Episode 11: Talking True Persistence with Tangam's Ari Mizrachi

[MUSIC] Hello everyone, welcome to episode 11 of Bonus Round. Today we have with us another very special guest, Ari Mizrahi from TANGAM, as well as our game performance database manager, Jared Book. Today we're going to do a discussion on true persistence games. It's been a while since we got a status update. One of the experts in this space is Ari, who's been at a spinger on the pulse for quite some time. So we're going to have a really nice conversation today, get a catch up, see what's new, what's happening, as well as tie in some insights from the game performance database. So how are you doing today, Ari? How's everything going in the true persistence space? Doing well, good to chat with you again. How are things going to be in space I guess that there's more games today than there were yesterday? That's what we're seeing, multiple manufacturers are putting games on the floor with some level of a true persistence feature today. It still represents a relatively small fraction of the overall floor, but it is growing as time goes on. >> Yeah, just to give you some numbers there, they really did have to give you these numbers. I love just a refresher on how you define true persistence with an audience. But true persistence games, as far as we've been recording these games, we were seeing at one point in the core video space at its peak, around 30% of games that were coming out in 2021, early 2021, had any form of true persistence. And we'll get into the spectrum and tax on the needs of the different kinds there, but 30% of games, and that's been steadily coming off. We were still in the 15 to 20% of core video in 2023. And then now we're actually at single digits and the lowest as a percentage of games with true persistence, but there still is quite a number out there. >> Yeah, I guess the way that you're looking at is newer games and the percentage of, but obviously with core, most of those games are hoped to be on the floor between five and seven years. So I guess when I say growing, I just mean actual assets on the floor relative to games that don't have true persistence. Like that because if a game was purchased in 2021, there's a really good chance it's still on the floor today. >> How would you shortly define true persistence for the audience for those who might not be caught up in this space just yet? >> Yeah, I mean, I'll try to explain it as simply as I understand to explain it that way. Well, I guess I'll explain non true persistence first, maybe it's easier, right? So non true persistence game, the spin prior has nothing to do with the spin going forward, right? I think that's the best way to explain it. It's just like a roulette ball, right? If a roulette ball lands on black 17 times in a row, even though it landed 17 times prior, the next spin of the ball has nothing to do. The result has nothing to do with the 17 rolls prior. So if you think about a complete RNG class-recent-lock game, the spin's prior are completely independent of each other. With true persistence within the, I would call the cycle of the game, depending on which and I know we'll get into detail of all the different kinds, certain features within the game stick. I like to use the word stick. So maybe a symbol drops or real grows. And that is not smoking mirrors. That is not the next spins, house advantage is altered based on the spin before, depending on what may or may not landed within the game. So that's what truth persists is, is that it's not a complete RNG. Well, it's an RNG, but the house edge actually moves as the game progresses. Yeah, we'll just contrast that to perceived persistence, which is sort of the example there is just your triple pot, and the triple pots grow over time. And the size of those pots have no impact on the RTP of the next spin. However, there's this more so of an indicator of when the event lasts occur. And I guess the example there as well as kind of a, when you're at a roulette table, and you see red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, it doesn't mean the next one's black. The spin's still independent of the prior outcomes. Yes, I would say that's true except for one specific game, where the size of the pot and what happens in the pot actually has a true persistence feature to it, which I didn't know until I realized there were certain players winning on these games every time. And I'm like, how can they beat a perceived persistent, which I thought was a perceived persistence game. And then when I looked on the hood, I realized that when a pot was a different size and a certain symbol land, it was in the pot itself, it actually became a true persistence game. And that's where it gets like kind of weird in some ways. Yes, that those definitely could be some of these games that does here. It does seem like they're one or the other and they actually end up being the inverse. I've definitely noticed that as well. Yeah. And I do want to delve into sort of the spectrum there of these different styles. But just at a high level, what is your hypothesis on true persistence games? And what have you been researching and what have been some of your findings generally? Yeah, I mean, so three or four years ago, and I kind of talked about this at first. And again, talking to Jared earlier, when I discovered it, I didn't even know what I thought I stumbled upon. I just found a customer that won every day or close to winning every day. And long story short, I discovered what true persistence was. The thing is that all true persistence games are not made equal. True persistence has been around since the mid 90s with some kind of real games. They kind of fell off and then must hit by progressives, right? Ainsworth was a big company that had must have brought aggressive as a standalone. There's absolutely nothing wrong with any kind of must hit progressive. Those have been around for