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Writing the rulebook
In our regular look at the issues facing land-based casino operators planning a move online, Barnaby Page explores why standards matter and names don’t (much)
You will be forgiven for not throwing your hat in the air and whooping at the news that Gaming Laboratories International (GLI) and its TST unit have issued a technical standard for e-gaming, GLI-19. After all, the mere words “technical standard” are enough to send many consumer-oriented execs to sleep.
But it is important. This standard, drawn up after consultation with regulators, suppliers and operators in Europe and Canada (the territories where GLI reckons e-gaming rules are most sophisticated), means that authorities in other jurisdictions won’t have to reinvent the virtual Roulette wheel when they come to drawing up their own regulations on the technical aspects of online gambling. They can simply say to the industry: “Do as GLI says.”
And that, in turn, will make life easier for developers and operators, who should be able to reuse systems designed for one territory in another without profound changes, and start planning their technology strategy for new markets even before the laws governing e-gaming are put in place. It will be a boon for the makers of server-based games for bricks-and-mortar venues, as well, giving them a chance to future-proof their products in anticipation of the day that they are delivering the same content to casino floors and online.
The standard – in two parts, one for suppliers and one for operators – is available at www.gaminglabs.com.
Just because ICANN?
Regular readers may recall that I recently cast doubt on the wisdom of spending big bucks on generic domain names (like Gambling.com or Poker.org), and pointed out that nearly all the success stories of the Internet have names that are either meaningless or, at least, not directly descriptive of their business (like Amazon, Google, or eBay).
Since then, ICANN – the body responsible for overseeing the global domain-name system – has announced that anyone can apply (for $185,000 plus, inevitably, the rest) to register any term, subject to some length limitations, as a top-level domain like .com and .net. There are other conditions, but the practical implication is that a gaming industry federation, for example, could apply to create .gamble, and we could then have domain names like blackjack.gamble or slots.gamble or hollandcasino.gamble.
Yet…do we want them? For the irrelevance of descriptive domain names is not some passing quirk of the ever-changing Internet. It applies to a staggering extent, it turns out, offline as well. I was surprised when recently perusing the Interbrand list of the world’s 100 top brands that only nine have names that describe their business: IBM, Microsoft, GE, UPS, HSBC, MTV, KFC, Credit Suisse, Pizza Hut.
And in several of these cases they are now much better-known by non-descriptive initials. I don’t hear a lot of people say “Kentucky Fried Chicken” or “General Electric” these days, and I doubt “International Business Machines” has been uttered in seriousness for many decades.
A further small handful have names that suggest if not describe their line of business, for example Kleenex, Intel, Panasonic, and Nescafe, much as Amazon and Google in a slightly subtler way each imply that their offering is one of vast size.
But in the overwhelming majority of cases, the brand name is nothing at all to do with the product/service.
Or at least it didn’t start that way. Because occasionally, the process works the other way and a brand name without literal meaning becomes a generic term. Looking at the Interbrand list, the second half of Coca-Cola’s brand has achieved this, Google is probably on its way to becoming a synonym for “search”, and when we say “Disneyfication” we’re not really referring to the Disney organisation or its products per se, just its approach. Other famous examples, of course, include Hoover and Biro and Xerox.
So, does anyone know of a brand name in gaming that has acquired a broader meaning? I’m wondering, for example, if some of the generic terms for table games today might have started life as the names of specific products.
But in wondering that, I digress. The lesson for those in the casino business who are making their move online seems to be: certainly, don’t pick a wrong name, one that’s difficult to remember, or carries unwelcome connotations, or is tough to pronounce for non-English-speakers, or doesn’t tally with your market positioning – for example, EveryPuntersAWinner.com is not a clever choice for an upscale service.
But getting the consumer proposition right, and delivering on it, is much more important in the long run and deserves much more of your attention than the quest for the perfect name.
