When I was carrying out fieldwork in Macau in 2010, I spent many evenings in the casinos, so much so that I fell asleep many times on a slot machine, only to be woken up by the guards. But one thing that totally fascinated me was the virtual table game …
There are huge digital screens with rows of machines laid out before them like in a cinema. These machines are individualized consoles where gamblers sit and play collectively in a game of baccarat or poker. The human croupier has been replaced by a simulation on the screen. All eyes are on this virtual figure as he/she performs the duties of a croupier – distributing cards, revealing the hand of the house, asking for bets, clearing the table, disbursing/collecting money etc. But it is not the mechanical functions of a croupier that capture the magic of this performance – this digital figure is hyperreal in a hypersexualized way. Female ones are buxomy, their cleavages clearly bursting out of a uniform two sizes too small for them, and quite visibly heaving to the rhythm of an electronic heartbeat. They tend towards the coquettish, flipping their locks or tucking a strand of errant hair behind the ear, smiling and making eye contact with gamblers at their consoles. Male ones are, in the same vein, excessively masculine. When a gambler gets a good opening hand, he looks at the gambler, shoots a thumbs up and yells, “Good card!” (in Cantonese). His actions are as sharp as the female ones are soft, though both are totally professional and flawless – they even “clear” their hands, which is the act of revealing their open palms to the surveillance cameras above them every time they come into contact with chips or money. At some point in the rounds and rounds of bacarrat/poker, the croupier turns to his/her left, as if responding to the pit manager, turns back to the gambler, and excuses him/herself. It is time for a change in shift. He/she wishes the gamblers the best of luck and walks away, only to be replaced by another digital croupier. Male or female, blonde or brunette, Chinese or European (or Jamaican? I can’t tell for one of them), they are all perfect workers – always friendly, never makes a mistake, incorruptible, indefatigable and (I suspect) cheaper than their fleshy analogue.
At the individualized console, the player has a screen that shows his cards. When he receives these cards, with their backs facing him, he can “peel” them by stroking the screen, somewhat similar to the touch screen of an Iphone, thus simulating how a gambler likes to slowly turn over and reveal the card to himself. Except, of course, none of these are actually happening. No card is turned over, no “table” is cleared, no croupiers undergo shift change, and though money is won or lost, no actual chips exchange hands, despite what the performance will have us believe. Despite everything happening in virtual space, the play experience is designed to be as close as possible to the living fleshy realm of human interaction.
Within the industry, there is a term called “player resistance” to describe how gamblers instinctively reject games they do not trust. All these attention to simulating and reproducing bodily habits are done in the name of overcoming player resistance. In Macau, gamblers do not take to slot machines the way Americans do, and industry players are acutely aware of this cultural aversion. But Americans in the 1950s were also distrustful of slot machines, and it took almost 30 years for the industry to mould the machine into the physiological and psychological contours of the American player, transforming the slot department from a peripheral distraction for women and small-change gamblers to the biggest profit maker in US casinos today. In Macau, industry players have initiated this process, and the digitized table game is one way in which the Chinese gambler, in playing the game that he likes and is used to, is acclimatized to this technological mediation.
A year later, I had the opportunity to work for a month in the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Las Vegas Nevada. There I dug through the professional journals, and found a series of advertisements by the gaming technology company Aruze. It was a wonderful discovery, and a little bizarre to catch up with this cosmopolitan cast of perfect workers …