years and years. And then 2019, 2018 video slots and some of the manufacturers started adding persistence features to games. And, you know, I would love to hear from the studios that have built these because I'm assuming at the core reasoning of building a game with true persistence is pristickliness, right? How do I get someone engaged enough to keep them playing? I assume that's the sole reason why these features were there. And in essence, kudos to them, right? Proceed for persistence games have much more stickiness than any other game mechanic of any type. You know, so to talk about true persistence in the video slot space, they're not all made equal, right? I think now there's a stigma of true persistence is really bad. And operators should take them all off of the floor. Like, you won't hear me say that for every single game type. I frankly don't have enough of an opinion because I don't run a casino. And every market is slightly different than each other. But there are short cycles true persistence games, right? So there's a three spin cycle games, 10 spin cycle games, you know, we'll use a game like Scarab, which was one of the earlier adopters of true persistence. And I'm sure you guys are familiar with it. It's on a 10 spin cycle, certain symbol lands on spins one through nine. And on the 10 spin that that symbol becomes a wild. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that game from the slot ecosystem because most players that play a game like that know that they're in for a 10 spin ride. Can somebody leave after spin eight or nine and leave it at a positive state? Sure. Does that happen often? Not much. Ultimate expoker, right? Yes, there are plays people leave with multipliers on it. But I think the customer knows that, hey, they left the they left the screen with a multiplier. And you know, maybe they decided to leave whatever. And there's like the cash falls short cycle, which is like three spin cycles, right? These are pretty self explanatory to any gamer that's interested in the cabinet or the themes. And, you know, it's pretty self explanatory to me as a slot player that, okay, I'm getting it to this game. I want a certain land, a certain symbol lands. I need to stay and play for three more spins in order to potentially win. So I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with those. The truth is most of those games do not have a lot of stickiness, right? You know, you produce all the reports, you know, short cycle, troopers, such as games have a very short self life. And maybe it's just the, you know, a game like Scarab, which I think is a very interesting math model. It's very low volatile game, right? And in the world today, people are looking for pretty high volatile games. So I don't think there's anything wrong with a game like that. It just kind of lost its allured had nothing to do with a managed lot player, true persistence. It's just I think the game kind of lost its steam. But then you go to long cycle and I don't think long cycle, long cycle, true persistence games are created, created equal. And I use these two terms four or five years ago when I talk about this publicly. It's interesting that people talk about it now and I'm like, I just kind of, these terms out of my head. When I say long cycle, what I mean by that is it's what a single person will never experience in their own session. So I have the ability or with our company like looking at session level data, the average session for a slot game, I'll call it 10 minutes. Regardless of the game type, the average is around 10 minutes. With a long cycle game, you will never experience the low of the game and the high of the game in two minutes. So when I say long cycle, it's just that a single person can't experience the gameplay that of what I believe was maybe intended by the studio that created this. And that was always my opinion of these long cycle games is that if a game was built, so Jared could experience the lows and the highs and at the end of the cycle, he's like, oh, this game was cool or this game was not cool. That makes all perfect sense to me, IE, the short cycle games. If Jared was to go to play a long cycle game, there's no chance. I mean, I don't know how much you guys pay Jared, but you don't pay him enough for him to experience the lows and the highs because it's thousand, it could be thousands and thousands and handle pulls before you go from base state all the way towards positive EV. And that's always been my kind of opinion around this is that the way the game was intended to build the person that's going to a game for the first time, that doesn't know any better has really no chance to experience that high of the game. But in long cycles, I think there's also two types. There's long cycles that don't have a cap that could be almost the most kind of, I wouldn't say egregious because it's not the right word, but those are the ones that are probably the most detrimental to a casino player that doesn't know any better. And then you have long cycle that are capped like we go riches, right? The wilds must hit by, right? So some, you know, there's an endpoint of when that bonus needs to be triggered and you could see it on the screen. There's other games like Magic Treasures, there is no cap on the money ball symbol of when it could go. There might be somewhere behind in the math model, but it never says, you know, bonus must go off at 48 money balls, right? So you could go on that ride for an extremely long period of time. Not to get too detailed, but I guess that's why we have a podcast to get into a whole lot of detail. But so short cycle, I think zero wrong with them, long cycle, I think they're divided into two different buckets. You know, some are obvious when they're going to hit and others are, pretty, pretty, can take a long time and that's sometimes where the biggest DV may even be for the cause for someone that knows when to play