Small and Strong

The history of the slot sector is one of expansion, followed by contraction, and expansion again. When slots first took over table games as the highest-earning casino offering in the 1980s, one could count the number of slot suppliers on one hand.

Since then, many companies have come and gone, but a few have survived to lead the industry. Aristocrat, originally founded in the 1950s, entered the U.S. market in the 1990s and survives today at the top of the market as Aristocrat Gaming. Legacy companies Bally and WMS are today’s Light & Wonder, and IGT has survived through many iterations to remain a force in the industry.

Those three companies occupy what many call the “podium,” a reference to the top three Olympic medals, translated into the three market leaders in slots. Large companies like Konami, Ainsworth and Everi have targeted the top of the market for years, but if there is one development that characterizes today’s slot market, it is the emergence of a segment of small companies vying for a share of the market.

Many of these companies have generated significant ripples in the slot sea, scoring hits that have risen to the top of industry surveys such as the Eilers-Fantini Slot Performance Report. All have achieved market share that has put them on the industry radar, and all are facing the same challenge—how to move toward that podium range in terms of revenue and market share.

When it comes to small, upstart companies competing against entrenched industry leaders, there are many common elements that surface among the more successful of the small suppliers. Among the top factors is a focus on creating winners—to use a baseball analogy, scoring hits while minimizing strikeouts.

“We have fewer resources, so we have to be more efficient,” comments Mike Brennan, chief product officer for Bluberi, a company that only recently entered the U.S. market but already has scored big hits, most prominent among them the award-winning Devil’s Lock. “We don’t have as much bandwidth (as the large suppliers), so we have to be more thoughtful, and take our time with what we’re doing—we can’t afford as many mulligans as the big guys.”

Slots like Devil’s Lock, which scored Bluberi’s first Eilers-Fantini award, demonstrate another of Brennan’s favorite analogies. “The Big Three have big advantages, but we liken the process to a restaurant,” he says. “We’re not going to have the highest revenue-earning restaurant, but if we focus on a dish, we can have the best.”

Creating those hit “dishes” means keeping a close eye on player preferences, says Dan Whelan, vice president of gaming product development for Incredible Technologies (IT), another smaller company with rapidly growing share in the slot market.

“The most important thing is to provide what the players want,” Whelan says. “Not only does the design team consist of developers, but we are also slot players. We look through the lens of players when we develop our games. We ensure the bets, denominations, volatility and game features are all appealing to the player to the best of our ability.”

Whelan says IT has kept a close eye on what appeals to players—not only in game mechanics, but in the volatility range that is appealing to end-users. “First and foremost, we made a concerted effort to better align with popular trends in the industry,” he says. “Second, we made the decision to transition our games away from being known as the entertainment/low-volatility company. We have had recent, sustained success with several high-volatility math models.”

Other smaller companies have achieved success by drilling down to find the needs of the market. “We have to maintain a heavy focus on having the right products, balanced with having the right games on those products,” comments Mark DeDeaux, general manager and senior vice president of slots for AGS.

“There are certain constraints that smaller companies have to work within, as opposed to the bigger guys who may have bigger budgets. There are a lot more constraints in terms of our resources than our competitors, especially the big incumbents…

“The byproduct of that is that we’ve learned how to become very good at improving things. The first thing we do is look at the overall market opportunity, which includes our competitors and customers—we spend a lot of time evaluating what our competitors are doing, and then also we look at what we believe customers would benefit the most from us. We try to align our strategies and our teams and our business around those factors.”

“The most impactful developments include closely tracking market trends, such as the growing demand for content and games with unique mechanics such as three-target awards and feature-in-feature bonuses,” adds Lai Cozzolino, manager of global product management for Aruze Gaming Global (AG2).

“Establishing a competitive position in the market requires a combination of proven performance, innovation, and responsiveness to market trends. Leveraging the success of our past games, we continuously refine and enhance popular titles, ensuring sustained player engagement and floor performance.”

In the end, the smaller slot suppliers have one overriding advantage over the entrenched companies—the ability to respond to the market quickly.

“The advantage of being a small company is the ability to be nimble about different things,” says Greg Colella, chief product officer for Las Vegas-based Gaming Arts, a company which recently entered a strategic partnership with Germany’s Merkur Gaming to add world-class manufacturing capabilities and the ability for quick market response. “The ability for us to move and move quickly because of the resources that we have from Merkur will be particularly significant for us.”

Veteran Help

For many small companies, the journey to top performance has been given a significant boost from veteran talent. Bluberi’s Brennan was a longtime top executive of IGT. AG2 is headed by Kelcey Allison, who was CEO of the legacy company Aruze Gaming America. Gaming Arts was a bingo company before its owner, David Colvin, enlisted slot supply veterans—headed by former Ainsworth Americas chief Mike Dreitzer—to enter the slot market.

Colella is the latest addition to that roster, with a 30-year history in the supply sector including executive positions at Bally, Scientific Games, Konami, Novomatic Americas and other manufacturers. He says it’s important to inject veteran talent not only at the top, but in game design as well.

“I’ve worked for really big companies,” Colella says. “I’ve worked for medium-sized companies, and now I’m working for a smaller company. Obviously, we don’t have the bankroll of the Big Three, so we have to rely on some of our key veteran talent to allow us to be really smart in what we’re doing.”

