Q&A Ask Me Anything about Slots (AMA) 2020 with Trancemonkey

[trancemonkey]

Hi all

As the other thread ( Ask me anything (about slots)!),has grown in size to the point where going through it for anyone new would be tedious at best, and impossible at worst, I thought it might be a good idea to start another one.

Let's try and keep this to new members who want to ask someone who works in the industry making games any questions they have OR the usual bunch IF you have new questions or discussions.

So, people, once again - Ask Me Anything

 

[Jono777]

You really are a glutton for punishment mate

 

[slotmaster]

Hi trancemonkey! Nice to see you back and upbeat again!

Of course the question everyone wants to ask or know, Are slots rigged?

(I am a new poster in this thread, does that count?)

 

[trancemonkey]

Hi trancemonkey! Nice to see you back and upbeat again!

Of course the question everyone wants to ask or know, Are slots rigged?

(I am a new poster in this thread, does that count?)

They are only rigged for you ... in your favour.

 

[dionysus]

I'll lock the other

 

[paul7388]

Okay i will ask you a question you probably have not been asked on here before.

Yes i think it is possible.

Do IGT slots have a special deal with William Hill as WH started doing tournaments weeks ago and it is only IGT slots they are using. Seems a weird choice of provider for tournaments and don't think anyone else uses exclusively IGT for tournaments.

And i know you have probably not worked on those slots they are using but playing the tournaments reminded me why i don't really play them.

Oh and nice to see another new thread. Will check back in a few days to see if anything is posted in the first 100 pages that has not to do with slots are rigged lol.

 

[dionysus]

FYI, would still love to see, a thread where youve addressed, say 10 Qs greatly-asked Qs and responses.
It can be a public or locked thread, but one that addressed the most asked Qs

 

[paul7388]

FYI, would still love to see, a thread where youve addressed, say 10 Qs greatly-asked Qs and responses.
It can be a public or locked thread, but one that addressed the most asked Qs

You could always sift through the other thread and select the best bits and put them in a Trances greatest Q&A thread then lock it and make it a sticky thread.

Would give you something to do for a while.

 

[dionysus]

You could always sift through the other thread and select the best bits and put them in a Trances greatest Q&A thread then lock it and make it a sticky thread.

Would give you something to do for a while.

well, besides the 100 things I barely can barely tackle, yeah
but better by Trance as trances words and thoughts
and can always still be debated elsewhere
but a good follow through from the AMA

 

[Gaz237]

FYI, would still love to see, a thread where youve addressed, say 10 Qs greatly-asked Qs and responses.
It can be a public or locked thread, but one that addressed the most asked Qs

Sorted the top ten for you.

1-Are slots rigged?. Trancemonkey-No
2-Are slots rigged?. Trancemonkey-No
3-Are slots rigged?. Trancemonkey-No
4-Are slots rigged?. Trancemonkey-No
5-Are slots rigged?. Trancemonkey-No
6-Are slots rigged?. Trancemonkey-No
7-Are slots rigged?. Trancemonkey-No
8-Are slots rigged?. Trancemonkey-No
9-Are slots rigged?. Trancemonkey-No
10-Are slots rigged?. Trancemonkey-No

No need to thank me.

 

[trancemonkey]

Okay i will ask you a question you probably have not been asked on here before.

Yes i think it is possible.

Do IGT slots have a special deal with William Hill as WH started doing tournaments weeks ago and it is only IGT slots they are using. Seems a weird choice of provider for tournaments and don't think anyone else uses exclusively IGT for tournaments.

And i know you have probably not worked on those slots they are using but playing the tournaments reminded me why i don't really play them.

Oh and nice to see another new thread. Will check back in a few days to see if anything is posted in the first 100 pages that has not to do with slots are rigged lol.

