Hi
I am a journalist from Finland, and I am writing a book about gambling. I am trying to find a slot game developer for an interview.
Does anyone here know a game designer or a game mathematician? If yes, I would be extremely happy if I could contact them and ask for an interview. I would like to inquire about the research involved in their development work and the instructions they receive from their bosses.
All the best,
Anssi Koskinen
I can answer your questions very easily:
Instructions we receive from our bosses range from: "Come up with a new idea" to "Come up with a game like X". Yes we might be given guidance on what games are working in a particular market (or we get the information from Eilers or ReelMetrics) and that's about it. Sometimes they may give guidance on a theme (i.e we don't want a Chinese theme).
I can't talk for all companies or course, but producers at companies I have worked for get almost entirely free reign to come up with the game design and theme, and there is no interference from "bosses". Of course there are key stakeholders that will want to play the game at different stages of development so they can give feedback on how the game plays, the game flow, maths, etc ...
I'm terms of research, other than taking the game to a player focus group (asking players what they think of it) and market visits (i.e going to Vegas, or whatever market your game is targeting) that's about it.
If your trying to suggest that companies are doing research in to what makes people addicted, and then following that research, whilst it can't if course speak for everyone, I've never worked at a company that has done that, nor would I want to.
Of course we want to make our games fun and we want people to keep playing and coming back, as performance is based in cash played, but this is (at least where I work) done by simply trying to make the game as fun as possible and entertaining as possible.... And for me, this is done simply by experience. There is no "silver bullet" for this, it's a combination of game design, maths, art and sound, and this is all combined by the product owner / producer in order to hopefully make the game as fun as possible.
There is nothing nefarious - it's simply looking at what works in successful games and trying to make my game as good at, or better, than that... And what makes games good is very often subjective and rarely objective.