“Until a game is on the casino floor or in players’ hands, you're never going to know how it will perform. You can
make assumptions and look at data, but until the game is in front of a player - you never truly know how it will be
received. This is why we are building up a social arm with the idea to effectively trial a theme. Do you want to be an angry pirate or a happy pirate? Are monster or cartoony themes better? Essentially, simple A/B testing which, if we mature quickly enough to
get eyeballs on our games, is a goal to strive for. As it is, this is a long way away.”
vice versa, or indeed in every casino. Tere is a tonne of overlap between brick-and-mortar players and online, and you see that from a growth perspective.
“Online gaming didn't exist in New Jersey, Michigan or Pennsylvania several years ago. Now, both brick and mortar gaming and online revenues are exploding in those markets. Yes, it's a lot of the same players, but new players too. Tat's what is attracting casinos to iGaming - it's a potential user acquisition tool to drive boots to the ground.”
DWARFED
Aruze’s stated goal is to keep the online experience of playing their games as similar as possible to the casino floor. However, cabinets are only getting bigger – which we’ll all see at ICE this month. A game built for a machine that looms over our heads is never going to be the same on a mobile device, nor is there unlimited memory and gigantic computers.
“I don't have eight feet of screen to play with but a few inches,” explains Kurt. “Depending on the market, you aim for the minimum standard of device. In Europe there are a lot of older devices meaning smaller, lower resolution screens. We try to keep games from land-based as similar as possible, but we have a lot more limitations.
you ask! Yet Buffalo was the one that became an icon. Tere is a reason suppliers put out several games per year. If they knew what was going to hit, they'd only put out 10. It's the reason we produce the volume of games we do.
“Until a game is on the casino floor or in players’ hands, you're never going to know how it will perform. You can make assumptions and look at data, but until the game is in front of a player - you never truly know how it will be received.
“Tis is why we are building up a social arm with the idea to effectively trial a theme. Do you want to be an angry pirate or a happy pirate? Are monster or cartoony themes better? Essentially, simple A/B testing which, if we mature quickly enough to get eyeballs on our games, is a goal to strive for. As it is, this is a long way away.”
Data has borne out that there is an overlap in the demographic of land-based and online players. In Kurt’s previous places of employment, namely GAN and Aristocrat, social games were also on the casino floor and the loyalty programmes played a huge role in the online marketing for digital casinos and igaming.
Tere is a huge corollary, particularly with the bigger players online loyal to a brick-and- mortar brand – but this does depend on the right product mix.
“You are never going to have the perfect mix of every game on the casino floor being online and
P52 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS
“Te changes Apple made around iOS last year have only complicated things further. In the US, everything has to be native app and fully embedded, meaning that games have to be compressed even more. Ultimately, our goal is to deliver an entertaining experience for the player.
“When the experience gets too divergent, that becomes a factor in game selection. Tis is why we are going to start building digital-only titles. Tese will be built for mobile first where two thirds of the players on average are engaging - if not higher depending on the market.”
Part of Aruze’s Activ-Play game line is Go Go Claw which offers an unexpected blend of arcade and casino style play whereby a physical claw is used to attempt to place one of the prize balls in the collection bin to unveil a jackpot. An innovative take on a traditional slot machine, the machine captures the eye on a busy casino floor.
Another, Rock Paper Scissors Instant Win, funnily enough sees players choose rock, paper, or scissors against the machine. Te rules are the same as the traditional game; each time a hand sign is chosen, a bet is placed. A winning play against the machine results in a randomised prize wheel, ties level up the prize wheel up to five times, and a loss is a reason to play again.
But is there enough flexibility to do this in the online space, given the size constraints and lack of social element?
“Go Go Claw is a good example of Aruze successfully putting a completely different style game into the market. It has been flying out of the warehouse and performing very well on
floors, as has Rock, Paper, Scissors Instant Win. Development for the digital games is already underway, but is far out on the roadmap at this point.
“As we get into next year, we want to start launching titles more in parallel and, at a minimum, getting titles out across land-based and online within a quarter of each other. It would be great if we could be co-releasing titles by 2024/25.
“We are super excited by the potential of these innovative land-based titles online because engineers want to do interesting things. Aruze gives engineers more leeway to do that. If somebody at other industry suppliers wanted to manufacture and develop a Go Go Claw game, they'd likely be laughed out of the engineering office.
“We're willing to give things a go. In fact, we're looking at potentially releasing live dealer-style versions of our ETGs. We have Shoot To Win Craps which is an auto roll Craps game. We're looking to do a video-based version of this online which will look like a live dealer. Tis goes back to what I was saying about striving to take our retail products online in a differentiated way that no one has done for.
“Everybody thinks that innovation is over and the gaming industry has discovered all the new and interesting ways to do things, but there is still a hell of a lot to do and we've likely only just
“We have Shoot To Win Craps which is an auto roll Craps game. We're looking to do a video-based version of this online which will look like a live dealer. This goes back to what I was saying about striving to take our retail products online in a differentiated way that no one has done for.
“Everybody thinks that innovation is over and the gaming industry has
discovered all the new and
interesting ways to do things, but there is still a hell of a lot to do and we've likely only just scratched the surface.”
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