Question Thinking about making a slot!

[Steffo]

Hi! New member to the forum as you can see, I have been creeping for a long while though so I thought I finally would become a member so that I can pester you

Me and a couple of friends are working for a slot manufacturer and have done so for quite some time now. We are thinking about quitting and start our own business! Yey for us and hopefully yey for your guys..

We have already started to create the slots that we loved to play but I also would like to know what you think is the best or worst features in slots? What makes you tingle inside and what makes you throw your computer out of the window?

We love slots and think that we are creating the best stuff that the market has seen so far so as soon as we're live I'll post the games here so you can try them out and let us know what we could tweak! I would like to create an active process where we can use this forum to test new ideas and get feedback from you guys.

If you have an example of a great slot please name it and explain why this is the most bad ass slot so far (I write so far because I promise you with our knowledge about the business our WILL be preeeetty bad ass)

Can't wait hearing from you!

 

[Steffo]

My favorites

Just thought I would add my favorites to start with

JH1 - Just want to fill that screen (didn't like JH2, to dark and well, it is pretty much the same as JH1)

Gonzo - Always going back to that one when I'm bored. I guess it is my old Tetris skills that comes to live

Buffalo - pretty basic, but when you stack those buffalo's...

Alice & the enchanted mirror slots - Kind of trippy game but when you hit those mirrors with wilds..

 

[Nifty29]

Just FYI

If you want to use this forum for commercial purposes, such as market research and beta testing as you state, you should obtain permission from Casinomeister himself via PM or email.

Members like to provide honest feedback, but they get pretty shirty if they start feeling exploited.

Apart from that....welcome.

 

[jetset]

I thought this was pretty self-promotional and spammy (these questions have been asked and answered many times as a little research could illustrate)...and I agree that Casinomeister's prior approval should have been sought.

 

[Steffo]

I thought this was pretty self-promotional and spammy (these questions have been asked and answered many times as a little research could illustrate)...and I agree that Casinomeister's prior approval should have been sought.

So sorry about that! Tried to search but couldn't find anything. We don't have a company yet or even a name so it was just to get some feedback I'll try to search more and see if I can find the post that you talk about.

Sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes.

 

[rainmaker]

Hi and Welcome

You may want to read this thread: https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/threads/what-is-your-top-3-slots-and-why.49989/

 

[Slotster!]

Off the top of my head.

If you're going to have three scatters to trigger a feature/bonus - make sure that two at least pay something. Nothing more annoying than when two take up dead spaces and you don't even get your stake back. Make up the RTP somewhere else, I don't care, but make two scatters pay.

Stacked wilds are definitely fun.

Everyone loves free spins and big multipliers.

Some sort of random post spin trigger is always exciting, like the Wild Desire on Immortal Romance or the Mega Moolah wheel type bonuses. Don't take up too much time with a terrible return though - like the Joker on The Dark Knight who takes ten seconds to give you 4p.

Licences/Characters = Good (The Dark Knight, Marvel Super Heroes etc etc)
Comical "not quite the same" copies = Bad

Any combination of lines and coins should be allowed - no minimum stake/line number.

Most importantly - always pay out the jackpot/top pay when the username "Slotster" is logged in.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[incrediblestuff]

Off the top of my head.

If you're going to have three scatters to trigger a feature/bonus - make sure that two at least pay something. Nothing more annoying than when two take up dead spaces and you don't even get your stake back. Make up the RTP somewhere else, I don't care, but make two scatters pay.

I agree with this part totally. Everything that you mentioned actually, but this is worth emphasizing i.m.o!
It just doesn't feel right when they dont pay anything, and i would go as far as saying they should at least pay 2x bet, since they are supposed to be rare, and slots developement these days seems to follow the trend that scatters pop up much more then they used to, but certainly not enough scatters to start the bonus rounds/freespins, which is why those two scatters should pay at least a small profit, not just a return of bet.
Since i reckon that the 2 scatter frequency, is part of the psychologic philosophy, to keep the players excited, give them the near win feeling,etc., i would like to point out, that most gamblers will feel the opposite, i.e they will feel screwed on sessions where they dont get the freespins.
I could probably word this better, but i have been up all night, smoking my brain to a pulp, and as such i will just hope my point is made ^.^

 

[Steffo]

Thank you rainmaker for pointing that out

And thank you incrediblestuff and slotster I totally agree with you. I think it it a beginner thing, at first when you start plying slots you fall for the near win on scatters but after a while you get pissed when you don't win them because like you say slot makers often add two scatters because they want to create the feeling of near win but they hell don't want to pay out for them.

I have actually tested JH on my iPad (try it out if you haven't) and I actually started autoplay and just let the ipad play just listening to the sound of a sticky doing that on a cheap scatter game would likely piss me off because I had to look at the ipad to often just see the near win miss..

Another thing that I have started hating are the games with two complicated features.. simple is the key word for me, I don't want to be a rocket scientist to figure out my winnings..

 

[rainmaker]

Another thing that I have started hating are the games with two complicated features.. simple is the key word for me, I don't want to be a rocket scientist to figure out my winnings..

