NetEnt Open Questions

burgstrom

New Game: Bon Bomb Luxpots Released!
Joined
Mar 18, 2018
Location
Malta
Hello All,

I'm not overly active on CM as I would like, I'm trying to fix this (although life tends to throw curve balls!). I've introduced myself in some other threads in the board, but I'd like to do it more openly.

I'm the Games Product Director at NetEnt (yes, my details have been verified by Bryan). I've been at the company just over 5 Months and I've been getting my head around things as you do in a good job.

I've been in the Industry, both land and online collectively for about 12 years mainly around slot games and games design - so I've been around a bit at least.

I wanted to explicitly reach out to the CM community and ask you for some feedback. I know this could turn into a bit of a free for all but to at least attempt to add some structure:

What are we doing that we should stop?
What are we doing that we should keep doing?
What aren't we doing that we should be?

Game Features you like, dislike.
User Interface and User Experience stuff that is driving you crazy good or crazy bad about our games

I realise that I have opened up to taking a beating which I'm always prepared to take, but in the spirit of transparency that this post stands for:

1. Any overly derogatory posts without constructive criticism I will simply slow clap and move on...
2. NetEnt is a public listed company, and there a just some things that I cannot reveal or talk about - especially big future facing stuff. I'm not doing it to be rude, mean, arrogant or dodgy - its just that people's jobs and careers depend on these rules to be adhered to. TranceMonkey knows I'm an honorable fella (at least I hope he does!) so I will truly do my best!

A couple of popular questions I can perhaps answer upfront:

We are going back to Canada, we are trying to get there are fast as we can. I do not have a games list yet, we will soon and I will reveal it/if and when I can! It is not easy to get back there...

We HAVE NOT changed the Math Model on DoA. Really, WE. HAVE. NOT. We are looking at the DoA game itself (outside of the math/server) to see what we can do to it to make it truer to the original Flash version. Stay tuned...but if you have feedback surrounding this outside of the scatter issue raised all over the web, then I'm all ears!

Deep breath and here come the latex gloves....be gentle!

Cheers!

Burg
 
Oh yeah! Netent Slots are reviewed at Casinomeister - to include their associated casinos! Woo woo!
Prepare yourself for a rough ride lol and WELCOME!

Firstly DoA, I feel this is fine as it is to be fair, honeymoon period over and people have had chance to settle to the HTML5 version, not as bad as first feared (including my own personal moans) big hits appearing in the winners screenshots section and to be truthful I don't think I could ever live with the sluggishness of the flash version ever again :eek:

Creature from the Black Lagoon, has this been updated please? - There seems to be an abundance of low paying features in comparison to personal experience of years gone by, it seems sooo tight these past 6-12 month's

New releases................There is such a HUGE difference between these and Netent older games, literally next to no win potential and nothing to entice players to want to play these newer ones, I mean seasoned players and HV players will show little if no interest in a top prize of 400x, those maths models are awful.

Moving forward I feel basing games on Doa, CFTBL, Evolution, Wild Rockets, JATB etc would be better from Fairytale Legends, That awful Phantom of the Opera game and so on.

I've read numerous posts about Netnet dropping from number one in the business to not even the top ten!! - Surely you guys want your crown back??
 
Uh oh, you openend Pandoras box. :D

But honestly, thank you for showing up here. Netent seems to get a lot of hate lately but I guess thats how it is in this industry with players losing and feeling cheated.

I have just one question in my mind at this time: Is Starburst really that popular? I never heard somebody sayin "I love that game" but still it seems to be an all time blockbuster?


Oh, and one wish for the future: Please make a DoA Slot with another theme. Same insane win potential with a wildline but im getting tired of the cowboy theme. :D
 
Hi and Welcome Burg!

I applaud you for having the courage to step into the lion's den. :D :D

Give me a day or so to put a list together. I write reviews for all Netent games, hence, I think I have a pretty good insight on what could be improved/changed/removed etc., at least what I feel personally when I spin them for the first time. :)

Usually, I post a few details about new releases here as well, the last one was BerryBURST: New Slot Announcement - BerryBURST™ by Netent

And no worries, DOA is just fine. We just play it less since we became so foolish to let Bonanza et al capture our brains. :oops:
 
Uh oh, you openend Pandoras box. :D

But honestly, thank you for showing up here. Netent seems to get a lot of hate lately but I guess thats how it is in this industry with players losing and feeling cheated.

I have just one question in my mind at this time: Is Starburst really that popular? I never heard somebody sayin "I love that game" but still it seems to be an all time blockbuster?


