As touchscreen technology continues to become more advanced, the choices available to game developers continues to grow at the same pace. Helen Fletcher looks at the latest touchscreen offerings and how these are being incorporated into successful gaming and amusement machines
Touchscreen technology keeps expanding in all aspects of our lives - from mobile phones with touchscreen features to all types of devices in banks, restaurants, machinery and of course gaming devices. With this comes a natural improvement in robustness, response time, accuracy and reliability, but more recently, there have been some exciting developments in multi-touch systems and tactile feedback.
Historically capacitive touch, which offers fast and accurate touch performance, excellent physical durability, premium light transmission, advanced anti-glare properties and field-tested high reliability, along with SAW technology, which is nearly impossible to wear out and provides excellent scratch and damage resistance and superior drift-free calibration stability as well as a superior level of light transmission, have been favoured by the gaming industry.
For Kimson Tan of Chinese manufacturer General Touch, SAW touchscreen technology has dominated the industry in recent times, having been marketed aggressively, and is the more desirable choice for gaming products.
"Our SAW touchscreen LCD monitors have been designed especially for use in high-traffic casino gaming, video game entertainment and self-service kiosk environments," he said. "Features include a pure glass sealed screen that withstands damage from drips, smoke and other potential hazards found in a gaming environment."
Advances in technology such as these assist manufacturers in developing products demanded by the industry, as Javier Lanfranchi, director of international sales at Merit, explains: "The newest technology in touchscreen has allowed Merit to develop the only touchscreen amusement machine that is weather resistant - the new Megatouch RX - answering our customers that require a machine that can be placed in outdoor locations due to smoking bans affecting most of the pubs and bars around the world."
"SAW touchscreens in casinos have gone from being an interesting add-on that replaced, or augmented buttons and mechanical arms on slot machines, to a product that can be used throughout the property," continued Tan. "Nearly all new slot and video poker machines now have touchscreens and an increasing number of machines are now able to expand play in bonus rounds and offer other interesting features to players."
3M Touch Systems is one touchscreen developer that has played a major part in moving the market forward and the company recently demonstrated its dispersive signal technology touchscreen in London, which allows up to four players to play on one machine simultaneously.
Used in Tab Austria’s Fun4Four game, this technology was chosen for its large size and fast, accurate, repeatable touch response and the product is already being shipped to customers with great success throughout Germany, Spain, Austria, Luxembourg, the UK, Ireland and Switzerland.
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According to Tab’s Dietmar Straubinger family board games and poker work particularly well with the technology. "We run a lot of games and our Silverball Terminals offer, in total, more than 250 games and our brand new multigame table Fun4Four runs card games, skill, trivia, web surfing features, GoogleMaps and of course, poker," he said.
3M has also developed the MCT System, which allows players to experience tactile feedback, which can be implemented either as part of the original gaming machine direct from the manufacturer or as an after-market retrofit to existing video slot machines.
"Many operators are taking the initiative to upgrade games in designated zones on the slot floor," said Paolo Pedrezzoli, marketing operations manager for 3M.
"Once these zones are created to correspond with existing on-screen touch buttons, players can experience tactile feedback with their favourite games. Over the coming months, these enhanced games should provide casinos and gaming halls with the key player feedback and usage patterns needed to expand the MCT System throughout the entire slot floor."
There are clear benefits of developing touchscreen games - for both the game developers and players - as Josef Öhlinger of Funworld points out: "Touchscreens allow the creation of flexible interfaces that can be customised for various different application scenarios. If an application is optimised for a touchscreen, it will be very intuitive to use, therefore it will easily surpass the usability of applications designed for common button operated terminals."
And when it comes to developing new games, for Öhlinger the high flexibility of touchscreen interfaces allows developers to create a bandwith of games that would be impossible in other environments.
"This is not only a result of the higher usability of the interfaces, but also of the quick reaction times of the user," he says. "Touchscreen can therefore create a unique gaming experience that cannot be easily recreated at home, with ordinary input devices like a mouse or gamepads."
Andrew Ludlow, managing director of Games Media, reinforced this point, telling InterGame: "Total flexibility of positioning and messaging of touch panels allows the concept of a multigame terminal - the bedrock of our business - providing flexible digital gaming and entertainment solutions.
"Touchscreens provide players input in precise locations, which greatly enhances the game flow and comprehension. Furthermore, by virtue of the changeable nature of game graphics that also act as versatile buttons - when we update or change a game, the control mechanism is also quick and easy to alter, giving tremendous flexibility to the customer."
However, there are plenty of players out there who still enjoy the tactile nature of push buttons, which Games Media is well aware of, ensuring that its new Juice and Replay terminals incorporate both control methods.
Games Warehouse, based in the UK, is another manufacturer that has traditionally focused on touchscreen technology for its Paragon SWP terminals but is seeing the benefits of push buttons - and how they can compliment touchscreens - by recently introducing push buttons as an optional enhancement. "One of the drawbacks of current touchscreen products is the unavailability of a cost-effective multiple simultaneous touch variant," said Andy Powell, managing director.
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"Speed of repetitive touches can also be limited. With buttons these issues do not exist and this provides game designers with further scope to develop ideas that may previously have been restricted - Paragon TT is now unique in offering the best of both worlds within our markets."
There are some games that tend to lend themselves better to the touchscreen format than others and game developers would be wrong in thinking they can transfer an idea that works in one format on to another - a bit like the situation in the UK with video versus analogue AWP.
Game developers are finding that successful analogue games are not necessarily experiencing the same success in video format. The same principal applies when developing games for a touchscreen or push button product - some games lend themselves better to either/or format.
"Card and puzzle games work great with touchscreens," says Lanfranchi. "Action games like Hoop Jones and Monkey Bash are also fun to play on a touchscreen machine because they require players to perform simple and intuitive actions."
Öhlinger supports this theory, telling InterGame: "Casual games such as Kick the Fish or Pengu Flip, which require quick reactions by the user, work very well with touchscreens because the technology supports the player’s skills needed to play these games successfully. The high sensitivity response reactions of touchscreens make quick playing moves and menu-driven handling possible."
And for Astro Corporation, which uses 3M’s capacitive touchscreen, the technology assists the implementation of bonus games and features and completes the multigame concept, which so often goes hand in hand with the technology.
For Powell this statement is also true. "Playing via a touchscreen interface is an immersive experience. It lends greater variety in play format with games such as our own Dr Who for example - containing sub-games and puzzles that are totally dependent on the touchscreen interface that adds all the excitement."
So where do we see all this heading? How important a role is touch technology going to play in the future industry and what further opportunities will it bring?
There is the view by many in the industry that as technology advances digital products will become the mainstay of the industry. For Ludlow, without doubt the revenue from traditional AWP machines is in decline and outlets have to update their overall gaming provision in order to reverse this trend.
"Utilising new digital gaming technology is the only opportunity to appeal to the huge customer base that currently does not engage with the traditional analogue coin-op offer."
For Simon Herbert of Astro Corporation, touchscreen technology will become the protocol within the gaming industry. However, at the moment each manufacturer has different protocol and it would be a good move for a plug and play touchscreen to be introduced.
He said: "We believe it will be the standard for the coin-op industry in the near future. We can think about it like years ago when we were still using CRT monitors on the slot machines, but now all the machines use TFT monitors. So we think every machine will begin using this technology as it makes things so simple and easy."
