Casinos are places that encourage people to gamble with their money for the chance of winning more. The longer people play, the more profit casinos make. The design of a casino helps accomplish this goal by creating an inviting and appealing environment.
One of the ways casinos encourage players to stay longer is by providing them with comps, or free goods and services. These gifts range from free rooms to dinner and show tickets to airline flights and even limo service. Casinos also encourage players to gamble by making the games with the worst odds the most attractive, often by amping them up with flashing lights and bright colors. Craps, for example, are the games with the worst odds, but they’re also the most exciting to watch.
Something about gambling attracts cheaters and con artists who try to find a way to beat the house. This is why casinos spend so much time, effort and money on security. In addition to hiring professional security guards, they use cameras to monitor every table, window and doorway. These high-tech eye-in-the-sky systems are monitored by security workers in a room filled with banks of security monitors.
Though Scorsese makes no apologies for the movie’s hellacious violence (including a torture-by-vice sequence that had to be trimmed for an NC-17 rating), the film carries with it an ambivalent appreciation of the old Vegas that Ace and Nicky represent. As he laments, “Today it looks like Disneyland.” But the movie also suggests that while casinos are a good business, they may not be so great for the town they’re in.