As revolutions go, Mr. Monopoly walking his dog down the Boardwalk might not
sound like it would be on the cutting
edge. And if a first glance was all there was to it, WMS Gaming wouldn't have
been chief buzzer among buzzmakers at the
annual Global Gaming Expo, Nov. 14-16 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The
expo, G2E as it's known in the casino
industry, is the industry's largest annual conference and trade show, and
it's where slotmakers and other manufacturers
show off their latest and greatest wares to potential buyers. But a buzzmaker itwas, the first in WMS' new category of
Transmissive Reels Gaming. Along with IGT's Guaranteed Play video poker, it
was one of the truly revolutionary products at
an expo that showed growth in many industry trends: the rise of multi-level
progressive slots, the rebirth of mechanical
reels, wide-screen technology, community gaming and the next steps toward
downloadable and server-based gaming being
among the leading trends.
When Mr. Monopoly walked his dog, he did it on the fringes of slot machine
glass, in front of five mechanical reels that
spun behind glass that remained clear. And, in the game called Monopoly Super
Money Grab, the same glass was used for a
bonus round. When players advanced to the bonus, the reels darkened, and the
entire surface of the glass became a video
screen. A traditional reel spinner, and a video bonus slot, all in the same
integrated, interactive package. It's called
Transmissive Reels Gaming, and when WMS vice president of marketing Rob Bone
called it the hit of the show, it was no idle
boast. When I ran into Mark Kashuda, slot director at the Resorts Casino in East
Chicago, Indiana, I asked him if he'd seen
anything he liked. "WMS' Transmissive Reels are the product everyone's
talking about," he said. And Jim Ouimette, slot
director at the Empress Casino in Joliet, Illinois, said,
"The Transmissive screen at WMS was definitely the most interesting
thing."
Slot manufacturers have made other attempts to layer the bonus experience onto
reel-spinning games. In fact, the rise
of bonus games started in the mid-1990s when Anchor Gaming devised Wheel of
Gold, which put a tower with a bonus
wheel atop regular slant-top reel-spinners. International Game Technology
licensed Wheel of Gold, and morphed it into the
ever-popular Wheel of Fortune slots. WMS put bonus events on reel-spinning games
with its orange Dotmation screens in
games such as Piggy Bankin' and the original Jackpot Party. Other
manufacturers, notably Bally Technologies, have tried to
ble together the video bonus and three-reel play experiences by adding a full
video screen in the top box, above the
spinning reels. But Transmissive Reels bring something new and different to the party, with one
cohesive reels/video experience,
visually exciting and entertaining. That turned everyone's heads. For WMS,
Transmissive Reels represented one of three
innovations it wanted to show off in an expo that was a coming out party.
WMS
started to reinvent its technology five years
ago. Now, in its CPU-NXT2 platform, it's ready to show what that technology
can do. In addition to the Transmissive Reels,
the other categories of innovation were Community Gaming, with Monopoly Big
Event, and Sensory Immersion Gaming, with
Top Gun. Early versions of both Monopoly Big Event and Top Gun were shown in an
inner circle, booth within a booth at G2E
2005. This time both products were front and center, ready for the world to see. Monopoly Big Event, which has already reached casino floors in Nevada, is a
win-together play experience, with all
eligible players at a bank of machines taking a trip around the Monopoly game
board overhead when the community bonus
comes up. All win the same base amounts, but there is a multiplier based on bet
size, speed of play and length of play.
Making a minimum bet per line, I moved up to a double bonus with fast, steady
play. Top Gun, of course, is based on the 1986 film starring Tom Cruise. It is a true
sensory immersion with Bose speakers
in the back of the special chair. As you pilot the fighter jet in the bonus
round, soaring, turning, doing barrel rolls to target
bonus amounts, the screen shakes and the jets' roars swirl around you. There
have been upgrades since the test version
showed at G2E 2005. In a bonus round within a bonus round, you can find yourself
going one-on-one with another fighter.
Plans are afoot to extend the new high-tech lines. Top Gun should be out nearthe beginning of 2007, to be followed
by "The Wizard of Oz." In the Transmissive Reels world, John Wayne's image
has been licensed for Duke It Out, still more
than a year down the road. And next in the Community Gaming category will be
Press Your Luck, based on the TV game
show. One other truly innovative product was Guaranteed Play video poker from
International Game Technology.