I can't honestly say. I guess it's likely an agreement with the casino that they will use your games in tournaments for a period of time as a kind of advertising campaign. Next week or month it will likely be someone else's games

 

[nutnut]

when will IGT ever make a slot I will play. awful games

 

[brianmon]

What are the UKGC regulations on autoplay?
I know there's a maximum of 100 spins. But what about loss limits?

The latest MGS HTML5 makeovers have totally unusable loss limit settings
There are 6 preset amounts - £100, £250, £500, £1000, £2500, £10000, £100 being the lowest amount
These are fixed amounts, regardless of the stake.
Is this 'legal'?

 

[mcgameboy]

TM, since you are an IGT guy, I have a question re: Pyramidion.

Do you have any info with regard to the average feature triggering frequency? *

* I'm referring to the two tomb features (Tomb Of Power, Tomb of Mystery), not the four pyramid features.

I'm only asking because the Tomb bonus seems to be REALLY difficult to trigger.
As in "Bonanza-level" difficult.

 

[Kroffe]

What are the UKGC regulations on autoplay?
I know there's a maximum of 100 spins. But what about loss limits?

The latest MGS HTML5 makeovers have totally unusable loss limit settings
There are 6 preset amounts - 100, 250, 500, 1000, 2500, 10000, 100 being the lowest amount
These are fixed amounts, regardless of the stake.
Is this 'legal'?

View attachment 133740

+1 on this.
Feels like some providers are adding useless losslimits so people wont use them.
Just let me set my own damn limits.
Making the the limits customizable would take 1 extra second while making the slot.

 

[trancemonkey]

when will IGT ever make a slot I will play. awful games

TM, since you are an IGT guy, I have a question re: Pyramidion.

Do you have any info with regard to the average feature triggering frequency? *

* I'm referring to the two tomb features (Tomb Of Power, Tomb of Mystery), not the four pyramid features.

I'm only asking because the Tomb bonus seems to be REALLY difficult to trigger.
As in "Bonanza-level" difficult.

Sadly I'm not part of the online team, so I can't give info on these games simply because I dont know anything about them

 

[trancemonkey]

What are the UKGC regulations on autoplay?
I know there's a maximum of 100 spins. But what about loss limits?

The latest MGS HTML5 makeovers have totally unusable loss limit settings
There are 6 preset amounts - £100, £250, £500, £1000, £2500, £10000, £100 being the lowest amount
These are fixed amounts, regardless of the stake.
Is this 'legal'?

View attachment 133740

The rules are as follows:

RTS 8 – Auto-play functionality
Gaming
RTS aim 8
To ensure that the customer is still in control of the gambling where auto-play functionality is provided and to minimise the risk that the functionality disadvantages a customer or that auto-play or other strategy advice is misleading.

RTS requirement 8A
The gambling system must provide easily accessible facilities that:
a. make available the following three controls, each of which stops auto-play functionality when it is triggered-
i. ‘loss limit’, ie where the player selects an option to not lose more than X from their
starting balance, where X is an amount that can be selected by the player. A ‘loss’ in
this context equates to accumulated auto-play bets minus accumulated auto-play
wins.
ii. ‘single win limit’ ie single win greater than Y where Y is an amount that can be
selected by the player and
iii. ‘jackpot win’ (where applicable).
b. require auto-play to be implemented in such a way that each time a customer chooses to use auto-play they must select the stake, the number of auto-play gambles and at least the first of the above three controls.
The number of auto-play gambles must not exceed 100 in one batch. During auto-play the customer must be able to stop the auto-play regardless of how many auto-play gambles they initially chose or how many remain.

RTS implementation guidance 8A
a. Auto-play should not override any of the display requirements (for example, the result of each gamble must be displayed for a reasonable length of time before the next gamble commences, as set out in RTS 7E).

RTS requirement 8B
In relation to skill and chance games, strategy advice and auto-play functionality must be fair, not misleading and must not represent a poor choice.

RTS implementation guidance 8B
In implementing this control, the following should be considered, where appropriate:
i. if there is a standard strategy, for example, for well-known games like blackjack, the
standard strategy should be used
ii. strategies or auto-play should (theoretically) produce at least the average Return to Player (RTP) for the game over time.

