Konami Gaming – Growth Mode
For the past few years, the Global Gaming Expo for Konami Gaming, Inc. has been a stage for a parade of new cabinets launched in the Dimension series.
This year, Konami has undergone a concerted effort to fill those cabinets with a diverse range of content, in many cases through collaboration among its three main development studios.
“The business is in growth mode,” says Tashina Lazcano, Konami’s director of marketing & communications. “Konami is investing in our people, our products and partnerships. In terms of our investment in people, we’ve significantly increased our workforce over the past 12 months, aimed at future product development as well as customer success on the product side.”
Among the additions on the talent side are Vice President of Sales Enablement Stephanie Lau, who joined Konami after 20 years on the operations side with Station Casinos and MGM Resorts; and Eric Schultz, who had previously spent 13 years at Konami in software engineering, who returned to the company as vice president of studio operations after five years at Everi.
“We’re really happy to have him back on the team and helping lead our studio operations here on the U.S. game development side,” Lazcano says.
The ramp-up in development has occurred as the latest entry in the Dimension series of cabinets, the Dimension 43×3—with its impressive display of three 43-inch monitors—has entered the marketplace, completing the footprint for the cabinet series.
“In the past 12 months, we launched an entirely new slot form factor with Dimension 43×3, and we’ve also expanded our content across the Dimension line,” Lazcano says. “But at the end of the day, any investment that we make in people and products is ultimately aimed at partnership, and driving that customer success in the market.”
Lazcano adds that there is a lot more diversification among game styles and mechanics in Konami’s slot lineup, thanks to collaboration among designers in the U.S., Japan and Australia studios. “That’s really with the support of (Senior Vice President and Chief Games Product Officer) Gerard Crosby at the helm,” Lazcano says.
“He’s really driven a lot of that collaboration, and we’re seeing that play out with series like UnWooly Riches, where we really tapped into the strengths of the different studios to create something truly unique.”
Konami’s Global Gaming Expo lineup for land-based casinos will feature out-of-the-box mechanics and art styles. But the company’s G2E booth also will reveal a move to different channels, with games for the VLT, Class II and historical horse racing markets, as well as the online channels, where Konami has seen a big bump of late.
“Konami has its own proprietary remote gaming server that integrates with many of the industry’s major internet gaming systems,” explains Lazcano, “which allows our latest slot titles as well as our classics to be deployed across online real-money and social gaming sites.”
Finally, Konami will demonstrate new developments for its popular SYNKROS casino management system, which is still spreading its footprint across the industry with recent installs at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City, and the JACK casinos in Ohio.
Diverse Collection
All of the collaboration between studios has created a diverse range of slot games for launch at G2E, including games across all the cabinets in the Dimension line. Andrew Culverson, Konami’s senior manager, games and product, notes that the company’s developers have taken care to watch the market and respond with popular game styles.
“We’re really focusing on market trends,” Culverson says, “metamorphic pots, characters and symbols, but also the hold-and-spin feature, expanding reels and multipliers. We’re also focusing on what works well for Konami, so we’ve released a lot of legacy titles on Dimension, and we’re porting some of their features over to different titles.”
Charms Full Link on the Dimension 49 portrait cabinet is such a game, with base games Leprechaun’s Gifts and Leprechaun’s Blessing featuring a hold-and-spin feature similar to Konami’s hit All Aboard series.
During Leprechaun’s Gifts’ primary game, gift symbols appearing on all but the first reel transform into the same paying symbol or into coin symbols. The coin symbols travel to the top display to increment the pot. On any random spin, six or more coins can cause the pot to burst, triggering the Charms Full Link hold-and-spin bonus including the enhancement identified on the coins.
The coins are marked “Extra Spins,” “Double Games” and “Lucky Kicker.” Extra Spins grants a fourth spin after three spins without a coin or bonus, extending the feature. Double Games expands the bonus to two stacked reel arrays. Lucky Kicker adds a spinning coin on the right of the array for an extra bonus amount. The player can trigger one, two or all three of the enhancements on a single feature. Filling the entire reel array on the hold-and-spin feature returns the Grand jackpot.
Another game calling on past successes is Mighty Mayan Chief, featured on the Dimension 27 triple-screen or the big-screen Dimension 43×3. In this game, there are two metamorphic gems, one triggering a jackpot picking bonus and the other boosting the value of “Reveal” symbols, which transform several symbols into the same symbol for large wins.