This is a
new way to play, one with loads of potential for casino marketers. The opening
screen at Guaranteed Play asks if you want
to pay for each hand, the traditional way of playing any casino game, or take
Guaranteed Play. At G2E, a $20 ticket, not real
money on these demonstration models of course, was buying 100 guaranteed hands.
Instead of starting with 80 credits on
the meter, as in a regular 25ΒΆ video poker, the meter started at zero. Bet, and
the credit meter moved to minus 5. Hit three
of a kind for 15 credits, and the meter moved to plus 10. So it went through the
entire 100 hands. The meter moved down
with each bet, and up with any wins. At the end, the player either had positive
credits remaining, or had a negative number
and just walked away.
The player never paid more than the original investment,
even if the results would have him or her
reaching for the wallet after 20 hands or so betting the regular way. IGT says
the math works out about the same, that the
Guarantee does not affect the house edge. Enough players are going to lose their
$20 to make up for those who stay
positive after the set number of hands. Players may or may not choose to alter their play when Guaranteed Play hits
casino floors, but what it does for
operators is to enable them to include their primary product, which is gaming,
in package deals. A deal that includes a
room, a trip to the spa and a couple of buffets could be adjusted to include a
guaranteed 200 hands of video poker. The
marketing potential is enormous, and once operators start including the
guarantee in packages, players will fill the
machines.
Guaranteed Play is the brainchild of Jay Walker, who has devised familiar
things from Priceline.com to those little
perforated flaps on the envelopes for your bills. He took it to Action Gaming,
the inventor of Triple Play Poker and other
multiple-hand video poker games, and they developed the game for IGT. If
Guaranteed Play is a hit, and there's no reason
to think it won't be, look for the concept to be extended to slot machines.
It's just the beginning for Guaranteed Play, so that could hardly be called a
trend, just as Transmissive Reels is one of a
kind at this point. Still, there were trends galore at the 2006 edition of the
Global Gaming Expo.
Multi-level progressive jackpots:
Aristocrat Technologies started this trend several years ago with its Hyperlink
games, starting with Cash Express. We've
seen the popularity rise with IGT's Fort Knox system and WMS' Jackpot Party
progressives. At G2E, every major manufacturer
was showing multi-level progressives. Aristocrat, naturally enough showed a
number of multi-level progressive games,
including the Millionaires SCX, which puts a four-tiered jackpot onto games with
five mechanical reels. That's a big step;
multi-level progressives grew from video slots.
IGT showed a couple of its new multi-level progressives on its AVP widescreen
units, using a wider, high-resolution
video monitor for extra fun with the graphics. Wheel of Fortune multi-level
progressives were visually striking, with two
widescreen video monitors and a bonus wheel at each machine, and a display up
top showing both a big wide-area jackpot
and a four-level progressive, with purple, blue, green and red jackpots. On a
spin of the bonus wheel, the player can have
up to eight pointers, and can win two of the progressive awards at once.
The
other new widescreen progressive, Indiana
Jones, features the logos and Harrison Ford image of the hit movie series along
with one big jackpot and a four-level
progressive on a 25-line video game. Atronic has high hopes for the Game of Life, its new five-level progressive.
The bonus round involves a trip around a
Game of Life board. Progressive award levels are placed throughout your trip on
the board. The farther you go, the bigger
the progressive award you can win. You select spaces that either give you bonus
awards, spinners to advance on the game
board, Game of Life cards, or a "stop" sign to end your picks. But you can
reach another bonus level even after you pick the
stop sign. At that point, you touch any Game of Life cards you may have picked
p, and they turn over to reveal additional
numbers of spaces for you to advance.
Mechanical reels:
WMS' Transmissive Reels are a particularly innovative way to attract players
back to reel-spinning slots. But five-reel
games have become increasingly popular in the last couple of years, and there
was plenty more five-reel products at the
show. Bally Technologies, with its Alpha Elite series, says that any of its
five-reel video games can also be applied to five-
reel mechanicals, hence, a five-reel mechanical version of S&H Green Stamps,
previously introduced in video. Bally added five-reel mechanicals to its Playboy line with Playboy Free Games.
In addition to the five reels, there's a
video top box that adds an entertainment factor during the game's free spin
feature. Players can win up to 50 free games,
and while the reels spin on the free games down below, the video top box changes
pictures among 25 Playboy Playmates.
