The online gambling market continues to expand at a very rapid pace, and is expected to touch US$ 87.75 billion by the year 2024, at a CAGR of 8.77% for the forecast period of 2019 to 2024.
Online gambling includes all the gambling-related activities on the Internet including poker, blackjack, bingo, roulette, lotteries, slots (called pokies in New Zealand) and more. Talking about online slots in specific, these are the games that require maximum development effort and are also the kind that change quite frequently. Let’s learn more about their design and development below.
Creation of an online slot game’s
A top rated online slot game, for instance, a life-transforming progressive jackpot slot like Mega Moolah, requires around one year for development, starting from the ideation stage to the deployment on multiple platforms. Close to a dozen people take part in the development process, including a server developer, mathematician game designer, 1-3 front-end developers, project manager, game tester, configurator and a creative team comprising of 1-2 individuals. Specialty graphic designers can also be a part of the team depending upon the specifics of the online slot game. Although every game is different, they all use a pre-existing framework that helps in streamlining the process.
The process
The first step involves getting everyone including marketing people, creative teams, development team and the product management together and to figure out if the concept has legs? Once a direction has been taken, all the demographics data and marketing stats are used for taking specific directions. After the concept evolves into a concrete idea, it is handed to the creative and the product management team. These groups go over similarly-themed online slots in the marketplace and figure out how their game can be presented differently to attract players.
Post the selection of the theme, the team decides on the mood of the slot game; if it will be whimsical, featuring cartoon characters or more reality-oriented with actual photographs? The bonus games are created to accurately reflect the mood and theme of the game.
The market research and creative teams decide everything ranging from the broader details such as fonts, audio, colour schemes etc. to the smallest specifications like the time taken by the bonus games to launch. Every single detail is planned out by these teams, much before anyone gets to know about them. In the end, it’s all about delivering the best playing experience to the users.
Many a times designers need to incorporate certain pop culture elements like some musician or a movie, as a part of corporate tie-up. This can pose a major professional challenge. Development of branded games requires the teams to comprehensively study and research the concerned brand in order to gain good understanding of the highlights, main scenes and characters, and thereafter give all that the shape of a realistic game plan which can be implemented inside a reasonable budget and timeframe, after approval of the brand owner.
Sometimes it’s pretty hard to develop a brand-new online slot game from the scratch too. A non-branded slot game causes other kinds of challenges, the biggest being how to differentiate it from the great multitude of slots that get released each year. And to make it engaging and compelling enough from the user’s perspective, without making it too complicated for project execution.
About the Author
Mirko Humbert
Mirko Humbert is the editor-in-chief and main author of Designer Daily and Typography Daily. He is also a graphic designer and the founder of WP Expert.