 HALL OF FAME
Monopoly
The first branded game for WMS Gaming blazed new trails
by Frank Legato
Each slot-maker has its franchise games—games that have sustained a company, that broke new ground, that continue to put food on shareholders’ tables.
Some slot makers have several franchise games, which is the case with WMS Gaming. This space has already featured two WMS games, Reel ‘Em In and Jackpot Party—both created in 1997; both still going strong after a decade.
Hot on the heels of those two WMS games, though, was a game that would become a dynamic and evolving franchise, and another game which, in all its various incarnations, has remained popular: Monopoly.
Monopoly was released nearly a decade ago as well. However, while Reel ‘Em In and Jackpot Party were both pioneering slots in their own ways, the Monopoly series broke new ground for different reasons.
First of all, Monopoly wasn’t just one game; it was released as four separate slots. The series has been refreshed with new games every year since its 1998 release.
Monopoly also was WMS Gaming’s first branded slot game—and the manufacturer’s first game leased by casinos in exchange for a cut of the profits. While this is a common practice now, it was brand-new in the late 1990s.
Finally, Monopoly was the first-ever game to incorporate a classic board game as its bonus feature. Players loved it in 1998, and they love it now.
Fast-Track
For a game that has lasted so long, it is remarkable to look back on how quickly it was developed.
Joel Jaffe, now WMS principal creative designer, was the primary software engineer working on Monopoly, from the time the contract with Hasbro, Inc., owner of the Monopoly board game, was signed. “We signed the contract in the fall of 1997, and we then had to design the games really fast,” Jaffe recalls. “We pressed to get them done by May. We went into test in May of 1998, and we brought them to the industry trade show in October.”
The first four versions of WMS’ Monopoly game actually were released to the public just before that trade show—two reel-spinners, called “ Advance to Boardwalk” and “Roll and Win;” two video slots, called “Reel Estate” and “Once Around.”
One of the video slots had a five-line format; the other was a nine-liner. “It was only the second nine-liner we ever did,” Jaffe recalls. “We still didn’t know if the players were going to accept nine paylines. We did two reel-spinners and two video slots because we wanted to make sure we succeeded. We put so much effort and financial means behind the product, we wanted to make sure at least one of them worked!”
They all worked. They worked not because of the paylines, but because all four games included so many features that players had never seen before. Much of this groundbreaking design, says Jaffe, was a function of having to recreate the experience of playing the Monopoly board game—an experience with which millions were already familiar.
Much of it was uncharted territory. For instance, one version had large mechanical dice, which would roll in a chamber to simulate the rolling of the dice in the Monopoly game. “We decided to use mechanical dice, which was a big deal at that time,” Jaffe recalls. “We had problems with them initially. They were squeaky at first, and we had to go out into the field and oil them periodically.”
Another attempt to simulate the Monopoly game ended up in a second groundbreaking slot feature—a side proposition bet within the game.
“I came up with idea to build houses, as in the Monopoly game, as a side bet feature in the bonus round,” says Jaffe. “It made the game so much more like Monopoly. I didn’t want to make it overly complicated, but when you got into the bonus, you could choose to play the game or to build houses (paying a credit amount for each house, which jacked up the bonus value of properties as you landed on them in the Monopoly bonus round). Eventually, players taught each other how to do it.”
Shridhar Joshe, the other main engineer working on the game, suggested making the proposition bet sweeter. “Shri came to me and said, ‘You have to make it pay better.’ The proposition is 7-1 to land on a property, so the bonus wasn’t enough.”
Nevada gaming authorities required that the dice roll be a true roll—the result in the Monopoly bonus game is not predetermined; it depends on the roll of the dice. Therefore, since it was prohibited to manipulate the dice roll electronically, they added more proposition payoffs. “For example, we came up with the idea that if you roll snake eyes, you get a much bigger payout,” Jaffe says.
The entire time the game was being developed by Jaffe, Joshe and artist Daryl Hughes (who created all the 3-D animation on video versions of the game), the game designers had to periodically check back with Hasbro, the owners of the brand. This resulted in changes along the way. For instance, they needed the game owner’s permission to flip the spaces on the large Monopoly board in the top box so they were all vertical and easily read by the player. (On the real board game, all spaces face outward.)
“For our first Rich Uncle Pennybags character—the character now known as Mr. Monopoly—we had to make him more portly,” Jaffe recalls. “We had to use Hasbro’s approved voice actor for the bonus event. There were only three guys in the country allowed to be the voice of Rich Uncle Pennybags.”
Along the way, the designers added little extras that would make the game memorable—for instance, if you tickled the tummy of the Pennybags character, he would react, laughing and wiggling. This wasn’t promoted; customers found out for themselves.
All the features came together in a package that wowed players. The Monopoly games were solid slot games, each with a bonus that faithfully reproduced the experience of playing Monopoly—the player would go into a bonus round and would travel around spaces on a back-lit Monopoly board in the top box, or a 3-D video bonus trip in the multi-line version. Each property paid a bonus. There were multiple possible outcomes, depending on which property on which your token would land. It provided the model for the lion’s share of future WMS video slots.
“It clicked with players right away; all the banks were full,” says Jaffe. It clicked with casino operators too. “We had a few operators come through our Chicago office before it was released, and you could see the dollar signs in their eyes!”
At the time of their release, the first games in the Monopoly series were among the only slots in the nation using brands licensed from another concern—Wheel of Fortune from IGT was the only other themed game of note at the time. However, once Monopoly was a smash success, “the floodgates opened,” Jaffe says, leading to a revolution in themed, branded games that lasted well into the following decade.
“Brands made it easier for casinos to tell their players to come in and play ‘this game,’ a game with which they were already familiar,” Jaffe says. “For manufacturers, it started a trend of leasing which provided us a constant revenue stream. That got us through the lean times and allowed us to grow our company.”
From the outset, the plan with Monopoly was to refresh the brand once or twice a year with new titles in the Monopoly series. This the manufacturer has done, right down to the present, with the release of another groundbreaking Monopoly game—“Super Money Grab,” which uses a new technology called “Transmissive Reels” that places streaming video animation over the top of mechanical reels. (For more on that game, see “Slot Spotlight.”)
The Monopoly brand lives on, and for WMS Gaming, it will remain what it always has been—a franchise.
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