Any player who might be bored during the free spins has a little extra scenery
up top. Konami Gaming moved to add some excitement to three-reel games with its
line-less 27 Ways games. That's right,
line-less. There are no paylines. Symbols form winning combinations across the
reels, regardless of their position on the
reel. Bells at the tops of reels one and two and at the bottom of reel three
form a winner, even though they don't line up
across a payline. That leaves 27 Ways to win.
Wide-screen technology:
IGT has its AVP widescreen, mentioned with the Wheel of Fortune and Indiana
Jones multi-level progressives. Bally also
has made bold moves with wide-screen technology with its Cinevision product. At G2E, Bally showed Super Fireball Frenzy in Cinevision. Playing off Bally's
hit four-reel Bonus Frenzy games, Super
Fireball Frenzy has seven reels, eye-popping on the high-resolution Cinevision
screen. Where the original Frenzy games had
three reels for basic game play with a bonus reel to the right, Super Fireball
Frenzy has three reels on the left, a bonus reel
down the center, and three reels on the right, leaving a double three-reel
experience along with the bonus fun.
Communal gaming:
Giving players a chance to win together creates extra excitement, as any craps
player knows. That experience has been
rare on the slots until now. Monopoly Big Event, one of WMS' triad of
innovations, is one such game, of course. And in the
last year, IGT's Wheel of Fortune Super Spin, allowing nine players to sit
around a single giant wheel, has made its way into
casinos.
IGT showed another communal-type game this year, with The Price Is Right Cliff
Hangers multi-station game. Three
slant top machines sit under a single mechanical Cliff Hanger display that they
share for bonus rounds. In the bonus round,
selecting either bonus amounts or spaces for the Cliff Hanger to move to the
top, I got him to within one space of the top. A
pretty good bonus, but for the trial, I delighted in going again and sending him
over the edge; not playing for real money, of
course.
A.C. Coin, known for its creative use of top boxes in its Slotto and Big
Roller-style games, joined the communal gaming
trend with Super Slotto Celebration and Super Bankroll Bonus. In Super Slotto,
the lottery ball top box of regular Slotto
games is applied to a giant center dome. Eight players sit around the dome at
IGT five-reel Double Diamond games, and
when the Slotto balls start popping, they catch eyes from a wide area of the
slot floor. The unit is 25 percent smaller than
IGT's Wheel of Fortune Super Spin, perhaps making it a viable option for
smaller casinos as well as the giants. Super Bankroll Bonus is a Big Roller-type game, with money looking like it's
coming off a printing press, just as in the
single-game Bankroll units. Only here, that big, Big Roller sits atop a bank of
four machines, lending community fun as the
presses roll and "Money (That's What I Want)" plays.
Downloadable and server based-gaming:
For the second year in a row, every major manufacturer showed systems that will
allow casinos to load games on to
machines from central servers. The systems include some backroom management aids
that the general public will never
see. You'll be able to watch games change, especially if regulators in your
jurisdiction make sure the changes must be
transparent. You won't see the data collection that's important to operators, nor some
little features like the possibility of games
offered on the terminals on casino floors being tailored to the individual
preference, keyed to your player rating card. Such
things are coming sooner rather than later, with tests already having been
conducted in Nevada and Iowa.
One last thing. This isn't really part of a trend, unless you call
Multi-Strike a trend, but it looked so cool I had to
mention it here. At the IGT booth, along with several new versions of Leading
Edge Design's Multi-Strike Poker, there was a
new slot game called Multi-Strike Triple Diamond. With the Multi-Strike
possibilities of moving up a level at a time for
multiple payoffs, you're betting on a potential 100 paylines, with a maximum
bet of three coins per line. On pennies, this is
a $3 maximum game. It is highly volatile, a gamblers' game where you can win
tens of thousands of credits at once, or
nothing.
"We just had to find out," said Leading Edge director of legal affairs and
licensing, "if people were playing Elvis Multi-
Strike because they liked Multi-Strike on slots, or because they liked hearing
their favorite Elvis songs every few minutes." That's one of the fun things about G2E. There are revolutionary products like
Transmissive Reels and Guaranteed Play,
and there are trends like multi-level progressives and communal games. And with
all that, there's still room for a wild ride
like Multi-Strike Triple Diamond.
- John Grochowski is the author of The Casino Answer Book, The Slot Machine
Answer Book, The Video Poker Answer Book
and the Craps Answer Book, available through Bonus Books, Inc. at (800)
225-3775.
