Andrew Pascal is no stranger to gaming — on multiple platforms. As founder and chief executive of PlayStudios, a developer of social and mobile casino games, it took years of experience in Las Vegas integrated resorts and forays in slot machine innovation for Pascal to ultimately form the company in 2011.
Pascal’s career follows the Las Vegas renaissance in the 1990s. After working with his aunt and uncle, hoteliers Elaine and Steve Wynn, to start up The Mirage and other Wynn properties that transformed the Las Vegas Strip, he sought to change how slot machines were played. Experiences in hospitality and game manufacturing ultimately brought him to build products that exist where mobile and casino games meet.
The Review-Journal spoke with Pascal about his career, gaming innovation and the overlap between mobile and casino gaming in a recent interview. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Review-Journal: Let’s start with talking about your early career. You started in casinos, in different Wynn-run properties. What are you most proud of when you think about your work at Wynn Resorts and the Golden Nugget?
Pascal: I’m proud to have been a part of a history and legacy of excellence in terms of the types of places Steve and Elaine built and/or renovated, the experiences they created. But more importantly, what they were able to achieve in terms of talent they brought into the company — and the fact that they were able to recognize they’re just so central to delivering on a really impeccable experience. For me and everybody else that’s been a part of one of their resorts, I think it’s a really important part of the emotional connection you have to the place. It’s really rooted in feeling that sense of pride, knowing that you’re working for people and an organization that fundamentally cares about the customers they serve and about you as part of their team. To have that kind of exposure early in my career really affected the way I also think about the types of organizations that I want to help shape and create.
What led you to leave those initial positions in the casinos and transition to some of your early tech-based gaming companies like Silicon Gaming and WagerWorks?
I spent my high school years in the Bay Area, in San Francisco, which was super formative. I was exposed to the whole startup, very entrepreneurial environment that it is in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. I think I was pretty enamored with the idea of just creating something, teaming up with a collection of people from different disciplines and having a shared vision.
But yet, when I got out of school I started at the Golden Nugget and was just fascinated with that here, within one integrated casino-resort, you had all these different industries and businesses so it was an incredible place to learn. You want to learn about the hotel industry, you could; beverage, you could; about the casino industry, you could; about all the administrative functions and support of any business. There was so much that you can glean from being in that environment. That’s where I went feeling and thinking that I could acquire skills that I would need to enable me to ultimately venture out and do something on my own.
I then found myself getting more deeply connected to the industry itself, seeing how much opportunity there was within different aspects of the casino industry. What I was really focused on within the casino industry was the fact that the core content was ripe for innovation. When the Wynns created the Mirage, they really brought about the whole renaissance in Las Vegas through the 90s. It was remarkable to see the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars — in today’s dollars, billions of dollars — were being spent on creating these very fanciful places but yet it wasn’t really changing or evolving that much. So, I came at it from the perspective of, we have a really unique and interesting…
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