Casinos and Popular Culture: Eternally Entwined for the Benefit of Slots
From the sight of a Sean Connery in his prime 007 years – bedecked in a tuxedo and nonchalantly lighting a handmade Balkan cigarette – to the fervent concentration of an unassuming Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, some of the most iconic moments ever seen in film have taken place in a casino setting. Naturally, the innate glamour of the casino, with its bright lights, clashing colors, ceaseless noise, and high stakes can often be the main draw with films that heavily involve the depiction of high-pressure gaming.
Slot Machine’ – Jeff Kubina via Flickr (CC-BY-SA 2.0)
Television shows are also a popular source of themes, as well as films,. It has been a long evolutionary process, but online slot machines can now display sophisticated visuals from a specific film or television show, and even play iconic scores from them. For instance, with a range of sound effects pertinent to the popular British show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here, which ran for two series in the US, provides a particularly clear example of just how smooth the transition from screen to gaming site can be today. Sounds readily associated with the outback, such as rattlesnakes and wild birds can only serve to immerse the gamer ever more deeply. So too does the imagery of that same wildlife, which literally crawls over numbers in the now-familiar flagship font of the show.
The now-vast range of livestream casino events has completed that which the film industry unwittingly began more than fifty years ago. Companies such as Redbet Poker now reflect the glamour of the card table as do the game’s biggest winners in history – the most notable of which is Phil Ivey, who once won $19,242,743 online. Such stories can only inspire people to consider trying their hand at poker, but only one in a million will ultimately act on that desire. That reluctance in the vast majority, to immerse oneself in a land-based casino game, is understandable. In addition to representing a relatively new ‘safe space’ for the less seasoned gamer, the internet is also the primary source of film and television-themed games.
Excellence in eponymy
The most iconic casino-centric films, such as those seen in this top ten list on TheMost10, predate the boom of companies like 32Red. Thus, it could be argued that they provided the foundation for the way in which the glamour of the land casino was so successfully translated into the digital world. At the summit of said list is (naturally) Casino, directed by Martin Scorsese. Released in November 1995, it features a range of characters, all of whom correlate well with the potentially extreme nature of gaming, with two, in particular, standing out as prominent.
On the one hand, Sam Rothstein (Robert De Niro) conducts his business with dignity, but is not adverse to treating incompetent staff and rowdy, uncooperative clientele with brutal contempt. By contrast, his enforcer Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) is superlatively psychotic. Santoro’s actions throughout the film culminate in him being buried alive. Metaphorically, this scene – above all others in the film – appears to represent the dangers of overconfidence in the casino. As a result, the common ground between popular culture and casino gaming is subtly reinforced.
Card games and media representation - cruelty in kindness
Although Casino has a famous scene, in which Sam Rothstein berates a member of staff when a slot machine pays out a jackpot three times in a single night, a vast majority of people will struggle to name any film in which a slot machine provides a focal point. However, card games cannot possibly emulate the key elements from film and television as well as slot machines.
Though themed card games are also an entity, the strategy required to succeed in them does not appeal to the majority of gamers, who typically crave instant results for minimal effort. This is recognised by a number of online companies, that ensure their slot games are mentioned in search engine results. One case in hand is 21casino, with the searcher instantly seeing that they have an "extensive selection of slot games".
Ultimately, it is ironic in the extreme that films glamorize card games far more than slot machines, yet are merchandised through the latter at the expense of the former’s (now apparently dwindling) popularity. The only conclusion that can be drawn at this stage is that it is a trend which will continue for the foreseeable future with online gaming companies at the forefront of this continued development.
