GUEST COLUMN
Channel hopping
T
his industry has been talking about ‘multi-channel’ for a while now, but there’s still some confusion around the exact meaning of the term. For many, it seems that rolling out the same game on desktop and mobile justifies shouting from the rooftops about how forward-thinking and innovative they are.
But for the most part their boasts fail to take into account land-based machine content, which remains a significant chunk of the overall market in many territories around the world. Those that have adapted to all three channels tend to be heritage land-based suppliers, as opposed to those in the online and mobile space moving the other way. That’s because taking an online slot and creating an appropriate land-based machine version is a complex task, not least from a technological, regulatory, and game play perspective. These barriers have put many off even trying. Those that have tried
have generally struggled because they failed to understand these complexities.
New designs and innovation So how does a developer make a successful leap from the online to
retail environment? To start with, it’s important to acquire land-based expertise to complement an existing team of online specialists. You must then recalibrate your game to account for the different environments in which it will be played. Gaming in retail betting shops tends to deliver much shorter playing
sessions than its online cousin, and as a result the way the game looks and plays on the machine in-shop is extremely important. Online slots enjoy significant virtual real estate in which to compete for users’ attention. But on an in-venue machine, your game must justify its existence against a maximum of 40 or so rivals. This increases the need for instant returns and longevity; if the game doesn’t perform well from the outset, it will be removed quickly. As a result, there is an added pressure to create a slot which stands out from the crowd. Ironically, this pressure often leads to the roll out of very similar
games, as suppliers attempt to mirror the successes of earlier titles. But in the long run these fail to provide the element of differentiation players crave. Instead, we should all be striving to create innovative features and game elements that are so successful they become the things that others want to copy. From a design perspective, creating an eye-catching proposition is
even more important in the retail space, where other potential customers see the game being played and word of mouth is a powerful acquisition tool. Some of the nuances of the gameplay between channels can
potentially make a big difference to the success of the game too. For example, you can play the B2 version of our new game, The Fruit
Realistic Games’ CEO Andy Harris explains why a new approach to game design is required to master the real art of multi-channel
Machine, in the shops for stakes of £20. But the online version of the B2 game has far more staking flexibility in order to provide the large number of players who prefer to play for much lower stakes access to the excitement and benefits of this feature. The return to player percentage (RTP) of
games also provides a massive challenge, because adapting it to different environments almost always has knock-on effects to gameplay. That’s why suppliers must always ask themselves if a game is flexible enough to prove a success across a number of different RTP options. Then there is the technical side; coding a game for a land-based machine provides very different challenges from making one for an online environment. Acquiring people with the right technical and game development skills is therefore a fundamental element in the production of a successful retail product. And perhaps last but not least is the increasingly complex and
different regulatory requirements across the channels, which are enough to keep compliance and development teams constantly on their toes. In short, making a game for the online market is a fundamentally
different challenge to making one in retail. Having said that, the principles of game development should follow the same ethos that we have tried to adopt for all of our online content – that a deep understanding of and empathy for the player, as well as the devices and environments that they are consuming the products on and in, should stand you in very good stead.
The future of multi-channel
For our new five-reel game, The Fruit Machine, which is being rolled out on desktop, phone, tablet, as well as across machines in Ladbrokes’ 2,000 plus strong UK retail estate, we had to address all of these challenges to create a truly multi-channel experience. Our plan is to apply the lessons and principles we’ve learned in its
development not only to the re-purposing of existing games in our portfolio, but new ones that we develop in the coming years. But we are a small part of a larger industry, both supplier and operator, which is still only scratching the surface of the opportunities presented by proper multi-channel content. Players these days demand to be able to play their favourite games
anywhere, at any time, on any device or in any environment. Only providers who can service that need fully should be entitled to call themselves multi-channel suppliers.
MAY 2016 73
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