The State of New Jersey plans to cash in on the popularity of social gaming as additional means of revitalizing its diminishing casino industry. The Director of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE) David Rebuck, said that they have been observing the social gaming arena and its potential as a revenue earner. He added that under the state’s existing laws, the NJDGE is ready, agreeable, and able to deal with real money skill-based social games.
However, Director Rebuck said that not even one social casino gaming company has put forward a proposal to bring social gaming entertainment into NJ’s Internet gambling market. Since many believe that it will be the next betting phenomenon, the NJDGE welcomes proposals for offering skill-games with real money betting attributes.
Similar to the web-based casino gaming facilities, interested game developers for the skill-based real money game genre must also establish partnership with any of Atlantic City’s remaining eight casinos. The offering must also be confined to NJ’s territorial jurisdiction, which denotes requiring players to be physically situated within the state’s geographical boundaries, and requiring operators to institute geo-location verification systems in addition to the age and identity verification controls.
There are plans of making the games available as in-person offerings within a terrestrial casino’s gaming floor and using a real money account. The NJDGE admits that they still need to work on the actual details and standards because the games, albeit skill-based must meet certain rules such as incorporating minimum payouts similar to slot gaming.
Gary Thompson, spokesperson for Caesars commented that most of today’s new generation of legal-aged gamblers considers traditional slot machines uninteresting, because there is little or no skill involved. According to Thompson, members of the millennial generation are more inclined to engage in games that require an element of skill, as well as include features that enable them to socially interact or compete with friends or peers while they are at it.
Gamblit Gaming, for one, specializes in adding gambling components to popular social games. Gamblit CEO Eric Meyerhofer believes that there is a huge market for such type of betting games because they are played quite copiously across a broad range of demographics.
He added that in the U.S. alone, the estimated worth of its potential market is between $8 billion to $10 billion.
Although popular games such as “Candy Crush” and “Words with Friends” had cropped up as examples of the skill=based games mulled over by the NJDGE, their respective developer has expressed disinclination toward the idea. King Digital Entertainment, the publisher of “Candy Crush Saga” has stated that the company does not intend to enter into license agreements that will see any of its games, including “Candy Crush,” used for slot games or in any form of real money betting games.
Zynga, the creator of “Words with Friends” likewise made a similar statement. The latter explained that it does not support real money gambling on its platform.