“Konami has a huge library of legacy titles that did very well on the Podium platform,” Culverson says. “Now, we’re starting to utilize those features and enhance those into different titles. We’re not just porting them forward, but we’re also making a lot of tweaks.”
The gems in Mighty Mayan Chief are one example. “We’re also utilizing the Free Games and Super Free Games features that made those former games so popular,” says Culverson.
The player can win up to 450 standard Free Games, but can exchange them at one Super Free Game for every eight Free Games. Super Free Games feature bonuses such as higher-paying symbols, more transforming symbols and higher payout potentials.
Culverson adds that Mighty Mayan Chief is available in low- and high-denomination versions. “You can have this from a 1-cent to a 10-cent denomination with progressive reset values that correlate to those values. But you can also set this up for a 5-cent all the way up to a 50-cent denomination, and have $25,000 all the way up to a $100,000 reset, all in the same program. A casino doesn’t have to switch those programs to cater to a low-end or a high-end player.”
On the Dimension 49 is Crazy Stuffed Coins, with a metamorphic character that enhances free games with multipliers, expanding reels and progressive jackpot opportunities; and Moon Celebration, with a wild feature and expanded reels in a free-game bonus. “With this game, you have expanding reels during the free games, but also, with higher bet levels you see more frequent jackpots,” says Culverson.
“And, there is a wild transformation feature that goes on in the background. Different-shaped pieces drop down behind the reels, and when they land on the reels, they change those symbols to wilds.”
Also on the Dimension 49 is K-Pow Pig, which wraps hold-and-spin and free-spin features into animated sequences that combine classic comic book-style art with Japanese anime-style art in a fun visual. Lazcano says it represents one of the results of the multi-studio collaboration.
It’s also a good example of Konami’s application of its amusement-game heritage in the casino space.
“The amusement side of the business is in our DNA,” says Tom Jingoli, Konami’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “That’s who we are. That’s where we came from. We look at different products that our parent company has had, and see if there’s some way to bring that into the industry.
“We’re trying to focus more on what we’re really good at. Expanding into Class II, VLT and HHR are really important, but it’s also important for us to take a peek under the hood and see what our parent company has done with some amusement-style games. And if it’s something that we can fold into our mainstream product line, we’re always open to do it.”
Large and Larger
Konami is displaying several games that can be featured either on the Dimension 49J large-format portrait cabinet or the jumbo Dimension 75C. One highlight in these large formats is BUZZR, which wraps a cash-on-reels feature and a what-you-see-is-what-you-get mechanic into bonuses with footage from three classic TV game shows, Beat the Clock, Card Sharks and Family Feud.
The Beat the Clock free-game feature adds multipliers throughout the bonus. The Card Sharks feature is a high/low card pick, and the Family Feud sequence is a cash-on-reels free-spins feature with extra spin opportunities.
“This is one of our licensed titles we’ve shown in the past,” says Culverson. “With Eric and his team on board, we reevaluated it. We tweaked it so it really made sense for the market. So, you now have what-you-see-is-what-you-get and cash-on-reels, and other features that offer a bit of variety for the players.”
Bingo Frenzy Stampede is another title on the two large-format cabinets. This game features a unique hold-and-spin feature, played out on a five-by-five “bingo card” grid. During the feature, every time five cash-on-reels awards land in a straight or diagonal line, it’s a “bingo.” A dauber flies down to stamp the combination, and all the values are awarded instantly.
The bingo values collapse into a center coin, and the other spots open up again as the hold-and-spin feature continues.
In all, Konami’s G2E lineup reflects a renewed product plan based on game diversity and hit features across several channels.
“When we talked to the teams last year, (CEO) Steve Sutherland and I talked about growth,” says Jingoli. “Of course, every company wants to grow, and it’s not the easiest thing to do. So, I give the teams full credit. They’ve gone back to basics on a lot of the game development.
“It was a fantastic job by the engineering and product management teams, working with sales to set us up for growth.”
Jingoli says a lot of the development change was driven by Jay Bertsch, the company’s senior vice president and chief commercial officer.
“It was about getting back to the basics and following the trends,” says Bertsch. “In previous years, we have been so focused on innovation that we tried to innovate too quickly. This year, we’ve stayed true to the trends like metamorphic pots and hold-and-spin features, because we knew players were playing those games.”
“It’s all about content,” says Jingoli, “and we’ve done a good job of focusing on content through all of our different form factors over the past year, and you’re going to see much of the same from us at G2E this year.
“I’m excited about what the teams have done, working together to put some really good product in front of our customers.”