 

[Smithyy]

@trancemonkey Hey, I've got a question.

Where do you think the future of online gambling is headed? It's clear the whole Megaways/high volatility slots has changed the industry significantly - but with Megaways becomming pretty saturated, and we see developed trying to come up with their own concepts (like Infinireels etc) - what, realisticly do you think is next?

There was a lot of hype around virtual reality games - and I think some devs are still working on this - but it never really seems to have cottoned on as hoped. Where do you think the future lies, besides more super volatile machines with (seemingly) limitless potential?

Thanks!

 

[pinnit2014]

Trance you've probably answered this but...is there anything that prohibits a provider from changing certain elements of the game according to the stake? Probably not the only one who thinks in their head that certain games simply don't like certain stakes.

Eg. Chances of 100x wins or above etc varying between a 20p bet and a pound bet/RTP's varying according to bet sizes etc (albeit that the 'total') is still 96.xx?

 

[trancemonkey]

Trance you've probably answered this but...is there anything that prohibits a provider from changing certain elements of the game according to the stake? Probably not the only one who thinks in their head that certain games simply don't like certain stakes.

Eg. Chances of 100x wins or above etc varying between a 20p bet and a pound bet/RTP's varying according to bet sizes etc (albeit that the 'total') is still 96.xx?

No - no rules that stop this being done as long as the game conforms to the stated RTP across all stakes. You can of course declare a different RTP for each stake if you want.

 

[trancemonkey]

@trancemonkey Hey, I've got a question.

Where do you think the future of online gambling is headed? It's clear the whole Megaways/high volatility slots has changed the industry significantly - but with Megaways becomming pretty saturated, and we see developed trying to come up with their own concepts (like Infinireels etc) - what, realisticly do you think is next?

There was a lot of hype around virtual reality games - and I think some devs are still working on this - but it never really seems to have cottoned on as hoped. Where do you think the future lies, besides more super volatile machines with (seemingly) limitless potential?

Thanks!

Great question - i think there are a few things to consider:

1. The industry is quite cyclic - it tends to bounce from volatile to time-on-device and back again
2. Just because Megaways are saturated, doesn't mean they are going anywhere any time soon, although i think innovation in Megaways is slowing, but i think it's here to stay as a staple diet in gaming.
3. There is, as you say, a lot of "innovation" going on with other providers to try and steal the lime-light away from Megaways, and while InfiniReels is not a new idea (WMS tried something very similar many years ago
4. In land-based, the world is dominated by Lightning Link (money-on-reels + respins) style games - very frequent features, low RTP in the base game, high-RTP in the features. This is currently the opposite of the trends online, but people are trying to bring these to online, albeit in more extreme versions (Money Train, Aztec Gold Megaways, etc...)

I expect that there will always be some players who want the DOA2 style volatility, and the streamers (and CasinoGrounds style compilation videos pushing the very unrealistic and rare wins from certain games) fan the flames of the "life-changing wins" which, so these games will always have a place. But there are a vast vast amount of people who just want some entertainment. So i expect we will see the player base swing back away from the super high volatility games to more mid-volatility as they get bored of it...

I also expect to see many new developers come and go - it still amazes me the amount of awful games that are released on a daily basis (anyone seen The Vault by Micorgaming and some small company you've never heard of?). There has been a clear increase in online spend duing the Covid crisis, and some people will surely try and tap in to that...

As for virtual reality... my bet is on a "nope" here... but maybe someone will crack it eventually...

 

[dionysus]

I also expect to see many new developers come and go - it still amazes me the amount of awful games that are released on a daily basis
)

what do you think we'll see first trance? a new slots innovation or a new provider taking the lead (or a combo of both)

Seems so many are complacent with churning out games, I hope there's a new challenger soon (either developer or idea

 

[trancemonkey]

what do you think we'll see first trance? a new slots innovation or a new provider taking the lead (or a combo of both)

Seems so many are complacent with churning out games, I hope there's a new challenger soon (either developer or idea

The "big providers" of old are struggling - the likes of NetEnt for example used to be my go-to provider, whereas now, i tend to actively avoid them. I really do hope they come back though - they have some good leadership now, so fingers crossed!