them. Hey, thanks, Ari. That's good. You could kind of overview of short cycle versus long cycle persistence. It seems like to me and from my operator experience, the advantage players are, you know, targeting more of the long cycle persistence because that's where they can essentially gain more of an edge. And so when you talk about, you know, your typical retail player coming in and playing some of these true persistence long cycle games, so they don't necessarily understand, they're ultimately feeding into the RTP where someone else, whether it's an advanced player or not, you know, can come along and ultimately gain from that RTP change further on in the in the persistent cycle. Right. So my question is for you is, you know, do you see more advantage players coming in and getting involved at the casino level? And do you see the retail player, um, trying away from these games or, um, or getting hurt by these games are ultimately moving away from them? Yeah, yeah, really, really good question, Jared. And I think probably need about seven episodes to even answer that question, but I'll try and then the next five minutes. Um, so maybe I'll take a step back a little bit about my background and why I was passionate about the subject. Um, I started my career in poker. And when I was being mentor to open up poker rooms, the old school, uh, poker manager said, "Are you protect the poker ecosystem?" And if you could protect the poker ecosystem, your poker room will survive and you'll have a career over the long term. If you, if you do things from a marketing perspective, if you, uh, tend to too many of the poker professionals and you try to make an environment where they're happy, you may not have a job in a couple of years because that poker is ecosystem become fragile and you can lose it. Now, the reason why four or five years ago I talked about this because I thought about the same way, maybe naively, uh, you know, the slot ecosystem is a bazillion times bigger than the poker system, peak poker ecosystem. And, you know, frankly, if it's negatively affecting the slot ecosystem, it's almost too big to fail. So you wouldn't know. But this is what I will, what I will tell you, based on, you know, we talked earlier, um, you know, when you just have game performance data, which is the majority of why, how people make their product decisions is based on the games that make me the most money or the games that I'm going to buy. If that's all the information that I had, well, that's what I would do too, right? Um, when I first discovered this before I spoke about this kind of publicly was I tried to find loyal, non-advantaged players to true persistence games that were long cycle. And in the, in the last five years, I've yet to find one customer across about 75 casinos that are not loyal to any long cycle troopers, it's games. And that's why I always had such a strong opinion is that if your non-ap is really like these games, then you would find loyalty to them. And if, if people are loyal to these games, then put more, add more of these games. But what's happening is you're cycling through a bunch of jarrads and then all of a sudden you got to cycle through Brendan's and then you got to cycle through Aries and you got to cycle to this. And what happens when Sam, the next customer, isn't there to come to the casino to backfill this, because at the end of the day, if Jared is just a true recreational slot player, what happens in the long run? You lose, right? You can't fade a 10% tax, right? So if we say the RGP is 90 or the Theo Hold is 10%, you can't fade that, right? The customer can't fade that in the long run. Well, what you're doing is you're exchanging your money for time and entertainment. And your money for time and entertainment gets you X amount of time out of property, which all makes sense. It's the whole point of our business. Our businesses to offer games to provide entertainment. Yep, some people win, some people lose. At the end, most people know they can't win, but they're going to play to get entertained. And X amount of dollars in the long run will get me X amount of minutes of entertainment. With these true persistence on cycle games, when a guy like Jared might not know any better, well, maybe it's half the time. So what I exchanged my bankroll for to get entertainment, I'm now spending half the time that I was before. And as a business, is that what we want for our customers? That's the question I say. Forget about the game's going to make what it's going to make. No one's cheating. No one's stealing. No one's doing anything wrong. God bless these players that have figured out when to play a game. Like I got no shade on any of those guys. Right? They're smarter than I am. Just like card counters, just like professional poker players. They know when, hey, this game might be better for me. And if the casino doesn't care, awesome. But it's Jared of the world that's just there to be entertained. And he's being entertained less less. So a lot of times I get flack of like, well, why do we care who wins or loses? I said, well, that's your right. If you don't then add more of these games. Like I don't know what to tell you. But if you care about Jared's experience, it's just there to be entertained from the slot machine. Well, he's playing less. That's a fact. And if you're okay with that, then there is no issue whatsoever. If you're not okay with it, that's why the reason why he's getting less time on the vice, the group of Jared's right, which is the 99% of players, it's because they're touching these games in such a negative state that the RTP could be 70% at the time. So that's kind of my opinion around it all. Yeah, now that makes a lot of sense. What is keeping these games on the floor? Because somebody's got to feed the meter, right? So somebody's got to put these games in a position where advantage players can come along and play them. So is it just