Oh, and one wish for the future: Please make a DoA Slot with another theme. Same insane win potential with a wildline but im getting tired of the cowboy theme. :D
Oh God, did you have to mention Pandora's Box :laugh:

One of the games they pulled yonks ago. Yes even we in the UK suffer from Netent's baffling decisions :p
 
First off ui/ux: Only two things I can think of here that can be annoying. One is that on some games, like Jungle Spirit, if a scatter lands it needs to finish it's animation/sound effect before you're allowed to spin again even if there is no win. The other is that any play that isn't real money doesn't save game settings like volume and intro screens.

Overall your games are good when it comes to presentation, the only real issue is the math models you use. Far too many of your games in recent years play very similar, a max win of 400x stake which noone has ever seen, usually with some pointless random feature giving 10-30x. It's like you're afraid people might actually win big? That's also one of the features I wish you would stop doing. It becomes a bit too obvious on a game like Guns'n'Roses with the multiplier feature where you are 100% to hit the 4th reel if you have a low symbol and 99% to miss if you have a higher symbol. In my opinion it's cheating to change the odds/reels in a feature that uses the reels like that, if I in normal play see a certain symbol in a specific position on the 4th reel 10% of the time, then it should be 10% chance it hits even in the feature. Same deal with the butterflies in Jungle Spirit, can that feature even pay over 30x stake? It doesn't matter what symbols you get or how many expand, the end win will always be between 10-30x. Countless other games are the same, most recently Mirror Mirror.

Speaking of Mirror Mirror and other similar games, hitting a bonus and getting a coin win instead of freespins isn't exactly fun. Would much prefer fewer bonuses, it's not like we're not used to the 1/460ish of Bonanza by now.

It's not really about the max win, it's about having enough RTP for bigger wins so they actually happen, right now you have a big void between 100x as max realistic win on 90% of your games and 2000x+ on DoA. Not that you shouldn't have lower variance games, it's just it's the only thing you really have recently. You don't need 4 features in every game eating up RTP, why not try making a game with 56% RTP in base game and 40% in some freespins for a change?
 
Dear Netent, please cull all games Steam Tower onwards, including guff like Theme Park and Jackanory, and just resume from your 2012-13 era :D

Just bring back some of the older games like Trolls and South Park and we'll say no more about it :thumbsup:
 
Prepare yourself for a rough ride lol and WELCOME!

Firstly DoA, I feel this is fine as it is to be fair, honeymoon period over and people have had chance to settle to the HTML5 version, not as bad as first feared (including my own personal moans) big hits appearing in the winners screenshots section and to be truthful I don't think I could ever live with the sluggishness of the flash version ever again :eek:

Creature from the Black Lagoon, has this been updated please? - There seems to be an abundance of low paying features in comparison to personal experience of years gone by, it seems sooo tight these past 6-12 month's

New releases................There is such a HUGE difference between these and Netent older games, literally next to no win potential and nothing to entice players to want to play these newer ones, I mean seasoned players and HV players will show little if no interest in a top prize of 400x, those maths models are awful.

Moving forward I feel basing games on Doa, CFTBL, Evolution, Wild Rockets, JATB etc would be better from Fairytale Legends, That awful Phantom of the Opera game and so on.

I've read numerous posts about Netnet dropping from number one in the business to not even the top ten!! - Surely you guys want your crown back??

CFTBL - I'll look into it. Again I would seriously doubt we have changed anything but I'll check. We don't do that unless we have things like regulation changes which is pretty rare.
 
Uh oh, you openend Pandoras box. :D

But honestly, thank you for showing up here. Netent seems to get a lot of hate lately but I guess thats how it is in this industry with players losing and feeling cheated.

I have just one question in my mind at this time: Is Starburst really that popular? I never heard somebody sayin "I love that game" but still it seems to be an all time blockbuster?

No worries. It was time I guess. From the data I have Starburst is the best performing game online...but I'm sure others would dispute that of course.

Oh, and one wish for the future: Please make a DoA Slot with another theme. Same insane win potential with a wildline but im getting tired of the cowboy theme. :D

Noted Thank You.
 
Hi and Welcome Burg!

I applaud you for having the courage to step into the lion's den. :D :D

Thank You sir.

Give me a day or so to put a list together. I write reviews for all Netent games, hence, I think I have a pretty good insight on what could be improved/changed/removed etc., at least what I feel personally when I spin them for the first time. :)

Excellent - looking forward to it.

Usually, I post a few details about new releases here as well, the last one was BerryBURST: New Slot Announcement - BerryBURST™ by Netent

Read this thanks. Your math's is wrong but I like you, so you're forgiven. :)

And no worries, DOA is just fine. We just play it less since we became so foolish to let Bonanza et al capture our brains. :oops:

I'm personal fan of DoA so this title means a lot to me. Always good to ensure the craftsmanship is there.
 
