Hidden complexity of video game slots

Slots players are not reckless

Slots players are gambling. Pressing the SPIN button, although it looks like a simple action, mental processes are not. Gamblers base their decisions on how the features of the game work and what winnings or “near-winnings” they receive. This is called the potential of a mathematical model.

All casino games have a certain percentage of slot return to the player (RTP), so how the players win and how often they do it becomes an important differentiating factor. How do individual games become more popular than others? Due to the volatility and distribution of payments - the basic mathematical terms used in the development of slots.

Design first, then mathematics

Slots developers have a saying: “visual style attracts players - math holds them.”

As a storefront with a bad sign or a book with a bad cover, a very good mathematical model can suffer if the design does not attract new customers. However, what attracts one person may be completely indifferent to another. Therefore, it’s not so much the design that is important as the diversity to cover more players. The imposition of a new visual theme on the same mathematical model is called a skin. A new perspective mathematical model can be released on several skins.
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One day, a beautifully executed game with Chinese themes failed during the first month after the release. The skin of that model, made by another team with a unique, pre-rendered 3D design, was already in the final stages of development. We didn’t want to change him, because he had just received the approval of GLI, the watchdog industry, and the marketing and sales departments were ready to start campaigns. So we released the skin, and you would not believe it, but it came. The same mathematics, the same elements, rendered differently, gave completely different results.

In the end, people get tired of math. We tried to introduce new skins to give the model a new life, but none of them worked. Lessons learned? Never rely on one topic to determine the viability of a mathematical model, and do not underestimate the importance of design to create a hit.

So why not just do every time a new skin of a proven mathematical model? Some games have many skins so that they continue to generate income. But it is worth going too far, and it will look like a street with different restaurants serving the same food, or a shelf of books telling the same story. Players have different tastes and over time they get tired of their choice.

Features games

When a player sits down at the next slot machine, he first looks at the visual style, and then draws attention to the features - which he saw in an advertisement or on the slot's start screen. These features are exactly what distinguishes one slot from another. They are patented and registered as trademarks. When a feature is successful, it can be reused in combination with other features or on a different set of reels with slightly different volatility and payout distribution.

A feature is often a small change in the rules, which creates a deceptive impression that the game will pay you. These can be unique symbols, re-spin, pushing the reels, paying out side bonuses or increasing the number of free spins, etc. Whatever she does, she does not change the total percentage return of the slot to the player (RTP), but only the perception of your chances of winning.

Such interaction with the player makes slot machines more difficult than just pressing the SPIN button.

When a player notices a feature that he likes or that he has never seen, he can sit down at a new slot. It can be expressed differently depending on how it was combined with other features or a unique type of drum. If players understand that this is only the skin of an old game, they are less likely to try it. And even less will be interested in the appearance of the next game. When a player sees the inscription "NEW GAME", he expects new impressions.

For this reason, developers prefer to experiment a bit with successful mathematical models, rather than just changing skins. This is useful for filling a bank of machines with an already successful mathematical model, but it is unlikely to repeat a success. Thus, each original game, each new change of a popular feature is nothing more than another attempt to repeat the success.

Companies developing casino games want all mathematical models to work perfectly. So DO NOT HAPPEN. There is no ONE SECRET RECIPE. Partly because of the diversity of players, but more so because they get bored and are looking for something new. An effective game can pay company bills for a while, but in the end, sales will still decline. Companies use a haphazard approach - combining innovative design, derivatives of mathematical models and changes and skins of old effective mathematical models. They constantly play in competition, read sales reports, track down successful trends, invent and patent new ideas and secretly decompile or steal mathematics from each other.

Thus, an important metric for all companies developing slots is the number of original mathematical models that they produce. Large companies in the slots market target 50-100 new slot machines per year. From one third to one half of them have new original mathematics or changes to previously successful mathematical models.

Progress in the gaming machine

The player must have no win periods to create tension, followed by intensity bursts. This puts players on an emotional rollercoaster. A shooter with a poor balance can constantly throw enemies at the player, mixing each next wave with the previous one, creating a very intense, but ultimately quickly annoying user experience.

Progress in a good slot machine is likewise controlled by emotional slides, which corresponds to the volatility of the mathematical model. A player must lose as much - if not more often - as much as win in order to experience more pleasure from victory. Such wins, as a rule, are larger.

Slots that constantly give small wins, worsen the gaming experience. They are called dribblers. There are players who prefer such slots, unlike casino operators, because they lead to a very long time on the device with the same twenty or forty dollars that players entered into the game. Players who love these slots can enjoy the whole evening for the price of a movie ticket. Therefore, it is not surprising that they are usually popular in bars and local casinos.

Gambling mathematical models are more volatile. In these games, there may be a long series of zero or very meager wins, before a big win or bonus occurs, where players can play their money. The right moment and a little luck - and you can hit the jackpot or get a lot of bonuses and get away with a lot of money.

Of course, most players, as a rule, simply donate money to the slot machine, as if it were free money, completely forgetting that they might have lost hundreds of dollars in previous casinos. This is how a casino makes money.

Win demonstration

A huge mistake is to exaggerate a small victory. As in the case of progress, if the player constantly receives big wins, animations of symbols, bells and whistles, they make every victory ordinary. Players will no longer notice big wins. For this reason, the slot machines do not animate the winning combination if the win is lower than x2 (doubled bet), but shows a huge firework of coins and fountains of jewels when you win x20 or more.