naivety on the players part? I don't know what he better or there's other explanation. Well, think about this, right? Like, Assignations have been around since whenever 40s, 50s, 20s. I don't know when the first submission came down, right? You know, why do people play slots versus playing table games? Let's just talk about that for a second. People play table games because they want to make this as decisions. They want to make decisions and feel like whatever decision they make may change the outcome of the result. Most of the time it's not right. I'm going to bet 17 on black, but I could choose 17 and I have a feeling of where the balls go. They want to make decisions, right? They want to go to casino to gamble, but they want to feel like they have whether it's perceived or not, some influence on the outcome. Why do I believe people play slots to be entertained and escape the natural life in general, right? They worked really hard in their job. They have a $200 bankroll and budget. They're going to go play slots for an hour and they just want to press a bond. And, you know, cabinets are cooler. Music is better. Graphics are better. I walk aimlessly through this maze of slots. I find a cabinet that called my name and I just start playing. I think what we're asking is we want to educate that person. That person doesn't want to be educated. They're just there to pass time. They're there to be entertained in this gambling casino. They want to hear the bells, the whistles, they want a free drink. They don't want to work. They don't want to think. If they want to work or think, first of all, they want to play slots, right? They would either play table games and if they really want to think harder, they would try to handicap horses or play poker. People choose slots because they just want to be kind of entertained, lost, not think. People say, "Oh, why does that guy play slots?" He's a doctor. He works really hard. He just wants to escape from, that's his time to spend or hard time to spend their discretionary money. For us to ask those players to be like, "Well, you should look at the screen and know if you should play it or not." We're breaking the whole slot model. If that's what we're going to ask our slot customers to be educated slot customers, we won't have a slot business anymore. Yeah, fair enough. It definitely makes a lot of sense. These are all my opinions from my past experience. I grew up in a round gambling. I started learning. I always say this. I learned how to read the racing form before I learned how to read. I used to go to the track with my dad when I was three or four years old. A lot of my perspective is just the perspective of a gambler. I do have an analytical background now. I did work in operations for 16 years. I have less of a opinion of this stuff is good or bad, other than just really what the reality of it is. Reality of what, again, that can go from a negative to a positive. It's just like a shoe of blackjack. It's so interesting. People care so much about card counters. There was just the World Game Protection Conference in Vegas. I think somebody told me there was a thousand attendees at South Point about basically table games protection and surveillance. Why does the industry care since the 40s and 50s? Because if Brendan is counting cards and he starts increasing his wagers, he's taking money from the casino. That's the only reason why casinos care. If that money was taken from Jared, the guy next to him, there would be no car counting teams. There would be no surveillance teams. That would ever think about it. Casinos care because it's affecting their bottom line. With true persistence games and slots, it's not affecting their bottom line today. Today, yeah. That's one thing that I always looked at from another angle from it was. We touched on this a little bit earlier. You said those players, those retail players on the true persistence games, getting half the time on device. They're getting that experience that is less than what they used to. Used to get it and they're feeling a little bit less fulfilled during this so that ultimately is affecting the retail customers experience at the casino. So do you see a long-term degradation of slot play coming from true persistence games? Yes, I know. I say no because it still makes up less than 10% of a slot floor. If you go to survey any casino with a thousand slot machines, you're talking about less than a hundred that are on the floor. It affects the person that continues to play a game like that at such a negative state. That's a very small percentage of even the retail customer. I would say the flip side is if you as a casino owner are okay with Brendan, the AP coming to visit you every day and take a couple hundred dollars out of the building. And great, if you don't care, then then don't worry about it. But if you ask the table games folks, hey, Jared, the car counter is going to come every day and win 300 dollars, they would have like 27 people investigating it. So why is it any different? The difference is that they're taking it directly from the table games P&L where Brendan's taking it just from a couple of dollars from every player that touched it that made it get into a positive state. And that's really up to casino if they care or not. I think most are okay. Like they're like as long as the game performs as it is from a theoretical basis, it's up to the jarons of the world to know any better. And that's fine perspective. For me, I think I had a much stronger opinion in the past. Frankly, after getting to be completely transparent, I've gotten beat up from all the manufacturers. I've gotten beat up by a lot of casino operators that have vehemently disagreed with me. And I'm like, I don't know how to skin in the game. This is my research. I don't run a casino and I don't own a casino. These are just the facts of the stuff that I saw through player data. And that's something