First off ui/ux: Only two things I can think of here that can be annoying. One is that on some games, like Jungle Spirit, if a scatter lands it needs to finish it's animation/sound effect before you're allowed to spin again even if there is no win. The other is that any play that isn't real money doesn't save game settings like volume and intro screens.

We'll look at it so we can see where the annoyance is coming from, thanks Zap.

Overall your games are good when it comes to presentation, the only real issue is the math models you use. Far too many of your games in recent years play very similar, a max win of 400x stake which noone has ever seen, usually with some pointless random feature giving 10-30x. It's like you're afraid people might actually win big? That's also one of the features I wish you would stop doing. It becomes a bit too obvious on a game like Guns'n'Roses with the multiplier feature where you are 100% to hit the 4th reel if you have a low symbol and 99% to miss if you have a higher symbol. In my opinion it's cheating to change the odds/reels in a feature that uses the reels like that, if I in normal play see a certain symbol in a specific position on the 4th reel 10% of the time, then it should be 10% chance it hits even in the feature. Same deal with the butterflies in Jungle Spirit, can that feature even pay over 30x stake? It doesn't matter what symbols you get or how many expand, the end win will always be between 10-30x. Countless other games are the same, most recently Mirror Mirror.

Noted thank you. What is the ideal size win that you would want from a game on a regular basis? I'm curious. The well known issue is a game cannot deliver massive wins all the time, unless the game's server is plugged directly in Elon Musk's private bank account (I'm working on Musk's Moolah right now j/k). The quandry is then how do we communicate that it can indeed pay but that it's a patience thing? Smaller more frequent versions of the big feature to let you know something could happen? You say above that sucks. Whats a good way of doing this do you think?

Speaking of Mirror Mirror and other similar games, hitting a bonus and getting a coin win instead of freespins isn't exactly fun. Would much prefer fewer bonuses, it's not like we're not used to the 1/460ish of Bonanza by now.
That's great and interesting input thank you! Does everyone else agree?

It's not really about the max win, it's about having enough RTP for bigger wins so they actually happen, right now you have a big void between 100x as max realistic win on 90% of your games and 2000x+ on DoA. Not that you shouldn't have lower variance games, it's just it's the only thing you really have recently. You don't need 4 features in every game eating up RTP, why not try making a game with 56% RTP in base game and 40% in some freespins for a change?

Very good. This is great.
 
Thank You sir.

Excellent - looking forward to it.

Read this thanks. Your math's is wrong but I like you, so you're forgiven. :)

I'm personal fan of DoA so this title means a lot to me. Always good to ensure the craftsmanship is there.

Do you mean the maths in post 1 or 12? I actually corrected it after paul7388 pointed to a mistake. Wouldn't like to have a post with wrong numbers.
 
Dear Netent, please cull all games Steam Tower onwards, including guff like Theme Park and Jackanory, and just resume from your 2012-13 era :D

Just bring back some of the older games like Trolls and South Park and we'll say no more about it :thumbsup:

Are those your favourite NE games?
 
Do you mean the maths in post 1 or 12? I actually corrected it after paul7388 pointed to a mistake. Wouldn't like to have a post with wrong numbers.
post 1 is still wrong, if you're talking about a single wager, the Max Theoretical win on BerryBurst is x3000 bet or x6000 for BerryBurst MAX....
 
Wishmaster was the best Netent game produced. Steam tower a close second. Polar opposite games but both delivered what they were supposed to.

A new Netent game delivery used to be met with excitement by both the players and Casinos but personally speaking I wouldn't even bother a quick 5 minute play on a Netent new release. As everyone said, the maths model is absolutely dire.

High variance on the bonus rounds and lower variance on the base game is now a proven route to success for games. Hence why developers that are going places are now almost exclusively producing games like this.

I guarantee if you focus on that simple premise for your next three releases you could turn it around at Netent.
 
post 1 is still wrong, if you're talking about a single wager, the Max Theoretical win on BerryBurst is x3000 bet or x6000 for BerryBurst MAX....

Yep, it is wrong if you count all respins as one spin or as you said a single wager. It is correct for one single spin sequence. A full screen of Wilds or Raspberries pays 500x on the standard game and 1,000x bet on the MAX version.

However, I did not make it clear to what the number is referring. I should have explained it better.
 
Imagine how much was spent on the Planet of the Apes licence and devlopment £££. Who ever plays it...

This COULD have been a monster hit, shame they threw away a winning lottery ticket on this one :(

Gave it a real good "throw of the dice" when first released, wouldn't go anywhere near it nowadays, even with FS lol!
 

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