. A good amount of our table staff lives in the Atlantic City area and commutes in.
Q:
A: We have a lot of competition for, especially, our line level staff — our servers, folks that work in our retail outlets, in a restaurant, housekeeping, front desk. That’s because the country’s biggest mall is literally a stone’s throw from our property. There’s a tremendous amount of restaurants and all of this infrastructure coming in, a lot of service-based stores. So, we compete with all of those businesses with that labor market.
Q:
A: One of the biggest advantages we have here, and I think my career is a good depiction of this, is the integrated casino resort business. Almost anything you could be interested in doing, we have the position in that field. We have accountants. We have trades people that do welding, electrical and plumbing. We have people that work in the hotel side. We have retail. We have entertainment. We do shows. So, we have people that do rigging, and sound design, and book entertainment.
Q:
A: Absolutely. So, for me, as I was saying, I started out busing tables.
Q:
A: I think it’s funny. I’ve been to a lot of conferences and heard a lot of people speak about what millennials like and don’t like and do and don’t do. By most people’s definition, I am a millennial.
Q:
A: Right, I’m the very oldest. I’m on that GenX, millennial border. So, I can kind of fall into either category. But, when I look at what the folks, my friends and our sort of peer group, when we have birthday events and things like that, we’ll go to Vegas. And, a lot of the folks in our groups, they’ll gamble their butts off. So, the sort of generalization that millennials don’t gamble, or all the old games have no interest to them and or that we have to have these skills-based games … (is just a generalization). I think skills-based games are interesting to a very broad swath of the population. Some people like them and some people don’t. When you accept “Candy Crush” or games like that as a video game, my grandmother plays more video games than I do, or anyone else I know playing “Tetris” on her phone or those mobile games.
I think that it’s good that we continue to evolve that play experience and we offer different. It’s been a popular talk in the industry that, ‘Oh, we’ve got to get millennials! We’ve got to get millennials.’ Really, the best way to convert a millennial or get them interested in your casino is, for the most part, to do it en masse. We’ve got to wait until they’re older. The entire time I’ve been in this business, the age range of where our core players are (45-65) hasn’t changed.