that I wish we had a better handle on here, EKG. We do collect a lot of machine level data, but that's sort of where we have a deficit. I do want to go back and just sort of summarize what you said earlier as it relates to a sort of the taxonomy and the spectrum of two persistence games. So you have sort of a short, too long cycle, just to kind of simplify it. Obviously, we could peel back the way of onion here. And you have a medium cycle extra long. And it sounds like the takeaway here is that there might be more caution around the longer cycle games. But even if you peel back a little bit more, have you sort of looked into the different kinds of long cycle games? And what I mean by that is you have games like Buffalo Ascension, where you have persistence as a part of every single spin based off the real height. And then you have games that are also long cycle such as Buffalo Link, where yeah, there's that true persistence component, but it's more ancillary. It's not part of the spin to spin RTP and in the grand scheme of things. So I would love if you could kind of just share some findings there across the differences between the two if there are any. Yeah, that awesome. I mean, you're one intelligent dude, Brendan. I really appreciate it. Yeah. So Buffalo Ascension, as you said, every spin that you every time you hit the spin button, the RTP is changed based on the way the game was built, right? It starts at a thousand 24 ways. I think maxes out at 5,400 ways. Obviously when you're spending a slot at a thousand 24 ways, it's very different that when it's at say 4,000 ways, right? So you're going to feel the RTP, you should feel the RTP with those two huge gaps. You know, another happy brought up Buffalo Link because that's on the exact opposite spectrum of the game. That Buffalo counter is like irrelevant to the game itself, right? The people love that game, right? It's a hold and span with the Buffalo, you know, three coin free games feature. I mean, it has been gangbusters actually started out of kind of slow when they first launched and has been dying busters every since because, you know, that's one of those true persistence game that is labeled true persistence, but, you know, the regular hold and spins last free game chasers that like those mechanics absolutely adore the game. For whatever reason that Buffalo counter was added, I would argue that that game would do as well as it does today if that Buffalo counter was hidden. And the truth is, because it's such a long cycle to get into a positive EV with that, if Buffalo Link was the only true persistence game on a floor, AP players would never go to that casino because it's just those opportunities happen a few and far between in that regard. And it's not to your point is that it's not really part of the core gameplay. It's just this little counter that's there and if, you know, it could hit randomly any any time between a hundred and 1800, but obviously if it's close 1800, whether you are a wreck player or it's casual player or probably it goes every week, it's like, oh, it's going to hit in five more Buffalo heads. I probably should stay on this game because it's going to hit at some point. Great. Great answer. Thanks for thanks for sharing. I'm tying back a lot of [BLANK_AUDIO] conversation back to the game performance database. And I don't think this will surprise you at all. But as you mentioned, if you kind of just track life cycle of games, how they sort of do out the gate and trend them out over time, we found that probably not surprisingly, the troopers this is game start off at some of the highest points. And then around month five, six, ish, they actually fall off below the average of every other game. So what that means in reality is you can have a game that on our charts as a static data point top game for the month. But after five or six months, that game could actually be lower than the average of the entire competitive set, top performing, non top performing. What's what's going on there with some of those games in the life cycle? Yeah, so we we've identified same trends, right? And you know, because again, we're looking at the player experience impact. And you know, I think it's kind of what Jared was saying. Like I think players, your recreational player that plays this game goes to it once, twice, maybe three times. It was like, man, like game looks cool, sounds cool, but I can't get any money back. Like this is not fun for me. And I think once you cycle through that group of players, then the game crashes, right? Because you got to know and you know, again, like, it could be up to 50% of the handle is coming from advantage players. So it really skews the numbers. Now, if the rec player stops playing it, that means the person that's looking for a positive EV is not going to find them as much because the rec player is not playing. So that slow crashes pretty quickly. And that's why I always say like, my opinion doesn't really matter because the game's performance is going to kind of speak for itself very quickly anyway. The scary part is if you're a purchaser of games, right? And that kind of alludes to like, you know, for for you guys, you know, you don't get session level data. But you know, a game hits the top of a list. Let me buy some. There's no new and there's no initial indicator that that that may not last long as long as you would hope after you purchase that cabinet. And that's when you get stuck and you hope that there's conversions in the back log to keep these games going. And that's where sometimes, you know, it gets a little scary in that space where you're buying games. You know, they could hit the top of a charts right away, but you have to be careful that it it's all about identifying if it has staying power or not. So we actually do that, Brendan, again, because of the session level data, you know, we can actually early on indicate a game that has some markers on