Your average player won't realise it, but the amount of time and consideration involved in the design of a coin-op game is crucial to its success and even ‘good games’ can fail. Helen Fletcher speaks to some of the companies involved...

The initial ideas stage of game design is probably the single most important stage in the making of a game - design something that players’ can’t relate to or understand and even the most innovative idea can result in an empty cash box.

There have been a number of advances in game design over the years and according to games design specialist Arthur Thomas, one of the most significant advances was in 1965 when Roger Collins and Dave Shenton from ACE designed the Monte Carlo AWP, the first machine to be produced with the Hold and Draw feature on a set of electro-mechanical reels.

In recent years the advent of video gaming has improved the capabilities of designers and according to Phil Thomas from Ace Coin, although the genre initially appeared in the 1980s it has only recently begun to establish itself in the European AWP market.

“Video in many respects is a designer’s dream vehicle as so much can be achieved through the medium as opposed to physical reels and flashing lamps,” said Thomas. “The ideas that emanate from the designers mind or from creative events that may once have been severely physically limited by hardware constraints have been liberated by the advent of video platforms.”

However for Mark Hillman, managing director of Outback Gaming Group in the UK, the creation of networked terminals such as the itbox and GamesNet and the move away from proprietary technologies to Windows and Linux platforms, are the single more significant advances in game design.

“These machines have separated content from platform and developer from manufacturer, which has freed the development of content from the closeted and closed ranks domain of the manufacturer and opened the industry to a wealth of new products and product types that may not have surfaced within the internal design teams of a major manufacturer,” said Hillman.

“Not only have they lowered the barrier to entry but they have completely eradicated any barrier to entry at all. In the early days there were only a couple of companies working in the content space and now there are hundreds.”

Due to improved hardware and better graphic capabilities, game design has now become more about the feel and look of the game and not so much about the limitations of technology.

Johan Buiks, senior product manager at JVH, said: “As competition in Europe grew in the 90s, game design became the platform for gaining the competitive edge.”

Wider teamwork has also become more prevalent in today’s market rather than just a one or two person team heading up the game design function and Heath Samples of Hot Games said: “With our partner Octavian which has game development teams based in Russia, India and Australia we integrate the global view process and a market-by-market approach. Internal and external partners, market research, planning and sales input are key in attaining successful games.”

It would appear, however, that for all the technical advances and opportunities now available for designers, players are creatures of habit.

According to Phil Thomas, developers are constantly trying to find the key to players’ preferences and while video has presented more opportunities, designers are still very much bound worldwide by the players’ apparent preference for games that have spinning reels as the main thrust of game presentations. He said: “In any bar, arcade or bingo club, the vast majority of games are still reel based, whether they are physical reels or video presentations.”

And according to Hillman players are very rarely comfortable with revolutionary changes. He said: “You only have to look at the league tables provided by the operator/platform owner to discover that successful SWP games tend to fit into four categories.

“The TV licence, the board game licence, the traditional parlour game and the ‘also-ran’ games that include smaller-value licences such as men’s magazines, standard themed quizzes and games that are trying to push the boundaries in terms of innovation.

“For me, a successful game is one that is able to capture the player’s imagination and remain on a terminal for a long period of time.”

Lee Henderson from Games Workshop in the UK added: “Players seem to be drawn to branded games as they can relate to them. A good game has to offer value for money and be easy as players don’t seem to enjoy complex games with lots of rules.”

The industry is constantly searching for the secret of a successful game and, according to Phil Thomas, the answer is simply a game that players are prepared to spend time and money playing and derive satisfaction and enjoyment from.

This is not, however, as simple as it seems and the cash box remains the yardstick for buying decisions and players have the major influence over a good or poor cash collection.

Craig Beer of Empire Games said: “The good game/bad game scenario is definitely down to the software and we are all judged by what the operator takes from the cash box. However, a good game design with quality artwork or branded games can make a good game even better.”

There are many processes involved in game development - starting with designing a game specification, then the integration of artwork and sound and then finally making it a playable game - from design to release it normally takes around three months depending on the game’s complexity.

Although customer likes and dislikes are the main considerations when designing games, there are other factors that need to be taken into account.

According to Buiks, the actual design of a game itself takes no more than one or two weeks but it is the development of the game that takes more time and is more complicated.

“Current markets and opportunities need to be reviewed and local preferences binding guidelines from the side of the gaming law, details from the side of homologation institutes and even the ‘spirit of guidelines’ can have an impact on game design,” said Buiks. “These parameters all have an impact on the way the game can look and feel in both positive and negative ways.”

Samples added: “In the European street market, each game has to be specific to that market and even one country can have different regulations. Spain, for example, has 17 autonomous regions each with its own parliament, president, government, administration and Supreme Court. Each region is divided into a number of provinces and many of these have different regulations regarding gaming machines.”

The success of a game can also depend on the country it is placed into, as many players are drawn to a particular type of game depending on the country they live in. For example, according to Buiks, in Hungary players are keen on the Errèl games because they know the clock on the artwork, like dice features and recognise the sounds in the games.

Another example would be Germany; before the legislation changed hi-tech UK games were very popular due to the trail features and high awards available to be won.

Games Warehouse managing director Andy Powell said: “Apart from language barriers certain parts of the world have very specific trends and fashions that are not present elsewhere. Take football (soccer) for example; it is the most popular game in the world but a minority pastime in North America.

“UK players are allowed to enjoy an instant cash prize and therefore expect it and US players prefer puzzles and challenges as well as Q and A trivia. So there are cultural differences but an accurate prediction of the next big thing in a country is almost impossible.”

However, according to Hillman, the most challenging stage of a game’s genesis is the quality assurance stage, more commonly known as ‘testing.’

“Bugs are a fact of life in software development,” said Hillman. “No engineer likes to admit that all software will always have errors, but it is merely a matter of making sure that any bugs that remain at the end of the development are not critical to areas of the game that would make it a potential weak point for players or operators to exploit to their benefit.”

New technologies, it would seem, are crucial to the future and possibilities of games design as they allow for new ideas and Santiago Tirado of Nova Desitec said: “We see that the gaming industry will become more attractive to players due to the new technologies. As far as trends go, wireless and more sophisticated means of communication for control and operation will be common.”

And as more opportunities open up in the coin-op market it is clear that game design will become more important and the future of the coin-op market is progressing quickly towards multigame platforms.

“Skill-based games are one of the fastest growing genres in the industry and in the UK alone there are around 40,000 multigame entertainment terminals out in the field and this is set to grow rapidly,” said Powell.

“It is inevitable that terminals will become connected and networked, games will become server based, platforms will become open and the number of third party content developers will grow considerably.

“The old guard of which I may be a part may not like it, but it is what is going to happen and a lot sooner than many people believe it will.”