Player-Based Design
Ed Fishman’s Global Gaming Group asks players what they
like—and then designs their slot games. by Frank Legato
As a slot player, chances are you have never heard of Benny
Sum. But as a slot player, it is almost certain you have seen
his work.
Sum is one of the foremost designers of slot games in the
business. When he worked for Bally, he designed the look and
format of the legendary Game Maker multigame unit, as well
as many of Bally’s classic reel spinners. After he started
working as a hired gun for the slot manufacturers, he was
responsible for development and design of many games that
have become industry standards: Aristocrat’s Wild Cougar;
Shuffle Master games like Press Your Luck and Hollywood (now
owned by IGT); Konami games like Rocky, Most Wanted, and Hot
Dawgs; the original Shuffle Master version of Let’s Make
A Deal; and Marvel Comics–themed slot games like The
Amazing Spider Man.
If you frequent Class II Native American casinos, it is almost
certain you’ve seen Sum’s work, since he has designed
some three-quarters of the electronic bingo slot games sold
to Indian casinos by leading supplier Multimedia Games.
Ed Fishman knew of Sum’s work as well. Fishman was the
founder of Players Club International, credited with creating
the concept of the slot club, comps, and even gaming tournaments.
More recently, Players Club was a casino operator in several
jurisdictions, before Fishman sold off his casinos to Harrah’s
and other operators. He then got into the business of securing
licenses for branded slot games, and then selling them to
the manufacturers.
Last year, Fishman was looking for a new venture, and ran
into Sum in Moscow, where Sum was providing games to the burgeoning
casino industry there. They decided to join with a third partner,
longtime Fishman financial associate Steven Meistrich, to
form a new company, one that would create slot game content
with a specific mission in mind—to make games according
to what players already want in a slot game.
The new game maker, called Global Gaming Group, is already
doing brisk business. The company’s designers have churned
out a remarkable 36 new slot games for the Russian market
in 12 months, and the orders are still coming in—they
estimate that they will produce twice as many titles next
year. Back in the States, the company has designed three games
being introduced at the G2E show by Progressive Gaming International
(formerly Mikohn)—the music-themed Dick Clark Rock Roll
& Remember, Ed McMahon Million Dollar Madness, and KISS,
themed around the legendary rock group.
All of these games will contain elements that players love,
because all of them were designed after the company looked
into what specific players in specific markets like.
“First, we do a demographic study, of men, women, age
groups, tastes—we use that information to develop names
and concepts of different themes,” explains Sum. “Then
we use that information to create product clearly from the
standpoint of entertainment value.”
The result is Russian games designed for the Russian market,
games with Latin themes for places where there is a heavy
concentration of Latinos, Chinese-themed games for heavy Asian
markets.
The game features will reflect what the players like. The
Russian market, for instance, consists of a young, predominantly
male demographic. Russian players like Australian-style video
slots, with an “auto-play” feature—they hit
the spin button once, and then sit back and watch the show
as the machine does the rest. “We’ve developed colors—blacks
reds, very sexy—specifically for that Russian demographic,”
says Meistrich. “Additionally, we’re one of the
few slot companies with multiple languages. At G2E, we’re
introducing a game in which the player can choose from five
different languages—English, Spanish, Russian, Italian
and Chinese.”
A few manufacturers let the casino choose a language from
the computer system in slot games, but the Global Gaming Group
slots will be the first to let the player choose his or her
language. Additionally, when a player switches the game to
Chinese, Spanish or another language, not only the game features
you see on the screen will change. Information on bonus features,
pay schedules, even help menus will all be switched to the
new language.
Culturally Sensitive
It’s all part of what Fishman calls “culturally
sensitive” game design. “We began to focus on various
segments of the slot market worldwide, talking with people,
spending time on the casino floors, finding out what they
like,” he explains. “For themes, content, features
and sequencing, the idea is to design games for the people
who are playing them, instead of saying, ‘Here’s
our game—play it.’”
He says games such as Aristocrat’s George Lopez slot,
featuring the Latino comedian, will be available from Global
Gaming in Spanish, particularly in California. Games sold
in the Russian market will include the Chinese language to
accommodate Asian players there. Other markets around the
world will receive similar attention. “Eastern Europe,
South America and especially Asia need lots of game content,”
Fishman says. “And content needs to be designed with
the player in mind.”
In the United States, this player-based design is likely to
result in games designed for players in specific regions,
he adds. “We already design a game with cityscape themes,”
he says.
Meistrich adds that U.S. game design in the near future will
be driven by where the new casinos appear, as new markets
crop up in Pennsylvania, New York and elsewhere. “Regionally,
we suspect we’ll be making a strong impact when Philadelphia
opens up,” he says. “We will probably develop games
a little more thematically for the East Coast. We have intellectual
property and themes developed for specific areas in the Midwest
as well. With server-based games coming on strong, this becomes
more economically feasible.”
By “server-based games,”
Meistrich means the coming wave of slot games that will be
downloaded from a central server to player terminals on the
casino floor. It will be a few years before this method of
game delivery is widespread in the casino industry, but all
of the major slot manufacturers are already planning on it,
and vendor Cyberview Technology already has a server-based
system approved for the Native American markets. Basically,
it means the slots on the floor can be switched out to a new
denomination, or an entirely new game, from a remote location.
Fishman says he started his company in anticipation of the
day when casinos will have banks of slots in a server-based
system that need an extensive library of game content from
which the player can choose, picking from a menu of games.
“Once that happens,” notes Fishman, “we believe
gaming manufacturers will draw strength from software, because
we believe hardware (the slot cabinet and peripheral devices)
have become a level playing field. What will set manufacturers
apart in the future will be content. The industry will need
a lot of gamed content, and our goal is to provide a library
of games to be chosen by the players, not the operators.”
Global Gaming Group is gearing up fast to meet this challenge.
The company started up last year with seven employees; it
now has 31, with plans to launch at least 70 new games in
the coming year.
Players are already responding to the new games, particularly
in the region that is the company’s first success story,
Russia. In addition to features and content of the games themselves,
what is distinguishing the Global Gaming Group is the beautiful
artwork on the games it produces. “What we have done
is taken art to a different level,” says Sum. “Our
designers are designers first, followed by computer skills.
It is easy to teach an artist how to work a computer, but
it is very hard to teach technicians how to become artists.
We have designers ranging from people who happen to be talented
in art to people with master’s degrees in fine arts.
Regardless of their training, they go through our internal
training all over again. It gives us an edge in quality.”
So, if you are in Philadelphia in a couple of years playing
a slot in one of the new Pennsylvania casinos and find a game
featuring a cheese-steak bonus, it’s a good bet it was
designed by Global Gaming Group. Same thing if you’re
playing a slot in Florida that has a Hispanic theme and Spanish
language. That’s because, as Fishman says, the goal of
the newest slot game supplier is simple: “Give people
what they want.”
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