them that may not have longevity. And one of the biggest things that we're looking at is just really, you know, the play time per visit when they touch these games. And there's other new at troopers, it's tonight is just how we evaluate all slot games is that, hey, you know, new game look like it's doing well financially, but how is the volatility of the game affecting game play? And is this actually an indicator that have not long-term sustainability? And we're we've been studying that for the past year or so now. That's really interesting. Are there any types of features or game attributes in the mechanics you can attest to that would maybe push the needle to having longer staying power? I mean, listen, there are games out there that you know are genusly built, right? Dragon Link model, lightning link model, ultimate fire link model, Buffalo Go collection right has worked as worked for many years. When you start taking some of these hold and spin games and turning them on steroids, when the when almost all of the RTP or a lot of the RTP is going from the base game to the bonus game, there's a point where the player is like, I've tried this three times and I've never touched the bonus. I'm not coming back. And I think that's why like games like Dragon Link and and ultimate fire link have stood to test the time because the folks that created those games figured out the magic of, hey, Jarrod's going to come in with a hundred bucks, he has a dollar average bet. He'll experience bonus most of the time before he leaves and he might not leave a winner but he's like, hey, I had a shot. And there's some awesome games out there that just with the math model, the regular Joe Schmo that spends 23 minutes on property playing is just not going to feel it. And so we're seeing new iterations of older successful games that look really good at the beginning but because they're so volatile, they quickly deteriorate. And depending on what market, if you're in Vegas, a lot of it has a longer stay power and a place like on the Vegas strip because you have every two and a half days you have new people coming to stay. If you're in local, yoke, in the middle of Montana, right? In the little local house that has 20 slot machines, you better have the right products, right? Because you know, you want people to come back and and feel like they got a chance, right? So that, you know, that's the scary part for me and forget about true persistence is the the volatility's games are almost getting to a point where they're there. And it's what the customers want. I'll go back to my roots with poker, right? I was a I started in poker when everything was limit poker when no limit came, we were all scared, but that's what the customers wanted. If you can't go to a poker room now that has limit poker, it's all no limit. So I think the customers are asking for this volatility. But there's a point where you get a bit to I would say the magic, right? Scotty Oliver, that created like dragon link, lightning, he figured out the math with whatever, wherever he designed with his that the graphics, the music, the the RTP from the bonus and the base game, like magic happened in that game. It's one of the few games 10 years later is as strong today as it was 10 years ago in the floor. It's because he figured it out like it from the customer experience. And some of the iterations of those games didn't didn't have as much staying power because what are you going to do? You're going to make the game a little bit more volatile to make it a little bit more interesting. Well, the truth is it's not going to last forever because there's that point in volatility where people are like no moss. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a concern right now in the industry just overall as you know, like you said, we are seeing a lot of that RTP can kind of push to the far end of the curve into the bonus rounds and what not. And yeah, I mean, it can definitely feel like for a retail player that you know, you're not getting me as good of an experience. So I think that pendulum will probably come back a little bit as it's just had a fight story. I was with my boss a couple weeks ago in Vegas and you know, like not to speak about games, but I guess it doesn't matter. It needs different context, right? So we found a game that is not performing well anywhere in any market. And you know, my boss was like, why don't I go right? Well, let's play or why don't you play any Ben 80 cents a spin whenever I'm like, just play the game and you'll you'll feel why? Because the data is saying that it's not successful, but you know, sometimes people ask, well, why is it not successful? And this was a newer game where it was all in the base game. There was a lot of line hits that were okay. He never got to the bonus because it just never happened. And he got a plenty of time on the vice, but he was at the end, he's like, man, it's game kind of stunk. And I'm like, it's because even you that's not a slot player wants to get into a bonus with a chance that 80 cents could turn into $80. And you didn't get that. So that's why you don't like it. But the truth is you spent more time on this game than you would have if you played any other game with super eye volatility. And it was like kind of like in a home moment, like it's kind of shitty. Like they created a pretty good game in my opinion, because it was giving people time on the vice, but it's actually not what they wanted. So I always like to look at people that you know, I this industry has been like my life's work. I've been around gambling my whole life. I gambled myself at time and all that. So like I, I, like, this has just been my whole world. I love seeing someone that's not like as entrenched as I am. And like just play for 20 minutes. And you'll explain you'll validate to me my analysis and almost a hundred percent of time that happens. I'm like, oh, what you experienced is why