Diamond West Valley by HBG
The Evolving Floor Gaming industry fortunes and trends have reshaped the look of the slot floor By Frank Legato
For anyone who has observed and followed the casino industry for a long time , one thing is undeniable : This is not your father ’ s slot floor .
Slot floor design has evolved , not only because of trends in game design , but in response to changes in the fortunes of the industry . Slot numbers per square foot went down after the 2008-09 recession , and especially after the Covid-19 shutdowns .
Meanwhile , slot manufacturers have evolved their hardware styles to make games taller , wider and more spectacular . Electronic table games have added another factor to floor design .
The result is that today ’ s slot floors , for the most part , bear little resemblance to the floors of 20 years ago . Today ’ s floors not only work better for casino bottom lines , they give designers and architects much more flexibility to create compelling spaces for the games . And the floor is still evolving .
The slot floor of 20 years ago was itself a product of two decades of design evolution . Forty years ago , slots were placed to accommodate the tablegame pit , which back then provided most of the gaming revenue .
That all changed with the emergence of the microprocessor-based slot — and the resulting huge jackpots — in the early 1980s . Slots quickly surpassed tables as the casinos ’ chief moneymaker , and gaming floors adjusted to the new popularity and profitability of the gaming machines .
By 2000 , the idea was to cram as many slot machines onto a casino floor as the layout would permit . Many remember the days when floors revealed row after row of straight slot banks , as success became more and more measured by revenue per square foot .
“ We ’ ve always been a very high-volume casino in terms of the business we do ,” says Allen Schultz , a 25-year slot operations executive who is director of slot performance for California ’ s Yaamava ’ Resort & Casino . “ Profit per square foot has always been huge , but even in our earlier days when we were starting out , we probably had banks as big as 24 games .”
Oliver Shoemaker , vice president of slot operations at California ’ s Cache Creek Casino Resort , adds that there was a more practical reason for the long , cookie-cutter slot banks — serviceability .
“ There was a philosophy of usually maximizing the number of seats you had in your place , and you wanted a setup that was conducive to easy service ,” Shoemaker says . “ It was easier to service long , straight banks . And it was great for maximizing the number of machines on your floor , in particular in California where I broke into Class III gaming . We had two , three , four deep on every game at times , and you absolutely needed to have as many games as possible . “ So it was long , straight banks , with as many people as you could jam into a place .”
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