“Veteran talent is critical,” agrees Bluberi’s Brennan. “We have a great diversity of people from all different backgrounds and vendors, but also different geographies—in Quebec, Reno, Las Vegas and Austin. That diversity of thought is super powerful.”

“Bringing in veteran talent in game development has been crucial to our success,” says AG2’s Cozzolino. “Experienced developers bring a deep understanding of what works in the slot machine market, from player psychology and engagement tactics to proven game mechanics and theme selection.”

The exception to this rule is Incredible Technologies, which had a wealth of experience in the amusement-game industry but created its slot lineup through reverse-engineering of game features popular in the market, and creating an R&D culture that gives new talent a chance to shine.

“We have not added any veteran talent to game development,” says Whelan. “I have made a big push to give young developers a chance to design games and give them more responsibilities. It’s working. I’m proud of what we accomplished in 2024. The creativity of our people has always been the greatest strength of IT.”

Building the Roadmap

One thing agreed upon by all is the need for a small slot supplier to be very careful in planning each year’s product roadmap.

“It’s really a targeted focus,” says Bluberi’s Brennan. “It is measured growth. We’re not trying to turn any of our studios into factories. We can allow them to shine without putting the pressure to just deliver, deliver, and skip quality. If a game is late by five weeks and it’s much better, it’s worth it.

“We’re following the right metrics, and that means not releasing a game that doesn’t work, which hurts; it’s reputationally damaging… We want to make sure we put obsession on game quality, with subtle but impactful differentiation. It’s important to franchise our studios to keep pushing to be different in little ways.”

AG2’s Cozzolino says crafting the product roadmap involves a balance between the old and the new. “Our product plan leverages the success of our past games while incorporating market trend-setting innovations to stay competitive with the largest suppliers,” he says. “Games like Triple Treasure Pot, known for their engaging bonus feature and strong floor performance, have laid the foundation for our reputation. Building on this success, we are enhancing popular games with updates that introduce dynamic mechanics and multi-level bonuses to keep players engaged.”

Also crucial in this effort is engaging the operators to ascertain what is working in the market. “Customer feedback plays a vital role in shaping our game development process,” Cozzolino says. “Through close partnerships with operators, we gain valuable insights into market trends, preferences, and game performance. Operators share crucial information about the types of games their patrons enjoy most. This feedback allows us to refine game features like engaging bonus structures, and feature-in-feature bonuses that players find appealing.”

IT’s Whelan says impactful research extends to the end users of the games, the players. “Every month, we hold player focus testing in our office,” he says. “It is run by our marketing team with help from our development teams. We’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with local partners to find avid players with serious slot knowledge and reward them with free play for giving us feedback on games that are in the early stages of development.”

Customer feedback “is essential,” adds Bluberi’s Brennan. “There really are multiple customers. It starts internally with our sales team, and then operators, and then the players. Player input is the best chance to stop, when the game is almost done, with time for fine tuning—take a step back and get feedback from some fresh eyes.”

Eyes on the Prize

Regardless of the research, feedback and innovation placed into each individual game released by small slot companies, one thing all have in common is the courage to compete with the largest suppliers in the market by exploiting what already resonates with players.

“What’s important is intensity and tenacity,” says DeDeaux at AGS. “It’s all about the games, but organizationally for us, it’s about being hyper-focused, very scrappy and executing with a lot of intensity—and the energy we have to put into being successful because of the constraints of being an emerging supplier, versus an incumbent with a lot more resources to leverage.”

AG2’s Cozzolino adds that carefully leveraging successes in the marketplace is essential to compete with the entrenched market leaders. “Establishing a competitive position in the market requires a combination of proven performance, innovation, and responsiveness to market trends,” he says. “Leveraging the success of our past games, we continuously refine and enhance popular titles ensuring sustained player engagement and floor performance.

“The key to achieving a podium position is our unwavering commitment to developing innovative and engaging games that captivate players and meet market demands.

“Equally important is our ability to anticipate and capitalize on current market trends. We are focusing on developing games with engaging game-play elements, and cutting-edge cabinet designs to draw attention on the casino floor. Additionally, integrating market feedback and data-driven insights allows us to design games that resonate deeply with both casinos and players.”

Companies like Gaming Arts and AGS will soon have the ability to tap into the resources of well-financed larger companies in striving to compete, thanks to Gaming Arts’ partnership with Merkur and the pending acquisition of AGS by Brightstar Capital Partners.

“Having the ability to tap into that larger resource pool from a technology point of view and from an operational point of view is going to be significant,” says Gaming Arts’ Colella, “because it gives us the advantage of still being a small company that has the ability to be nimble about different things, but to have the backing of a very large company—so when we do get a hit, we could deploy lots of machines very quickly.”

Other small companies like Bluberi are consistently improving their financial position through organic growth—“measured growth while staying extremely hungry,” says Brennan. “That’s the intangible.

“We’re avoiding sameness by having these different studios and different approaches. For a small vendor, if you do only the same thing and you don’t have a diversified approach and portfolio, you die.

“So we are always thinking forward 18 months, staying hungry, staying humble, and making sure we celebrate wins, but never are satisfied.”