Today’s question is structured around a specific game and a specific market, but it relates to broader trends within casinos and slot makers, so we’ll also be addressing the question more broadly as it probably answers the same question many more of you have:
My question to you is, I live in b.c. Canada. Our dragon link games don’t go as high as yours in the casino. Do you know why we don’t have a Million Dollar Dragon Link game? It also takes so long to get new games here as well.
Tracey Ann
There are a variety of reasons why slots don’t show up in every casino. For one, casinos have to put them on their floors, so the simplest reason can be that the person who makes the decisions decided it’s not for them.
In the case specifically for Million Dollar Dragon Link, it can be a scenario of not wanting to be on the hook for a $1 million prize when the Grand is inevitably awarded. Unlike most large progressive slots, Dragon Link prizes are banked by the casino, not the slot maker, so they have to be able and willing to pay out the prize when it’s won. If that’s a stretch for a casino, they simply will pass on the opportunity to offer it.
Zooming out a step, the manufacturer may not offer it in that market, or may be working to release it in the future but simply haven’t yet. You noted your local casinos get things later, and that may be by design. When Brian Christopher’s slots came out, they were released first in the United States, and then a Canadian launch followed later on.
Manufacturers may purposely stagger releases to ensure it’s not competing with something else they’re marketing at the time, or that they can extend the attention by having new firsts to announce, etc.
In the days where physical releases were paramount in music, artists would stagger album releases based on when they could be present in the markets that were getting them. The same can be true for slots given they appear physically on a floor. (By comparison, online games tend to release across most markets in North America at the same time, not unlike how digital music does the same today.)
Whether a game appears in a market at all is also another potential hurdle – games tend to need to be certified in each market they’re coming out, and sometimes there can be reasons to not certify a game in a certain market – it may require modifications that aren’t worth the investment, or there’s no casino partners showing enough interest in carrying it to get certified.
So ultimately, there’s a variety of scenarios that come into play that can determine why a slot appears in some places sooner or later than others, if at all. At the end of the day making slots is a business, as is running a casino, and so business decision come into play.
This is why we always encourage players to voice their opinions on what they want to see – message the social media accounts, tell the players club desk people, share games you’d play with your host, etc. Casinos do listen, and it can impact what shows up on the casino floor.
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