What Secrets are Casinos Hiding Behind Their Designs?
Most gamblers are not even aware that casinos are designed in a specific way, with the sole purpose of encouraging the players to gamble more. Wondering how? When you visit a casino, what do you see? Is there darkness or pollution or too much noise or anything like that? No. Casinos are usually equipped with bright lights, attractive colours and designs, and many facilities, all of which are aimed at making their players feel at home. Let’s find out more.
One casino for many players
Casinos are designed to entertain all types of customers, including newcomers and professional players, high rollers, casual gamblers, and all others. A single casino hosts thousands of gamblers almost every day and has to keep in mind the interests of all types of people. Therefore, casino designers focus on creating a design that can work for all kinds of customers. You might find up to three or even more segments in a particular casino, for its high roller players, casual players and serious gamblers.
Focus on details
Each minor and major variable, including the colours, lights, floor design, noise level, etc., is taken into account when designing the casino architecture. Casinos will never put a table or a slot machine anywhere randomly. All these things are designed and decided very carefully. The best place to keep a particular slot machine, the places attracting big crowds, etc. are also taken into account.
Here are some of the examples of how casinos play with the design to make it more user-friendly (and casino-friendly).
A lot of research is conducted before the designing process of a casino building even starts. Here are some examples.
Researchers have shown that women like to play slots more than any other game. Also, women tend to prefer the games with small crowds as they get nervous when someone watches them playing. Casinos use this information to their advantage to design their place settings such as to encourage women to play more or make it easier for them to access their favourite machines.
High-rollers are known to visit poker rooms more often. Similarly, hotel guests can usually be found around the elevators. Casino designers use this information to map out the specific routes for all types of customers. These maps are then used to create a design aimed at appealing more alike customers. The specific games are put throughout the routes to make visitors stop and check them out.
One most important and usually missed thing about casino design is the floors that are designed such as to encourage customers to keep moving inward and not leave.
The Maze layout
This is one of the most common design layouts followed by most casinos, especially in Las Vegas. The concept is inspired by the maze design which makes it easy for people to enter but very difficult to leave. The same concept is now followed by some of today’s modern casinos. The absence of clocks and windows on the casino walls so that users cannot check the time is an example of this layout.
The casino floors are largely based on the maze design. Instead of placing slot machines in neat rows, most casinos place them in complex curved arcs so that it takes users some time to pass through them and they might want to try them on contributing some extra bucks to the casino’s account. The basic idea is that the machines and games are placed such that the player cannot see the exits directly and has to pass through a number of tables and slots to reach the gates, no matter where they are standing on the floor.
The Playground design
A new design concept became known among casinos by the beginning of 2010. Known as the playground concept, it is focused on keeping the casino designs as user-friendly and comfortable as possible while focus still being on high earnings for the casino. Some of the signs of this design include proper sunlight, impressive arts and styles, high ceilings, open views, and smaller group of game machines/tables. Modern casinos prefer to keep slots and other games in small groups and give users enough area to move around. The low ceilings of old days are now replaced with sky-high ceilings.
Whereas the old maze design was complex and confusing, the playground design is simpler and more attractive and yet fulfill the casino’s basic purpose of keeping the customers fully entertained and engaged. Many big casinos now also offer other related facilities like hotel stays, restaurants, spas, clubs, drinks and more to further keep visitors coming. The evolution of integrated casino resorts is a step in that direction.
Casino design layouts for Slot Machines
Slots have been an important part of casinos ever since the evolution of betting. Casinos are known to earn a major chunk (as much as 71%) of their revenues from their slot machines. This is why the slot machine layouts are given a special consideration while settling the design of a casino. The technology has played an immense role in increasing the popularity of online slots. The invention of touchscreens has made it possible for casinos to offer all types of games and themes in slots. This has, in turn, given customers more reasons to stick around and keep playing at slot machines.
The small clusters (groups) of slots as you see in today’s casinos are an effort to encourage socialization among players who can even discuss their games and strategies. The design is such that users can see a variety of games from anywhere they are on the floor and get a lot of choices and options to spend their time. The clustered design has also promoted social gaming, especially for people who visit casinos in groups and want to play together.
Layouts for casino table games
Casinos also have special design layouts and structure for their table games. However, these games are not very much affected by where you place theme. The casual gamers prefer to play slots and usually stay away from table games and regular gamblers will habitually move to these tables no matter where they are put.
Still, there are some obvious advantages of keeping high-game tables together and in the middle of the floor. Casino staff can easily manage and access the tables. Also, tables like blackjack and poker where noise and excitement are often at peek help spread the energy out to other games as well. The high noise also often draws more new players. By placing their most important tables at the centre, the casinos are actually telling the customers which games they should indeed play.
Now that you know why casino designs are the way they are, try to stay more alert the next time you visit a casino.