Pulse
LIVE CASINO: GAME SHOWS EVOLUTION
in the world in both directions, desktop and tablet. Tat is the minimum expectation.
How do you iterate upon games to create new experiences for players?
Players want options. Not only are there different types of player, but there are different types of moods for the same player. We have 20 different types of Roulette including multipliers such as Lightning Roulette, Roulette with two zeros, Roulette with two balls, Roulette with immersive slow-motion replay, Speed Roulette, Auto Roulette, Instant Roulette dealt by 12 auto machines so you can player super-fast or super slow, and Roulette with 15 different spoken languages. Every possible iteration of Roulette you can imagine.
Take Salon Privé as an example. Salon Privé has a €1,000 minimum bet. Te host is intentionally told to only speak when spoken to, call the numbers as they were, not to be chatty or focus too much on one player. Tese are serious players betting serious money so keep it tight. Contrast this with regular Roulette where the host will talk about movies and video games. Everything is highly curated all the way down to how dealers are told to dress and their communication style.
How does the management of risk and fraud in Live Casino differ from land-based?
Prior to coming to Evolution, I was in charge of all the gaming for MGM Resorts on slots and tables. We were sophisticated - we owned the Bellagio, Te Mirage, and Mandalay Bay with casino operations from Macau to Detroit. We were very good at catching fraud and making sure games were run tight.
However, that doesn't even come close to how we do it at Evolution. I was blown away. Every time there is a shuffle, it is tracked to see how good and random it is. Have cards been redealt in the same sequence as before? Has there been a sufficient shuffle? We have wheel tracking to ensure the ball never develops a bias. What we used to do every week at MGM, we do every hour at Evolution to rebalance the wheel. Te operational requirements are so intense.
In some jurisdictions, it is illegal to use an electronic device to count cards in land-based casinos. Online, everyone is doing it. You have to be so good to detect all of the shady stuff whilst also tracking 8,000 game presenters to ensure their game speed is good and mistakes are minimised. Dialling in those balances is very tricky. A lot of companies mess it up and have the scars to prove it.
The studio used for one of Evolution's latest games, Live Craps, is set in 1920s America. How do you settle on a studio’s design? Where do players want to spend their time?
P86 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS
Te last five per cent of getting all the finer details into studio design takes up half your time. Whilst Live Craps was launched for a European audience, people think of Craps as a proper American gambler's game. Unlike game shows, this is authentic gambling played by experienced and predominantly male players. Although we try as hard as we can to strip away a lot of the intimidation, first time players are unlikely to stumble onto a Craps table.
When designing a studio, we ask ourselves what players are expecting before they come to the table. What do they think it is going to be and how do we exceed their expectations? With Craps, players expect it to be old school. We then asked ourselves how far back we should go. After settling on a 1920s, speakeasy feel, we knew it couldn't become a childish and cartoony theme. We didn't want Live Craps to be themed, but instead comfortable. It has to be balanced just right and it would be very easy to mess up.
You constantly have to innovate. We need to create the look and feel as a mix between YouTube,
Facebook, Netflix and apps that people play because these are how players are defining fun and
entertainment. Some games are familiar with a little twist and others can be paradigm changes that might fail. But that's okay too. If it finds an audience, however small, then we are in good shape.
We entertained the idea of a gentle smoke machine for cigars, but felt that may have been going a little bit too far.
How do you gauge and respond to player feedback?
A game's launch is not the end of the story. We're always looking for ways to make games better based on player feedback. For example, in Craps Live, players were asking in the chat whether they could turn off the bets in the come-out roll. Despite it being an advanced superusers feature, enough people have requested it that we are going to integrate the feature in a couple of months. In Deal or No Deal Live, players said they no longer wanted to qualify for the bonus round. We're now changing it so players can pay money and go straight into the game.
On Mega Ball, you can currently buy up to 200 cards. As there are so many people now buying the maximum number of cards, we are upping it to 400 cards. Despite certain phones not being able to handle the extra processing power, we are going to offer the option to those whose devices can.
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