Show Time
I’ve covered G2E for decades, and every show brings something new. Now, in my first Agenda, here’s what I’ll be looking out for this year.
Welcome to our GGB show issue. Also, welcome to my first “Agenda” editor’s letter. As Roger Gros, my friend and longtime mentor and the creator of this magazine, noted in this space last month, he has stepped down from his connection with GGB.
Roger taught me everything about this industry. Well, the slots I figured out on my own (I’ll explain later), but to find out all about practically any industry development or issue, it was always down the hall to Roger’s office, to ask the Human Encyclopedia of Gaming. He will be missed at this magazine, and we all wish him well on his next venture.
Back to our show issue.
The October edition is our biggest issue of the year, intended to be used as a guide at the Global Gaming Expo, which starts early this year on September 28.
When I say “guide,” I really mean a guide to the exhibits of the major slot manufacturers. Our “Global Games” section includes an article on each of 13 slot manufacturers, highlighting the games they plan to launch at G2E. Much of this information is exclusive.
This project is something I’ve been doing every year since the early 1990s. I began writing about casinos in 1984 for Public Gaming and Casino Gaming, the latter of which I was founding editor. It was run by the Burke family, two of whom are still at it—Steve Burke at Indian Gaming and Susan Jason at Public Gaming.
Almost immediately when I started writing about casinos, the focus went to the slot manufacturers. This was during the first big boom of popularity for the slot floor, which was surpassing the table game pit in casino revenues for the first time, thanks to the Telnaes virtual-reel system and consequent larger jackpots including the wide-area progressive introduced by IGT on Megabucks in 1986.
In the early 1990s, I did my first work for Roger, then at Casino Journal (also a trade journal co-founded by him). I had met Roger at the old International Gaming Business Expo trade show in 1985, and I started contributing feature articles to the magazine, mostly on slot machines. Roger asked me to do a roundup of the slot manufacturers for the show issue of the magazine, to be distributed at the World Gaming Congress, then the sole gaming trade show in the U.S.
At the time, Casino Journal was in a tabloid-size format, having been conceived as a break-room magazine for Atlantic City casino employees before Roger and his business partner, Glenn Fine, expanded its coverage to the entire industry. That first slot roundup covered a slot sector of about seven manufacturers, all of whom I interviewed by phone.
I continued to do the annual slot roundup as the number of manufacturers expanded and contracted over the years. The suppliers came to trust that they could show me confidential information about slot games yet to be released (some not even in prototype form yet) without me divulging the information to anyone before the show issue came out.
Eventually, the special section—called “World of Slots” in Casino Journal—would involve me visiting the slot manufacturers in person during the summer and writing an article on each company. It’s a mouthful of words—usually north of 20,000—but the task was made easier because I covered the same companies for years and knew their situations off the top of my head.
After Casino Journal was sold to a competitor, Roger left to form Global Gaming Business, and asked me to come along. I joined just before the first issue hit the streets in 2002. At the time, I was editor of Strictly Slots for the former publisher of Casino Journal. For that magazine, I wrote—still do, in fact—a humor column called “Perfectly Frank.”
Roger said he wanted two things at the outset of my new employment: First, even though it is a trade magazine, he wanted me to continue doing a humor column, “Frankly Speaking” in this magazine. (He snuck my photo to a cartoonist to get that goofy caricature.) Second, he wanted me to continue doing the annual slot roundup, called “Global Games” here.
As usual, there are plenty of informative features in this issue, but enjoy the latest Global Games section. We hope it helps you as you traverse the trade show floor.
