Reducing the speed of the ball and the bounce reduces a lot of stress on the wheel. It was a side-effect of reducing the spin time of the wheel. If you think about it - it’s
straightforward. If you want the game to speed up, then you spin slower, and as a result you encounter fewer problems as you also increase stability.
IGT
Deconstructing the Multiplayer - Part Two Last month we posed a series of questions to Luigi Cacciapuoti
Vice President of Specialty Product and ETG at IGT, asking him about the creation of the multiplayer - GameAce. In Part Two, we continue to delve further into the intricate changes Luigi and his team implemented during the design process.
Luigi, the GameAce wheel maintains its stability for more than four months - reducing the need for servicing. How is this achieved?
It is a combination of things. To create the additional bounciness of the ball, a high-pressure cannon was being used to fire the ball. It was so strong it was increasing wear-and-tear on the ball, which when not perfectly round starts to cause problems with the cannon mechanism. When we revised the wheel interface, we found that the wheel had roughly 15 different error states, including vibration errors that we didn’t know about. Now, with the new interface protocol, we receive all those error messages, and we can react to the outputs from the wheel.
Reducing the speed of the ball and the bounce reduces a lot of stress on the wheel. It was a side-effect of reducing the spin time of the wheel. If you think about it - it’s straightforward. If you want the game to speed up, then you spin slower, and as a result you encounter fewer problems as you also increase stability.
How does the sightline of the wheel affect player engagement - and how has IGT sought to deliver the best experience in this respect?
Our sightline changes were born from direct observation of the player focus group. We found that many players were playing standing up. Why?
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Because they wanted to witness the moment when the ball stops. In fact, 70+ percent of players wanted better visibility of the wheel, which is also an ergonomics issue. If you’re standing up, you’re going to get tired. If you get tired, you’re going to stop playing. Plus, if you can’t see the ball then your enjoyment of the game is diminishing and, again, you stop playing.
In designing the Mesa4K terminal we ensured there’s nothing ‘extra’ at the top of the machine. We made everything as low as possible to ensure that we didn’t break the player’s point of view. Additionally, we designed a new wheel housing to be flush with the top of the machine. We also conducted a simple experiment. We put the roulette wheel on a ratchet and tried to find the optimum geometry between the units and the wheel. We learned that the farther you put the wheel from the terminals, the higher the wheel needs to be. So, we maximised the height of the wheel to meet customer expectations. Previously you could see around 35 per cent of the numbers while seated. For the GameAce, we’re now at 70-72 per cent visibility of the wheel.
Tell us more about the technology of the GameAce and specifically why opt for a 4K ETG display?
I’ll tell you a story. So, there’s an adorable lady who loves our products. She’s playing in her local New York casino, and we like to conduct market
LUIGI CACCIAPUOTI Vice President of Specialty Product and ETG, IGT
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