There is – or was – a process in the UK called the Triennial Review. This was an agreement between the industry and the British authorities that permitted a fresh look at stakes and prizes in gaming machines every three years.
Manufacturers adjusted their development around the upcoming reviews, operators even stopped buying for several months in advance of a review and even trade shows were organised and timed so that new models with the (hoped for) uplift in prizes could make the show floor.
That, we were given to understand, disappeared some years ago - in fact it is now four years since the last review. But although both the industry and the authorities accepted its demise, the Triennial seems to have crept back into the vocabulary of both sides. The Gambling Commission, which oversees British gambling on behalf of the UK government, has used the expression recently and even named the next Triennial as 2016 - although by then it will be a quadrennial!
Question is: do we need one? The industry will immediately chorus “yes!” on the basis that some, if not all, of the UK’s mystifyingly complex sub-divisions of machine types (unique in Europe!) will need some uplift. There is also the simple philosophy that if it’s offered, take it. And of course we have inflation to take into account, etc.
It is good that the UK no longer calls them AWPs. For there is little doubt that they no longer reflect that original policy of “amusement with prizes”. A £100 prize is not what the founding fathers of AWPs envisaged. The politicians of the day wanted an entertainment with the added “ginger” of a prize low enough to be disregarded as a harder-sounding “wager”. There can be little doubt that Category C, as it is now called, is a gambling machine if it’s going to pay out £100.
But that’s only my opinion, and a hack’s view really doesn’t count in the wider scheme of things. We have long since abandoned the notion of entertainment with a “harmless flutter” to simply “chase the money”. That is done not necessarily out of avarice (although that may come into it, to a degree) but principally on the basis that without it, the AWP in the UK dies on its feet.
It is already competing with all of the other distractions of modern-day society, plus supermarkets killing off pubs by using beer as a loss-leader and thus cutting out the very foundations upon which an AWP stands.
It is already competing with bookmakers’ shops offering infinitely higher prizes – arcades too with limited numbers of £500 prize machines. And they are all competing with the National Lottery which has no limit on stakes and prizes and upon which a 16-year-old may gamble his or her all. But the latter, of course, is government-owned and controlled and is therefore inviolate. Please excuse my cynicism.
What chance, therefore, has the AWP? Again, in the view of this humble hack, it is destined to be obliterated by one Armageddon-like impact or another, from VLTs or some other cataclysmic manifestation. But that will take time. Meanwhile, the industry must continue to chase the money and try to fight the opposition in fresh ways.
It cannot offer £500 jackpots in pubs; nor can it offer a realistic competitor to the National Lottery. What it can offer is fun. The hard-nosed gambling offers elsewhere have no notion of fun, nor will have any truck with anything that will slow the punters’ injection of their hard-earned wherewithal. So that’s the edge that the AWP (sorry, Category C) has and upon which it should capitalise.
For example, why don’t manufacturers build AWPs with a penny-a-line action? I asked someone infinitely better qualified that I whether this has any legal hang-ups to prevent it. Apparently not.
Yet when penny-a-line hit the Vegas market a few years ago, everyone did it. They did it because it meant hundreds of combinations on five-liners and virtually a win every time. The on-screen action was incredible. So why not offer 100 lines for a £1 stake? Or, if the industry gets its way – inevitably, a £2 stake and £200 prize – then 200 lines? A win every hit of the button will keep players there forever! And they won’t lose fortunes (the do-gooders will love that) and they will have FUN.
So, someone, please knock that idea to bits… (it's inevitable).
As a matter of interest, that would take the industry back to its roots, offering “amusement” at low stakes. It might even help get people back in front of machines. It might help the pubs industry to stem its own erosion.
It would certainly help swell the ranks of players away from the hard-core two per cent - or whatever it is - of hi-tech machine players, and release the AWP business into the sunlit, open fields of entertainment.
Might be pie in the sky, but it would certainly liven things up a bit.
