There are few sectors of the gaming industry where competition is more intense than the slot manufacturing business. Rising research and development budgets among slot suppliers are being used like never before to fine-tune games before they reach casino floors. To protect those R&D investments, manufacturers are turning to one research technique more than ever: Ask the players.
Slot manufacturers are using player focus groups to drill down to the most subtle of nuances that create hit games. They are being used in practically all stages of slot game development—particularly for the high-profile, big-budget games, but increasingly for most or nearly all of the games in a given product library.
Dean Ehrlich, Everi
“The feedback we garner from our player focus groups directly informs our game development efforts,” says Dean Ehrlich, executive vice president and games business leader for Everi Holdings. “We use these focus groups in two capacities—where we invite players to offices in multiple cities to provide input to games still in development, and player walk-away testing at various properties.”
Greg Colella, vice president of product management for Konami Gaming, says that company’s developers also are turning to the players on an increasing basis. “As part of Konami’s commitment to the quality of our player experience, we have added player focus groups to our R&D toolbox, utilizing them as a touchpoint within the development process. We are using a third-party facility that runs the games through their paces with players, allowing the game design group to identify what works and what doesn’t.”
Colella added that “by doing this as part of the development process, it gives the design teams time to incorporate appropriate changes, correct issues, or focus in on the best parts identified prior to release.”
No supplier in the sector has a bigger R&D toolbox than International Game Technology, and Mike Brennan, IGT’s vice president of product management, says there is no more important tool than player research. “This is one thing IGT focuses on supremely. We absolutely look to the players. Player focus groups are integrated into our game development process. By default, a game gets a player focus group and funds a player focus group, and our tier-one games—high-profile, high development costs, branded license debut-type products—actually get two groups.”
Brennan said player focus group is “something we do with 100 percent of our games, which comes out about 95 percent, because we won’t do ports, and we won’t do some clones sometimes. But we strive for 100 percent and build it into the schedule.”
Brennan adds that player testing is done across all game categories. “We’ve even done ETGs, we’ve done systems, bonusing.” He says testing for specialty markets like VLTs is done in the markets themselves—focus groups in Montana for VLTs, in Oklahoma for Class II, etc.
“But the lion’s share of what we do for Class III for poker, for video, for stepper and for premium is in Las Vegas, with some sprinkling in of the rest of the market,” Brennan says, “because we know that players are different across North America, but Las Vegas players are some of the most refined-experience gamblers. If they like you, there’s a good chance they can serve as a proxy for the rest of North America.”
Player research is definitely on the rise for all of the manufacturers. “We conduct player focus groups constantly throughout the year, aiming to test approximately 30 to 50 percent of released games on an annual basis,” says Everi’s Ehrlich. “Player feedback is particularly important on an original mechanic or element players have never seen before.”
He adds that player research is a relatively new tool for Everi. “We built an internal testing program in 2015, which involved only employees. In 2016, we formalized the program and began using actual players, which has grown significantly since then in terms of number of players, events, and titles tested.”
Greg Colella, Konami
Colella says the ratio for Konami is around the same, with current player focus groups for 30 percent of titles, with plans to grow.
For IGT, the focus groups are part of daily life. “For each product, they’re doing it once, and that involves about 30 players in multiple sessions,” says Brennan. “But for our capacity, if you remove holidays and weekends, two out every three days, we’re doing product testing. We had 2,400 players come into our physical facility on Buffalo Road in Las Vegas last year to engage in player focus groups. We bring the team behind it, whether it’s the mathematician, the game producer, the artists—usually just a couple of folks. But we stream that live to anybody around the world that wants to view it.
“We have studios in Belgrade, we have studios in Australia, we have studios in Graz, Austria—and they watch our player focus groups real-time. Sometimes in Graz, 20 of them will get together. They will order pizza, and maybe get some drinks, because they start around 6 p.m. their time.”
Player focus groups are increasingly becoming an essential part of game development, and slot developers are unanimous in their commitment to following through after receiving player feedback, with significant changes up to complete scrapping of slot ideas.
“Everi is committed to constantly innovating and improving on the games we release, with player feedback playing a significant role in these efforts,” says Ehrlich. “Player testing is not just about checking boxes. We take player feedback very seriously and are willing to change critical elements of a game, whether it be math, mechanics, messaging or choreography. We will modify artwork in a game if it does not land well with players or adjust sequencing for clarity.”
Colella says Konami is ramping up its player research. “Konami is expanding—bringing in new leadership and new ways of thinking,” he says. “This is the first year we have formalized the use of player-based research within the development process, and it has already changed the way we approach design.
“Since adding focus groups to our development process, we have used player feedback and observations to touch on and improve every game we have tested. We believe in the process, but we also actively review and assess our methods to ensure ongoing effectiveness. Our leadership team has years of experience with focus groups where games have been completely redesigned and have even discontinued development based on feedback.”
