The Interesting World Of Casino Game Development
Plenty of people enjoy playing in casinos – online and real-life- playing their favourite slots or live casino games. But many of these players don’t understand the intricate and interesting process that goes on in designing these great games.
In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at exactly what goes into the development of hit casino games. The hit casino games that are found on the casinos listed at Casino Online In have all been through this process and it’s quite spectacular when you look into it!
Designing the game
Casino games start life in the same way video games do – by designing the concept. This can be as simple as just sketching out rough ideas with a pen and paper that can be fleshed out, and the process often involves not just the look of the casino but the features as well.
Video slots usually have the most leniency in ideas when it comes to designing, as there are absolutely no hard rules when it comes to gameplay. Table games are a bit harder to innovate, as they have set-in-stone rules and mechanics.
Once the developers have got the design flesh out, it’s time to move to the technical development stage.
Technical development
This is the most extensive part of the development process. Most of the casino games you see will be developed using industry-standard HTML 5, as it allows the most flexibility in terms of what device the game finally ends up being played on.
Development at this stage will have stand-in animations and graphics whilst the actual game engine and data science are figured out. This is widely considered the hardest part of any casino game, as the mathematical logic needs to be constructed in a way that makes sense and is fair.
Once the mathematical components of the game have been sorted out, then it’s up to artists and animators to add the final touch to any assets that will be used in the game. Now we’re onto our next stage: testing.
Testing the game out
This is the part of development that many, many developers hate. Again similar to video game development, the casino game will need to have any bugs or glitches ironed out. As an example, imagine you’re enjoying a game of video poker and beat the dealer’s hand. You wouldn’t be happy if instead of paying out your winnings, the machine dished out twice your stake to the dealer!
The rigorous testing that takes place also helps figure out the actual RTP or Return To Player percentage of the slot. This has to be done over thousands of spins, as it takes a large data sample to get the most accurate RTP.
Testing the casino games is often the most extensive and intensive part of casino game development, taking weeks if not months of virtual playing of the machine to find as many bugs as possible.
Releasing the game to casinos
Once the game has been thoroughly tested, it’s time to get it into the casino. Both land-based and online casino games have to go through this process.
Thanks to advancements in technology, modern casino game terminals in land-based casinos will track the amount of money it’s made and split the revenue between the casino and developers. This has made it so that casinos don’t actually need to rent slots anymore for developers – everything is worked out inside of the machine.
This whole system is incredibly handy, since if the game is licensed – such as the Game of Thrones slot machine – then there are no complicated equations working out who gets what share of the revenue.
Online casino games are pretty much the same situation, with revenue often split between the casino, the developer and any licensing fees. The revenue cut for the online casino will often be a bit lower though, as there’s more competition on casino sites, and so in general fewer people will play the game.
So, there we have it – the process of designing a casino game. The next time you enjoy a casino game, just remember all of the work that went into it!