Slot manufacturer AGS announced that it will hold its second annual GameON Customer Summit June 6-8 at the MGM National Harbor casino in Maryland.
The GameON Summit was designed to help AGS officials to maintain personal relationships with the supplier’s casino customers. This year’s gathering, at MGM Resorts’ new casino resort on the shore of the Potomac River across from Washington, D.C., will feature keynote speakers, AGS-led presentations, social events and various panels.
“We decided as we’re getting bigger and becoming a more powerful player in the space we need to be a bit more on the radar,” Chief Marketing Officer Julia Boguslawski said. “We have product that is high-performing, and as a result, getting mentioned more and more in the industry.”
Boguslawski said the GameON event is different because it’s more than simply AGS pushing product.
“There are some opportunities to hear from us at AGS, but we also have a bunch of speakers either from casino operations or other suppliers or peers of our customers,” she said. “Most events like this might have one keynote out of the industry, but mostly it will just be them pushing their product.
“We want our customers to want to go and say ‘I’m going to get the most I can out of these two days.’ This is not an ego-based conference for us.”
The conference will include information on skill-based gaming technology, the state of sports betting, mobile gaming, and an address from American Gaming Association President Geoff Freeman. One panel discussion is titled “Wall Street Perspectives,” with analysts and investors in the gaming space. Another called “Gamblifying the Gamer” addresses how to convert the video gaming experiences into something people can wager on.
“But you also get a glimpse of our culture, and that’s one thing that really stands out with us,” she said. (The company recently received the honor of being included in “The Best and Brightest Companies to Work for in Atlanta.”)
AGS, which has roots in Class II gaming in Oklahoma, though, does have new products to showcase at GameON, including:
• Slot machines featuring the company’s new Orion cabinet. LED lights surround its 42-inch touch-screen LCD portrait monitor, giving the effect that Orion floats in an immersive light experience. Boguslawski said that competitors came by the AGS booth at the G2E conference in Las Vegas last fall and noted that the cabinets were bright and unique. “It helped change the industry perception of AGS,” says Boguslawski, who adds that the machines recently placed are doing a multiple of the house average.
• The AGS Bonus Spin virtual wheel, which table games operators can employ to increase excitement by adding unique bonus opportunities to table games play. The wheels can be customized so casinos can offer prizes (dinners, concert tickets, etc.) from their venue. “That’s been a home run right out of the gate for us,” Boguslawski said.
• A single-deck poker shuffler, the Dex S, which can be more accurately defined as new table equipment. Several AGS employees have experience in the shuffling industry, and by marketing shufflers, “I think there’s a lot of upside there,” said Boguslawski.