the game is not working. So it's pretty cool to see that in real life. Yeah, it's a great example. Thanks for sharing that. To the supplier's credit, and as much as we've talked about this problem, to the supplier's credit, generally, we've seen some good responses from the suppliers. As I mentioned earlier, the lowest percentage of games being released with these types of mechanics. There have been some tools that we've seen that some pliers have put on there that are sort of anti or at least mitigating the ability to advantage play. You know, we've seen some things from vendors where they add some sort of filter to to the screen where they don't, you can, the player can't see the counters. So have you seen anything from the vendors or just generally that you think has been effective at potentially mitigating these risks? Yeah, I will, yeah, to your point, there's a couple of manufacturers that have it, right? Some have some patent and technologies, others have, hey, we're going to offer it where that numbers hidden, right? There's something that's basically covering it. You know, this is kind of a weird time because I think, you know, the math model for true persistence worked because it was true persistence because you're getting not only all of Jared's play, but you're getting Brendan's play and you're getting Ari's play wayward. Once you take the true persistence feature, you're going to eliminate one of three of ours play. And once you eliminate one of the three of ours plays, the game has to do worse because there's a segment of the population that you're alienating, whether it's good or bad, right? So obviously, if you take a true persistence game away, a feature away from a true persistence game, an AP player would never play. And when we say AP, right? It's a person that's looking for positive EV plays. So if you take all that handle off of that game, how can it be successful? It can only be successful if the game was so well done without the true persistence feature being there. And that's yet to be determined, right? There's a couple out there, right? I think magic treasure's gold has an option of covering the numbers. I don't think you guys get the data differentiated when it does or doesn't. Yeah, we actually do. I believe you're there's magic treasure's gold, which has the true persistence and then mighty treasure's gold, which is the hidden version. And we have them differentiated and the mighty treasure's gold actually does pretty well. So then that would be an example of a game that doesn't need the true persistence feature to accommodate the wreck player. And you could argue playing that game. It's not, it's not the total focal point. I mean, it's a good, it's a nice portion, but it's not the focal point. That's I'm not sitting there for that specific for that they call them money balls. I'm not sitting there only for the money balls. It has, it's pretty feature rich. So yeah, I think to your point earlier, that's a kind of reiterates your point. Yeah, they, they, that's an awesome design game. It just has that feature in there where people can enter at a positive point. But that's another true persistence game where wreck players like Jared enjoy it. Right? So I mean, I think it's, it's, it's yet to be determined. Right? I, there is a risk where, you know, maybe there's some that are not so enjoyable by the masses and they turn it off and then they'll realize very quickly, like, oh, the majority of this handle came, like half of this handle came from true persistence players. It will fail if we turn this off, right? Like that, that's, that's when you'll realize how good or bad the game really is. So we have about 10, 15 minutes left. I want to get into some more practical questions for operators. So can you talk a little bit about free play and how that enters the discussion while operator should know? Yeah, I mean, that this is kind of a sensitive subject, right? Because, you know, at the end of the day, some of the plays slots and puts their card in, they're not doing anything wrong, right? There's a customer that or a patron or a gambler or an AP player, they come in, they're taking their money, they're, they're, they're playing the game and they build points and whatnot and, and a theoretical value based on, on, on, on the play that they had. So where's the slippery slope? Jared, Jared's an AP player that only plays games at a positive EV, i.e. he's a card counter. And, you know, a database marketing programs are still very much as they were pre-advantaged play. So Jared comes in to Casino A every day and, you know, it does $2,000 in, in, in cycle. So he has a worth of $200. Because on a theoretical basis and the long run, that's what Jared is worth. That's what we knew was tried and true for all the years that slots and database marketing was around. So what do I want to invest in Jared? And that's up to the casino. So Jared maybe gets 20% reinvestment in free play. So every time he comes, he's going to get $4,000 in free play. Does that make sense if Jared is actually not worth $200? Because it is a variable RTP. The system doesn't spit out like this game is at a minus 3% right now and Jared should be reinvested at minus 3% or, you know, it's at a minus 30% right now because it got down to its bare bones base state. Should Jared be over invested because it's a 70% RTP. So the problem is it's not variable based on what I would call quote unquote skill. And because it's not variable based on quote unquote skill, you are reinvesting either over investing or under reinvesting in your customers every time that button is spent. So, you know, every casino is different. How aggressive or not aggressive they are in marketing. Some casinos scrutinize their their their their reinvestment more than others. Some people look just like at ADT and like, Hey, that's what the guy or girl's worth. If it works the worth of somebody's taking advantage, that's, you