very easy to say, we need to make ‘X’ amount of money for the house to be sustainable, when in fact your existing players are already loyal to you. Te problem is that you’re not giving them anything in return. Your only invite is to come and play. Instead, what the Metaverse is saying is ‘come and play – come and stay.’
How does the competition side of the Metaverse work? Is there first-mover advantage? If you spend the most do you get the biggest share of the play?
No, it’s not about being first. It is about volume. Te Metaverse needs more choice. Te entire Metaverse experience is about choosing your preferred realities, which is why there are so many worlds to choose from in the first place. If I visit Grand Teft Auto Casino, for example, that’s what I get (Grand Teft Auto Casino is one of the most popular Metaverse casinos and changes money the fastest). ICE Poker is a totally different experience – and people want that. However, they don’t want to be in the same place all the time.
Does Grand Teft Auto Casino have an advantage as it’s a known brand outside of the Metaverse? Albeit a videogame, but one that has significant brand recognition…
Yes, and it skews with many different age groups. You see the characters within the casino and they look like us, whereas if you’re in Decentraland, you see boxy square folks in which we don’t see ourselves.
How diverse is the Metaverse?
I attended an event with the team at Decentraland, whereby 80 per cent are women and around 30 per cent are disabled and people of colour. I think there is a concerted effort to changes things from the past.
So why are you presenting the Metaverse to the ECA Casino Industry Forum? What do you want them to take away from the experience – and do you want them in the Metaverse?
We want experience and that experience/perspective will make the metaverse work better. I’m pushing 50 now, but when I started working on Tomb Raider I was 19. When I think about being a girl in a sea of men back then - and still to this day - we still need those men. It doesn’t matter that the percentage hasn’t changed that much, I still need their experience – and the Metaverse definitely needs that experience. Te Metaverse is new and exciting, but it stills needs people that have the knowledge to make it better.
I’m really passionate about the Metaverse. I have also worked for casinos in the past creating gamified applications. However, I think there is a golden opportunity for the casino audience at the Forum to get under the skin of the Metaverse and change their reputation. We have to stop thinking about gambling as a ‘bad thing.’ One of the things we benchmark as standards when creating games is that if something works in sex, or gambling – then the technology works. When we create games, we look to technology from these
P50 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS
“I think the involvement of the casino industry in the
Metaverse will change the casino industry, and because of their involvement the
Metaverse will change too. And I think the regulation part that scares them right now, will also change as they dip a toe in the water. Just because they’re dealing with finances, gambling and player
protections, doesn’t mean that they have to completely alter the Metaverse. They need
instead to enter the Metaverse, meet the people with like- minded mindsets and see how their place within the
Metaverse is relative for the future.”
“It is very easy to say, we need to make ‘X’ amount of money for the house to be sustainable, when in fact your existing players are already loyal to you. The problem is that you’re not giving them anything in return. Your only invite is to come and play.
Instead, what the Metaverse is saying is ‘come and play – come and stay.”
sectors to set the benchmark of what we have to create towards. So I think it is only fair that we utilise and optimise the Metaverse for the gambling industry. You have to move with the times and we want to help the casino sector capitalise on that.
One of the speakers at the conference – Laurent Lassiaz – stated that the regulatory casino environment represents safety and security for a business. Does the absolute freedom of the metaverse offer the opposite?
I think the involvement of the casino industry in the Metaverse will change the casino industry, and because of their involvement the Metaverse will change too. And I think the regulation part that scares them right now, will also change as they dip a toe in the water. Just because they’re dealing with finances, gambling and player protections, doesn’t mean that they have to completely alter the Metaverse. Tey need instead to enter the Metaverse, meet the people with like-minded mindsets and see how their place within the Metaverse is relative for the future.
Casino operators view play within their locations as social and home-play on a PC as anti-social. Whereas your view is that Metaverse play is completely a social experience…
Parents fear their children playing constantly on their mobiles. Tey are afraid about what they can’t see. If they enter the space themselves, it will optimise the entire experience. If I can live on the upper floor of the casino, I can visit the casino whenever I wish. I can move from one space to the other. Our children are already experiencing full connectivity, they are plugged in and they are spending money. And they have become ‘addicted’ to experiences. Unregulated experiences.
When you talk about unregulated experiences, you’ve eliminating whole swathes of the Forum’s audience who can only work in regulated spaces. Would they have to leave their current positions to enter the Metaverse?
When I show ICE Poker to casino executives they’re astonished that it can exist. Tey don’t believe something like this, a poker experience within the Metaverse, is real. You can play poker for ‘mana’ and then they off-ramp your mana. Mana is essentially chips. You put the chips in and cash out – there is no difference between these two things and the regulatory bodies in Decentraland are powerless to regulate this type of transaction, because it is decentralised.
When you cash out your mana, that’s when you have to regulate. What’s happening inside the space, however, is unregulated. I think that’s the same in a land-based casinos. Te point at which you regulate is when the player enters and when they leave – cash in and cash out. You don’t regulate the chips they’re winning and losing at the table, which is the same within the Metaverse.
You’ve created an omni-wallet for the
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