The problem is that people seem to be trying too hard to innovate, and whilst innovation is great and should be encouraged, not all of it is good. I personally don't expect Megaclsuters or InfiniReels to be the next big thing, although i could of course be wrong - but where Megaways allowed you a lot of freedom, those two mechanics seem (at least to me) to be quite limiting...

Also, i'm all for new developers trying, but there seems to be a real lack of quality control for most aggregators - and this, for me, is to the detriment of the casinos - if you just let any old crap on, eventually, players just get lost in the noise, and it just pushes them in to returning to their old favourites and not trying anything new... i admit, even i (and it's my job to check out new games) half the time just can't be bothered. Or i load a game, see it's from a certain provider, and don't even play it as the quality previously of their content has been so poor.

I think the casinos need to do a much, much better job of curating their content - that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't take a lot of content, but just that they find ways (AI, machine learning, whatever) to curate my experience and offer my games that i'm more likely to enjoy. That said, i think casinos SHOULD be more picky with the content they offer - i see no benefit in saying "we have 2000+ games" if 1950 of them rarely get more than 100 spins a day...

 

[brianmon]

The rules are as follows:

RTS 8 – Auto-play functionality
Gaming
RTS aim 8
To ensure that the customer is still in control of the gambling where auto-play functionality is provided and to minimise the risk that the functionality disadvantages a customer or that auto-play or other strategy advice is misleading.

RTS requirement 8A
The gambling system must provide easily accessible facilities that:
a. make available the following three controls, each of which stops auto-play functionality when it is triggered-
i. ‘loss limit’, ie where the player selects an option to not lose more than X from their
starting balance, where X is an amount that can be selected by the player. A ‘loss’ in
this context equates to accumulated auto-play bets minus accumulated auto-play
wins.
ii. ‘single win limit’ ie single win greater than Y where Y is an amount that can be
selected by the player and
iii. ‘jackpot win’ (where applicable).
b. require auto-play to be implemented in such a way that each time a customer chooses to use auto-play they must select the stake, the number of auto-play gambles and at least the first of the above three controls.
The number of auto-play gambles must not exceed 100 in one batch. During auto-play the customer must be able to stop the auto-play regardless of how many auto-play gambles they initially chose or how many remain.

RTS implementation guidance 8A
a. Auto-play should not override any of the display requirements (for example, the result of each gamble must be displayed for a reasonable length of time before the next gamble commences, as set out in RTS 7E).

RTS requirement 8B
In relation to skill and chance games, strategy advice and auto-play functionality must be fair, not misleading and must not represent a poor choice.

RTS implementation guidance 8B
In implementing this control, the following should be considered, where appropriate:
i. if there is a standard strategy, for example, for well-known games like blackjack, the
standard strategy should be used
ii. strategies or auto-play should (theoretically) produce at least the average Return to Player (RTP) for the game over time.

So MGS aren't following the rules.
A minimum loss limit of £100 is completely useless for the lower stakes of 0.09 0.18.....0.90, and not that much use on higher stakes.
Considering the maximum stake is £22.50, even a loss limit of £2500 and £10000 could never trigger a stop

 

[trancemonkey]

So MGS aren't following the rules.
A minimum loss limit of £100 is completely useless for the lower stakes of 0.09 0.18.....0.90, and not that much use on higher stakes.
Considering the maximum stake is £22.50, even a loss limit of £2500 and £10000 could never trigger a stop

Well, they are.. the rules don't specify an amount the loss limit must be as far as I can tell... but they vastly certainly are not following the Spirit if the regulations, which means they are potentially liable if someone complains