Yes, another thing is very time consuming features. One example may be NetEnt's Scarface game. Very well made game that looks great. But the bonus round is not very good which is a shame. Players want free spins with multipliers and not bonus features with a lot of effects that takes like 5 minutes to complete and all you win is 10 x total bet or something.

It is a bit ironic that some of the most popular games out there are quite simple. Like NetEnt's Starburst.

 

[jstrike]

I think it's always a good topic for discussion, because players tastes are always changing. Right now what I hear about a lot is social gaming and how to convince players to work together in multiplayer games and buy virtual goods and stuff like that, and there's precious little discussion about what makes a really good single player slot machine and what doesn't. There seems to be an assumption that tacking on more and more ridiculous animations and bonus rounds is always a good thing, and like rainmaker pointed out, that ain't always true.

I'm not much of a slot player. I've designed a few that have found niche markets, but I don't think anything I've done has really hit the nail on the head as far as what mainstream players want. There is one thing, though, that scares the industry -- because no one knows if it works or not. And it's something I've toyed with but haven't really taken to its full extreme. And that's the idea of truly long-running story line slots.

Right now, the online game industry won't consider anything that takes longer than 3 to 5 minutes to build up to a bonus round. Offline, you can't even do that because the laws in Vegas stand against it. But in my mind the success of social gaming points in a different direction -- I think there should be slots that take days, or even weeks to build your way through a story line, that you can come back to and work on whenever you feel like it, and that save where you are in the game... I'm talking about super high volatility slots that require a lot of time and patience, and even skill, to work your way up to the big prize (while leaving room for smaller prizes along the way). Maybe I'm way off, but I think that this is what's needed to get the next generation of players interested in the games -- because they expect a lot more interaction and decision making than what classic slots provide.

This goes totally against the grain of what game producers and casino managers are interested in right now. They have good reasons to believe that most slots players aren't going to stay long, that they're just looking for one quick win, and in a lot of cases they're probably right. The way they build their games reflects that. But I think if you're gonna strike off on your own and look for an untapped market, there's a lot of virgin territory out there in strategy based, skill based, higher volatility, long-running bonus buildup, and especially multiplayer/progressive slots that combine the things I'm talking about. This has nothing to do with whether you include lots of scatters or wilds or what it looks like, it's just a philosophy of building something that will bring people back to play over a long period of time.

I'm open to what other designers and reps think about this, and I'd like to hear why they think it is or isn't a good idea. Hope I explained it well enough that you get a picture of what I mean.

 

[Steffo]

I think it's always a good topic for discussion, because players tastes are always changing. Right now what I hear about a lot is social gaming and how to convince players to work together in multiplayer games and buy virtual goods and stuff like that, and there's precious little discussion about what makes a really good single player slot machine and what doesn't. There seems to be an assumption that tacking on more and more ridiculous animations and bonus rounds is always a good thing, and like rainmaker pointed out, that ain't always true.

I'm not much of a slot player. I've designed a few that have found niche markets, but I don't think anything I've done has really hit the nail on the head as far as what mainstream players want. There is one thing, though, that scares the industry -- because no one knows if it works or not. And it's something I've toyed with but haven't really taken to its full extreme. And that's the idea of truly long-running story line slots.

Right now, the online game industry won't consider anything that takes longer than 3 to 5 minutes to build up to a bonus round. Offline, you can't even do that because the laws in Vegas stand against it. But in my mind the success of social gaming points in a different direction -- I think there should be slots that take days, or even weeks to build your way through a story line, that you can come back to and work on whenever you feel like it, and that save where you are in the game... I'm talking about super high volatility slots that require a lot of time and patience, and even skill, to work your way up to the big prize (while leaving room for smaller prizes along the way). Maybe I'm way off, but I think that this is what's needed to get the next generation of players interested in the games -- because they expect a lot more interaction and decision making than what classic slots provide.

This goes totally against the grain of what game producers and casino managers are interested in right now. They have good reasons to believe that most slots players aren't going to stay long, that they're just looking for one quick win, and in a lot of cases they're probably right. The way they build their games reflects that. But I think if you're gonna strike off on your own and look for an untapped market, there's a lot of virgin territory out there in strategy based, skill based, higher volatility, long-running bonus buildup, and especially multiplayer/progressive slots that combine the things I'm talking about. This has nothing to do with whether you include lots of scatters or wilds or what it looks like, it's just a philosophy of building something that will bring people back to play over a long period of time.

I'm open to what other designers and reps think about this, and I'd like to hear why they think it is or isn't a good idea. Hope I explained it well enough that you get a picture of what I mean.

I think it is a very good idea and it has been discussed. The problem is that yo put a lot of money into one game. IT will cost you a lot of time and money to develop it and it is not sure that it is a hit. In other words you put all your eggs in one basket

We would like to create the games we love to play and the problem we would face is that we would start develop the game, run out of money and would need to look for investors . One those are in you end up becoming like DICE or Grin (game developers for EA Games). You'll get payed for creating one game, if that one fail you are pretty much done..

Like rainmaker said, simple is the key here. We love simple games with a nice feature or two. No big unrealistic bonus games/free spins combined super features that doesn't pay anything.

We have some ideas on features that are simple but makes the games more fun to play.

How do you feel about collectibles? Personally I hate them..