High 5 Games has succeeded in bringing the slot floor to cyberspace. Next up is delivering cyberspace to the slot floor. And the innovative games developer is just about there.
Lots of people in the industry talk about the convergence of online and land-based. No one’s come as close to achieving it as High 5 Games, whose pioneering work in cultivating social gamers on Facebook finds the New York-based slot developer in the enviable position now where manufacturers are grabbing up its titles ahead of their release.
Bally Technologies even took the unprecedented step last year of introducing a game in partnership with High 5 on the latter’s free-play High 5 Casino (the popular 4×5-reel Shadow Diamond) before taking it terrestrial. The two companies have gone further and made their growing symbiosis official in the form of a multi-year agreement for bringing an exclusive series of Ballybranded H5G games to land-based, online and mobile markets worldwide.
It’s a strong move for Bally. High 5 Casino is a go-to site for some 1.3 million active players on Facebook, of whom about 500,000 are engaging daily, the company says. In percentage terms, this rate of engagement, the “sticky factor,” as it’s called, has High 5 Casino right up there with such heavyweights in the space as Farmville 2, Candy Crush Saga and Angry Birds Friends. It’s actually edged higher in recent weeks. When you think about the font of player information this represents it’s no surprise that what High 5 has learned about marrying a good gamble to a good story is catalyzing other manufacturers as well, notably IGT, which has made tremendous progress over the last year or so in reconnecting with players in Macau via the rich theming and solid maths of Golden Goddess, Big Dragon Lounge, Four Great Chinese Beauties and West Journey Treasure Hunt—all High 5 concepts. Its latest entry for Bally, Zhi Nu, a tiered progressive slated for release in Macau later this year, had the show floor buzzing when it was tipped to the market at G2E Asia in May.
And if you think about the wider High 5 Games art director Nick Chin with Bally’s Zhi Nu tiered progressive The Sweet Spot High 5 Games has succeeded in bringing the slot floor to cyberspace. Next up is delivering cyberspace to the slot floor. And the innovative games developer is just about there. implications, which is what Bally and IGT are thinking about, you come away with something that is nothing short of monumental—a way to revolutionize how manufacturers and operators manage the costs and risks inherent in breaking new games.
The 30-plus games currently running on High 5 Casino get sifted through a 6,500-strong player panel—the full database numbers more than 2 million— which is continually refined for what it can yield strategically in the terrestrial space. Titles are ranked by total spins, spins per session and of course monetization. Apps are evaluated for effectiveness. User geography and language are analyzed. Wide-ranging surveys query players on everything from themes and features to graphics and even music.
“Connecting the dots, right?” says Patrick Brennan, the company’s vice president of Integrated Marketing.
“We really think bydiverging a little bit,innovating a little bit,you’re going to getthe next big hit. We’vebeen creating great gamesfor the mass marketfor 15-plus years so weknow it very well.We know what appealsto the global market.”
As he explains it, “The casinos themselves, they’ve owned the player data through the player cards and the rewards systems and things like that. Now we have a chance to have direct access to our players, not only in a testing environment but direct access to what they like about our games. Having those insights into the games themselves, looking at the games that they play, the spin rates, not only based on the behavioral data but also qualitative research, where we go out and ask them about new games that they would like to see, what themes, what math models and things like that, we’re able to bounce ideas off them before we actually go to full game development. When casinos hear about this, and the distributors, they’re like, ‘Oh, that makes sense.’”
Being online obviously also means quick to market. Gone are the usually lengthy logistical and regulatory hurdles that stand between a new title and its intended audience. Which means you can respond to trends and changing tastes almost as soon as they’re known.
“There’s no lag time,” as an executive in game development puts it.
The fan base High 5 Casino creates in this way, “prepackaging” is how the company describes it, is then cultivated anew through e-mail and other direct communications once a game hits the casino floor, making them aware that their free-play favorites are now available for the real thing.
From here the growth curve ascends sharply upward, so management believes. The plan is “to aggressively pursue potential new ventures and rapidly expand into untapped markets” in the words of COO Med Nadooshan.
The next move on the delivery side is a Game Server Platform capable of streaming content in real time both to cash gambling and social casino sites. This was kicked into high gear earlier this summer with the purchase of Electrotank, a leader in the field, developers of a multiplayer networking engine for Flash, Unity 3, iPhone, Android, XNA and HTML 5. Electrotank’s customers have included Disney, MTV, Mattel and US cable television giants Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.
On the all-important content side, a studio head for H5G says the idea is “to push and try different things.”
Mr Benson adds, “We really think by diverging a little bit, innovating a little bit, you’re going to get the next big hit. We’ve been creating great games for the mass market for 15-plus years so we know it very well. We know what appeals to the global market. Obviously, Asia is a niche, Macau very niche. So in terms of the globalization of our games, by hiring Nick, hiring his team, we think we can crack it—we’re close to cracking it.”
Nick being Remi Award-winning director, producer and writer Nick Chin, whose work has been previewed at Cannes and who joined High 5 a year and a half ago from Hong Kong/New York-based Tai Tai Films. He heads the team of artists and storytellers behind Zhi Nu, which is based on a tale that has endured through the centuries to become a staple of Chinese popular culture, that of the goddess who weaves clouds and her ill-fated love for a mortal.
“People relate to these stories a lot through television and film, so we’ve really sort of brought that in, the cinematic feel,” Mr Chin says. “We’ve really tried to add an emotional touch to it. We want people to really feel the game and to bring back why they liked the story in the beginning.”
It’s a task he pursues with the passion of an auteur. “What makes a good slot machine and what makes a good film are very similar,” as he sees it. “You want to captivate somebody. The techniques you have in film, where you have plot, you have suspense, you have the sort of highs and lows, you have that in a slot machine as well.”
But then delivering on that, as he knows well, means the game has to succeed as a compelling gamble. “It’s really the math. Really good math,” he says. “For a really good experience. If you get that experience, the suspense, you want to play.”
Combining that with thematic richness and the lure of the big win is what Bally and High 5 believe will set Zhi Nu apart when it arrives on Macau’s slot floors sometime in the fourth quarter. Several more titles are planned for the link, all similarly steeped in China’s abundant romantic lore.
“It’s a fun time in Asia to be making slots,” Mr Chin says. “It can grow and change in all kinds of directions. We can really try to push it.”
Zhi Nu
