Slots Game Overview

Introduction

Forgive the pre-amble, but I feel it’s best that I give some background in order to best allow you all to judge the validity of this journal.

While avoiding highlighting particular companies, I have been a game designer in the casino game industry for over 10 years. I have directly worked for some of the largest manufacturers in the world, have been the head of game design at one of the first firms supplying internet casino providers and co-founded another some 6 years ago. I dare say that at one time or another I or my colleagues have designed and developed games for the vast majority of the major land-based manufacturers and internet system providers. We have over 400 game titles to our credit in one form or another, and over 20 patents or patents pending in various jurisdictions.

The intent behind this short journal is to provide a level of insight into the way reputable online casino slot software is designed and how it functions. To that end I hope you will find that I speak from a position of strength when it comes to the industry and the games.

Given that it’s a fairly massive subject I think there’s a high probability that I’ll leave out many pertinent points, but one has to start somewhere…

So I’ll start with the big question:

Are on-line slot games fair?

By this, are they fair to the player and represent an honest chance to win, albeit with odds stacked somewhat in favour of the casino?

Well, the short answer is: “They can be and they should be”. The longer answer would be followed by: “…but it really comes down to the way the software has been designed and the integrity of both the software and the casino operators that use it.”

As with most gambling games in this world it is very easy to produce something that is very, very unfair to players. Good, honest on-line software, however, should be about giving the player a realistic chance of achieving a win. In the long run the player is still likely to lose, because unless you’re running a game that has higher than 100% average return to player (RTP), you’re going to come out behind.

And yes, there are shonky operators and shonky software providers out there.
Even if the software has integrity it’s quite possible that a dodgy casino operator may engage in utterly unethical behaviour or otherwise avoid legitimate operational responsibility.

As with just about any industry you’re going to find individuals that aren’t out to provide a solid product or be around for the long term. Much of the traditional terrestrial casino industry suffered from this problem throughout its early years, and the advent and growth of on-line side is no different. In my opinion the short-sighted decisions of such operators or providers make their business less profitable than they should be, and go a long way towards tarnishing both the software and industry.

Oversight by the provider of the software would seem like a solution, but there are numerous commercial and legal concerns that often prevent this. Still, we can but hope that one day the scene will be a lot safer for players…till then make sure you avoid Rogue operations listed on Casinomeister like the plague (http://www.casinomeister.com/rogue/index.php)

So how should good, honest software work?

I’ll restrict myself initially to how on-line slots should work, since they’re the types of games that we mainly produce.

In short a good software system should simply provide random results, with win evaluation conducted following a random spin of the reels. There are numerous ways that the software behind a slot can be constructed to yield a result that is still statistically in the favour of the operator and yet be random. To understand this we’ll start with how slot game reel strips are composed and how spins occur.