Nestled in the heart of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) campus is one of the gambling industry’s greatest incubators: The Center for Gaming Innovation. It’s half-class, half-development studio. Dr. Daniel Sahl runs it to support burgeoning creatives and their innovative ideas.
Sahl became the center’s director in 2020, but his history with the program runs deep.
“The Center started in 2013,” Sahl said, “with Dr. Mark Yoseloff at the helm. He was (and is) a prolific inventor, developer, and game designer.”
Yoseloff was ShuffleMaster’s CEO from 2000-09. In 2013, he formed the Center for Gaming Innovation and retired from the post in 2020. Sahl was there from the start.
“I took the very first Center For Gaming Innovation class in 2013,” he said. “I was studying game design as part of my dissertation.”
Sahl quickly embraced the class’s ethos and became enamored with its innovative work. The year after his first experience with the Center, he was hired to support Yoseloff and help students develop their ideas.
“I had a bit of a knack for teaching and innovating,” Sahl said. He was a natural fit for the director position after Yoseloff left.
Since Sahl took the leadership role, the Center for Gaming Innovation has grown to encompass a landmark DraftKings sponsorship that includes the “DraftKings Gaming Innovation Studio at UNLV and provides DraftKings with access to local talent, while furthering the company’s ties to the Las Vegas community,” according to a press release.
Sahl’s class is a hotbed for cutting-edge ideas for games and technology in the gambling space.
“This program has massively bolstered UNLV’s status as a world leader in gaming,” said Brett Abarbenel, associate professor/ executive director for the International Gaming Institute. “UNLV’s William F. Harrah College of Hospitality is one of the only university hospitality management programs in the world that offers a gaming concentration, and Dr. Sahl’s gaming innovation class has no equal: teaching students how to innovate by building the next generation of games. For the industry, CGI programs showcase a great Las Vegas export: knowledge and expertise in gaming. Its programs support evolution in game development, foster collaborations between academe and industry, and help build tomorrow’s workforce.”
Sahl gave GGB a peek behind the curtain of the Center, including how the class works and what happens when the semester ends.
Not Your Average Classroom
If you’re imagining a gaggle of students reading from a textbook and diligently working on papers or exams, shift your perspective. The Center For Gaming Innovation doesn’t run a “normal” class structure. There are similarities, sure—the class runs for a semester and features lectures. However, the goals extend far beyond the scope of memorizing facts. They stretch into the far-reaching corners of the gambling industry and beyond.
“I get students from all over the university and across many disciplines,” Sahl said. “Students come to the Center from the hospitality college, art, business, computer science—anyone with a creative spark is drawn to it. They want to nurture that spark.”
The class is open to students outside of UNLV as well. Demand is so high that Sahl livestreams the course, though those watching don’t receive credit.
“People tune in every week from Poland, South Africa, California, New Jersey, Canada, Japan, you name the place. People want an outlet for their ideas. They want to learn about the industry and develop their concepts.”
The course runs 16 weeks—a single academic semester. The first half is similar to a typical college course. Sahl leads eight weeks of interactive lectures on game design.
“It’s not just casino games,” he said. “We look at games as a whole, then dive deeper into the casino space. Why do people play games? How do they work? How do you design them? What are the considerations if you want to create a new game or technology for the casino space?”
While Sahl’s students are primarily interested in games, he said they also learn about affiliated technology, such as security, surveillance and finance.
After eight weeks of traditional classwork, the students shift to the application of their newfound knowledge and existing skills.
“At this point, all students are given a task: I want a new idea.”
The idea can be a game or a gambling-industry innovation. Students seem to revel in the new and novel. They present their ideas to Sahl and their classmates.
“Student presentations must provide a reasonable blueprint of the design and mechanics of their ideas,” Sahl said. “They use presentation software to do this. Some students might use their programming experience to build a game demo or a math model. The focus of the class, however, is always the idea itself. How innovative is it, and could it work as a gaming product?
“We’re very constructive and critical in this initial pitch. We identify the strongest parts of the ideas and try to trim the weaker elements.”
The second half of the course culminates in a final pitch of each idea. Collaboration is welcome and encouraged in the Center for Gaming Innovation, so some ideas come from pairs or groups of students.
“I want the pitch to feel like a student is actually pitching to a big gaming company,” Sahl said. “Different students bring different skills to their presentations. Some have a playable version of their concept while others have amazing artwork to support their idea.”
Beyond The Classroom
When the semester ends, Sahl’s desk is overflowing with ideas, many of which could be viable in the casino or gaming industry.
“I spend the rest of my year trying to identify those ideas that have the most potential and see if I can further develop them into something that might be packaged and sold,” he said.
In the past, this process has involved filing patents (these are issued to the students behind the concepts) and working with DraftKings. Sahl has a unit he calls the DraftKings Gaming Innovation Studio at UNLV. He hires students who have skills in art and programming to further develop the ideas into polished, pitchable concepts.
Not every idea makes the cut, but the lucky few stand a solid chance of finding their way into the wild. Sahl is limited in what details he can share about past successes due to non-disclosure agreements, but he said, “I’ve had more than 10 students who have licensed or sold their ideas in the past five years. These have been substantial sums—more than enough to pay off any student loans.”
Students get the money from selling their ideas, while UNLV gets a slight revenue share. Sahl’s goal is to nurture talent in the industry and create new leaders and innovators.
“There’s a lot of demand for talent in our industry, and the program has emerged as one of the venues where studios and companies can look for rising stars or talented developers,” he said.
Still Full of Surprises
After 13 years with the Center as a student, employee, and director, Sahl remains awed by the new ideas students bring to the table.
“I’ve seen hundreds of ideas,” he said. “It is remarkable for me how rare it is to see a repeat idea or an existing idea. Every year, I worry it’ll be the one that doesn’t yield any new ideas. And every year, I’m proven wrong. One or two ideas always pop up and make me think, ‘Wow. I didn’t think it was possible to create a game that way, but it’s an interesting concept.’”