And how many game changes are made as a result of all those focus groups IGT holds every week? “Great question—two answers,” says Brennan. “The first answer is 100 percent. Something is always changed. As you know, the team is going in sometimes unsure about a subtle part of the game, and what they hear from players might affirm that. There’s always clarification items that can come up in the player focus group process. It is a qualitative exercise. We are really doing this to expose our random studio folks to the end-user player, which I think sometimes we miss.
“And what they’re trying to do is find out if the player understands their concepts. Is anything upsetting or making the player angry in there? Is the player reacting the way they thought they would to the game? I have a producer in Austria that says it best: He uses player focus groups to read between the lines. So it’s not only what they’re directly saying; it’s what they’re not saying, it’s how they’re saying it.”
He adds that cameras trained on the focus-group sessions reveal how players are reacting—or not reacting—to games. He says it’s at least as important to observe players as to ask them questions. “If you talk to all the vendors, it’s hard to understand the math ride from a player focus group,” Brennan says. “What everybody says is, ‘That bonus doesn’t happen enough, and it doesn’t pay enough. Well, if we make it happen more, it’s not going to pay as much. If we push it out, it’s not going to happen enough.”
Examples abound of popular IGT games on which key elements can be traced to player feedback. Coin O Mania, a core video game on the CrystalCurve cabinet, is marked near the top performers in current industry surveys, but it is not the entire vision of its producer, who wanted to focus on the base game by omitting any free game or picking event. “It’s got a really cool, innovative coin feature, and in order to pay for that, he said, ‘I’m not going to put free spins or bonus in this game.’ So, he brought it to focus group, and every comment was, ‘How can you make a game without free spins?’ He put a free spins bonus in the game.”
Michael Brennan, IGT
Another example is The Price is Right on the giant Megatower cabinet, which is in the market on the CrystalDual Stepper cabinet. On that game, the team turned to players before game development had even started. “We knew we had the license, and a lot of times when you have a branded license, it is sometimes subjective as to what the creative team or others think is great about that license. So, with The Price Is Right, we piggybacked on another player focus group, and in the end, we spent 15 minutes and showed them four graphic layouts, and four potential ways we could use the wheel in Price Is Right, which we hope will become as iconic as the wheel in Wheel of Fortune. And they clearly responded to one of the four layouts.”
While testing can be valuable at the beginning of development, for most manufacturers, player testing does not end when a game is released. Everi performs walk-away testing in the field—asking players what they liked or disliked about the game experience right after they play it. And according to Ehrlich, it has led to significant product changes.
“Player walk-away testing is effective in gauging field performance early on with a game,” Ehrlich says. “We still dedicate time to walk-away testing for a game despite the fact the title successfully made it through internal player testing. The ability to capture a player’s feedback immediately after completing a game in a live casino environment using their own money has led to some of the most significant input we have received. Walk-away testing is very different from placing a player in front of an unreleased game in a controlled environment and having them use ‘play money.’
“As a good use case, early walk-away testing enabled us to identify unique elements of Shark Week that we could repeat in follow-on themes for our banked product Empire Arena. Conversely, walk-away testing allows us to determine our missteps so we can avoid them in the future for those titles that did not perform as we hoped.”
“We also do player intercepts in the field,” says IGT’s Brennan. “Player focus is only one part of it.” He says IGT has a program called SME—for “slot machine enthusiasts”—comprised of veteran game experts within the company who give feedback to game producers. “We get our own internal people to put on their slot player hats and play our games,” he says.
“And we also do player intercepts in the field. For example, when we launched 4D, we went out in the field, and we sat and interviewed players. Sometimes you formalize it, sometimes less formal. What did you think? How did you like the bonus? And we will get qualitative input on how players are accepting our games once they’re launched.”
As more hit products are traced to significant player input, the practice of player focus groups is only going to grow. “When designing and developing a game, you see it through a certain set of rose-colored glasses,” says Konami’s Colella. “You designed it a certain way, you’ve labored over features and entertaining extras, you know the ins and outs, and you make assumptions about how people will play the game.
“Stepping back and showing an unguided sneak peek to the intended audience can uncover all kinds of things you never saw or anticipated. It can also shine a light on features we want to highlight. Player feedback can pinpoint design changes that may make a game better.”
“The player perspective is invaluable, as they observe elements of a game we do not expect,” says Everi’s Ehrlich, “or discover moments we could not have predicted even in the roughly nine months it takes to produce a game. Serious players also bring fresh perspective when comparing games, which enables us to constantly learn about player likes and dislikes as well as trends. All of this is critically important to the development process.”
“It is a critical part of what we do,” agrees IGT’s Brennan. “Players are always a part of what we are. Our designers in our studios are players, too. You have to put the hat on a different type of player. That’s why the focus groups are important. You may be a hard-core player, but you might be designing for someone who is a different demographic or different play style.
“We absolutely have to believe in the creative vision of our teams, and we have to understand whether their original creative vision, and the implementation of that vision, is understood and accepted by players. We are going to stick with the experience and the passion and the expertise of the original vision, but we absolutely always listen to the players. Players are part of our development process every step of the way.”
