It’s so secret that casinos, whether online or land-based, have catered towards middle-aged men for a very long time. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, for many years this demographic was the only one with access to enough spending money even to enter casinos.
However, that isn’t the case anymore, with more women and young people entering casinos than ever.
The number of women slot players has continued to grow every year, with G Games explaining that 44% of their players are female.
“European online casinos have said for years, ‘We have a male player base, men are far more valuable, and we should be catering to them,’” said Helen Walton, the Founder and Chief Commerical Officer at G Games.
And to a degree, she’s right. For many years, the majority of slot games featured women in minimal clothing and suggestive posing, either in the artwork, the thumbnail or both. We’re all aware that ‘sex sells’, but surely the gaming industry has more to offer than this.
“There’s perhaps a circular fallacy if you build slots for men and advertise to men, then you get male players, but the data is starting to get through to people,” Walton continued. “Online casino-game suppliers are starting to realize the spend of the female audience.”
So if you were a slot designer, how would you develop a slot created specifically for women? Take some time to think for a moment.
If you answered by making it pink and adding bows to it then, unfortunately, you’d be wrong.
“You want it to be universal,” Kimberly Cohn, Senior Director of Game Design at Light & Wonder explained. “Women don’t want to be pandered to and don’t want something specific like a butterfly game. That can be condescending.”
It’s worth noting that we have actually seen a huge shift in variety in slots in recent years.
For a long time, the only slot games you’d see would have scantily clad goddesses or historical figures, but if you go through slot libraries now, you’re going to see all sorts.
Some of the most popular themes in recent years includes animals, the Wild West, dinosaurs, space exploration and even Don Quixote has his own slot games… As you can imagine, none of these are particularly lean on sexualization.
It’s a nice change, to be honest. Rather than relying on sexy women, slot providers are putting effort into making a genuinely fun experience for everyone.
“At this point, it’s making games that appeal to everyone,” Cohn continued. “Why would you intentionally keep people from playing slots?”
And maybe that’s exactly what the slot industry needs to do: make slots that appeal to a wider group of people. It’s not just women who have been left out for too long in the slot markets either, but young people too.
The classic slot symbols are still popular because of the nostalgia behind them… but that nostalgia isn’t universal. Millennials and Gen Z have little to no attachment to the bell, bar of gold or cherries. They were brought up on video games, so have a slightly different perspective of what games should be.
There are even some companies, such as Rivalry, who develop games specifically for these demographics. Rather than using classic slot machines for nostalgia, they’ll use imagery from the 90s. And it’s working.
So perhaps going forward, rather than trying to use particular imagery to appeal to one audience, companies will instead focus on creating universally appealing themes. Of course, you can’t please everyone at once and no game will be universally loved, but even just trying for this is a step in the right direction.