know, on them. It it again in the grand scheme of things, it's a small number, but that small number makes up a lot of money at the end of the year when when when if macroeconomics and other things are slowing down our industry. But if you're a very successful casino that's continuing to grow the limited exposure that it may produce, no one's gonna ever notice. So someone listening to this conversation today, what's something that they can do what's something we can do right after listening to this to start looking at these sort of things if if they're interested. And not just not just the player database, but maybe with their security team too. Well, what would you recommend to start with? So, I think I think the bad actors present themselves, right? So, the people that, you know, you know, it's funny. There's there's a, you know, in the AP world, there's like professional advanced players and then there's like the leeches, right? The people that have caused this to be kind of public knowledge, right? There's websites out there. You could pay for subscription on plays. There's people that are slot influencers that are that YouTube it, right? Those are the people that AP people hate the most. I'm sure they're not happy with me talking about it and not that I think my word means anything. So I think the bad actors on the casino floor, everyone already knows. Those are the people that blow smoke and someone's face when Buffalo ascensions at 5400 ways and customers start screaming and security gets involved. So honestly, I think security already knows with the bad actors. It's the professionals that don't bother anyone, right? They treat it as an investment. They're not doing anything wrong, right? They, you're offering a game that they choose to play when they want to play it. What should you do to them? I would do nothing. I say, "Gade, let's you change your program or take the games off and before," which I'm not suggesting that a casino should or shouldn't do. Those people aren't bothering no one. They're coming in. They put their head down. They're playing a slot machine just like you and I would. And when they're done, they're done. They don't talk to no one. They don't push anybody off of a floor. They don't blow smoke in people's faces. They don't distract customers and all that. What should security do? I know that security sometimes may kick those people out. I'm like, "What are they doing wrong? They're just playing the game when they want to play it. You offered it. I play it." I think from a security surveillance perspective, I think they were dealing with this before anyone ever talked about it because they're dealing with all those bad actors out there that are causing a really bad experience for the players, for the casino, for the professional AP players. They're the ones that are the problems. One follow-up, I have that question in your responses. Just to ask what your opinion is on the matter, do you think it's advantageous for a casino operator to limit the free play or any kind of bonus incentives to AP players? Just a limit kind of their exposure to kind of that free rooms or would it be a disadvantage you think in the long run? In this world today, it's not clear of who isn't taking advantage. You run the risk of upsetting a regular customer. The truth is that AP has been around since before all of us were born. Those players, the true professionals, are masking their play within the data that you can't even find them. There's so much more than an AP player can do with their players card or, frankly, not with their players card to kind of mask that. If you're looking at just the superficial layer of data, you're not finding these people anyway. Who you are finding you may be targeting the wrong people. You know, you know, you could say, "Oh, well, you're not gonna earn points on, or you're not gonna earn Theo on games with true persistence." I'm like, well, how about the 90, 50, 60, 70, 80% of regular customers that are playing it? Like you can't decide on that. So it's not as simple to find. And frankly, like I just, I personally don't know casinos care enough, really. And if you're going down the surveillance security route, that's a lot of resources. That's a lot of resources, 'cause it's not a surveillance issue. It's not a security issue. Those issues are only for people that are doing the things that I said earlier. It's the issues in the data, not in these random people that are acting like fools on a casino floor. - Hey, Ari, thank you so much for sharing your time today. This has been incredibly illuminating. I know the audience is really gonna appreciate this conversation. Where can folks find you with follow-up questions or to learn more about this? - Yeah, I mean, our website is probably the easiest to hang in systems.com, for dangamgaming.com, either one would work. You know, you could shoot me a note on LinkedIn. Like I said, you know, this is not a core feature of our product. It's just some research that I did personally that, you know, I'm happy to talk about, you know, again, don't have a strong opinion either way. It's just sharing the research that I've done. - And you'll be at IGA at the end of the month? - I'll be at IGA just for the first couple of days. I won't be there for the last two, but I'll be around. And yeah, if anybody has any, you know, thoughts on a Tuesday, there's all the day of the educational sessions. I'm speaking about table games on that day and I'll be around all day. So if anybody's interested in talking about this in more detail, absolutely happy to share everything I've learned along the way. - Awesome. And then EKG, we will also be at IGA. So if you have not scheduled meeting with us, or if you have free time, we will be at stand. One, eight, three, three. And it would be great to see everyone. Thanks everyone for tuning in today to episode 11 of Bonus Round. Thanks, bye. (upbeat music)