The mere appearance of a bonus, which players will patiently wait for, because it is from him that you can often get a win, often will be accompanied by a special animation. If you need 3 characters to drop the bonus, the games use such special effects during rotation: animation of the indicator and sound on the first symbol, even louder on the second, and then a special animation of subsequent reels with backlight, acceleration, and adjustment of the time they stop, so that create the effect of anticipation of victory. If the bonus is dropped, the bell will ring - a shrill sound that occurs in all games when the player receives a special win.

Like Pavlov's dogs, players learn to listen to these sounds and expect such effects in anticipation of a great reward. They will continue to return to the game, hoping to recreate these feelings, repeat their victory, or receive a greater reward.

Other players will hear the call and see what kind of game pays a cash reward. They can stop their current session to see the clink of coins on the top screen (they are specifically set to reach a large audience). They will remember this machine to try to repeat the success of another player.

Thus, the games are constantly vying for the emotions of the players from the victories. Visualization of winning coupled with win size is crucial to the success of the game.

Understanding player demographics

Slot machines, especially in offline casinos, unlike online or mobile social slots, are usually played by older women (50+). The average age of a female player is 53 years. Thus, they will not necessarily be interested in the latest trends in computer graphics or in the same topics that you, as a developer, would like to work on.

When I first joined my company, I worked with many artists and animators who would like to work on a Pixar film or a console shooter, but the reality was that their average age (25 years) did not coincide with the average age of the players in the slots. Is it any wonder that the cartoony games and youth-related steampunk topics did not perform well?

I insisted on 3D graphics, because it was my background, but, of course, this is not necessarily what would make a 50-year-old grandmother to play. I had some success with 3D slots (“Goddess of the Woods”), but not with all the 3D games, and, considering that they took two, or even three times more time and effort, it was hard to convince guide that pure 3d makes financial sense. They would prefer to see two or three games with a simple 2D theme than a single 3D game. They saved 3D for premium or licensed titles.

This moment was confirmed by my other game (“Gold Dragon Red Dragon”), made in 2D in After Effects and Photoshop, which was released and tested in less than a month: it was sold several times better than games that were spent on developing more time.

Of course, dragons are almost always popular because they represent the fantasy genre, and also symbolize wealth. We started to release a lot more dragon games after Gold Dragon Red Dragon.

Then come the licensed titles. Companies such as IGT, Aristocrat and WMS, produced games with movie stars, television stars and other celebrities. However, if they do not intersect with the target audience, as is done in Wheel of Fortune, Sex in the City or Monopoly, they do not have much success. Even in spite of the fact that in Dragon's Lair game, which I created, there was a well-known dragon, which was popular in the arcade machines of the 80s, it did not find a response from a female audience of 50+. We overestimated its popularity among slots players.

Of course, preferences change, and quirks come and go. One great mathematical model on the subject can breathe new life into it. The Asian theme always went away and came back again, until it was so much that everyone was bored. High 5 Games with IGT released slots with the most realistic characters. The upper screens looked more like the covers of love stories than slot machines. Given the popularity of the novels, should it be surprising that such games were successful among women 50+? All other companies began to do the same in such a way that fancy cartoonish or sci-fi themes began to stand out. Thus, the subject and design come and go, but always keep abreast of the latest trends.

The importance of research and understanding

It is necessary to play games of competitors. This is a truism for ordinary video game designers. Although they can be blamed for creating similar games, they all must first learn to be players. But just like video game designers, the creators of slots, being well-versed in mathematics, still need to understand what the players want and think about. Any good mathematician can make the game reach the intended percent of the return of the slot, and a good slot designer will invest in it “almost misses”, the balance of victories and defeats and the frequency of loss of features and bonuses to get a big win.

Understanding is closely related to the expectations of the player. If it feels like the game could potentially pay a lot and sometimes it does, players will continue to play and return to this slot machine to repeat this experience.

Volatility reflects how fierce the mathematical model feels. Players may feel that math sucks their money. But if this happens with a few “near-misses” on the feature or bonus along with a few decent x5 and x10 victories, then it seems that one day the stars can converge: you will cash out the winnings equal to the next payment for a car or a monthly rental housing. If you have never seen such winnings, then the reason is a mathematical model with high volatility, in which only 1 out of 5 players (or sessions) win. This leads to the fact that players spend very little time behind such a machine.

Usually, casinos love such brutal games because they get your money faster, but a smaller percentage of players return to them. This is ideal for targeted casinos like the Strip in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, which players only visit once or twice a year. Unlike local casinos and bars with a lot of weekly return traffic, which prefers less volatile math. Manufacturers often offer different volatility and return percentages of the return slot of the same game in different casinos.

Instead of conclusion

Since I have gone from offline and online casinos for real money to social casinos on Facebook and on mobile devices, I try to take into account lessons learned. However, I found some significant differences.

Mobile players are a different audience. She is younger and more male. They play more often, but their sessions are shorter. They play while watching TV after dinner, during a break at work or sitting in the toilet.

Paying real money to win and lose virtual money - it still amazes me. Some players intentionally do this, and it fits well with free-to-play and shareware models that rely on whales, which make up between 1 and 2% of all your paying players. As it turned out, the mathematical models that make casinos rich also make players lose chips and money in mobile games.

Players love to win, even if it has no real value. Slots players get something from winning, even if it is simply the result of pressing the SPIN button.