Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming May 2014 50 Going Deep Aristocrat will be at G2E Asia to reaffirm its leadership as an innovator across all markets and in every game segment A ristocrat has a lineup of new Asia-focused games that is possibly the most expansive in its long run as the region’s dominant slot- maker, highlighted by an array of feature-rich additions to the brands so popular with its core Macau customer and includes a bold foray into an increasingly lucrative space in the market populated by a growing number of casual players. “For us the mantra as we go into G2E Asia is content depth and portfolio breadth,” says Mark Aubrey, director of Asia Pacific sales and business development whose arrival from Warner Bros. on the eve of G2E Asia 2013 heralded a fresh approach for the New South Wales-based slots and systems giant to building on its enviable position in the region. “What we want to be able to show is that we have new content across a number of different segments—covering links, covering core gaming products, but now covering things like standalone progressives, covering the entertainment market, covering new technologies.” Mr Aubrey is in many ways the embodiment of this more expansive strategy. He was Warner’s group marketing director for Asia, managing home entertainment, video games, TV, HBO and digital sales and shepherding brands of the likes of Star Wars, Batman, Harry Potter and Call of Duty into release across all media during a 10-year career that also included executive stints at Activision and LucasArts. His move into casino gaming, while a first for him, doesn’t speak so much to a new direction for Aristocrat, as he sees it; rather it affirms the thinking the company has always pursued to achieve the successes it enjoys in markets worldwide. “This is still ultimately entertainment,” he says. “So whether you’re marketing or selling a movie or a video game it shares a lot in common with what has a slot player sitting in front of a machine and what attracts a player to your machine. The core “This is still ultimately entertainment. So whether you’re marketing or selling a movie or a video game it shares a lot in common with what has a slot player sitting in front of a machine and what attracts a player to your machine. The core principles are exactly the same. It’s about creating an experience and making people feel entertained and happy and excited about that experience.” Mark Aubrey , director of Asia Pacific sales and business development principles are exactly the same. It’s about creating an experience and making people feel entertained and happy and excited about that experience. And I think that’s where what Aristocrat is doing and some of my experience comes into play.” It’s an approach that will stand out at G2E Asia with the debut of the new Sky Rider and Storm Queens lines designed in partnership with DanMarks of High 5 Games fame. They’re part of a portfolio fittingly titled the E*Series— as in “E” for “entertainment”—eight titles in all, each as creatively themed and graphically rich as anything you’d expect from High 5 and with mechanics underneath that emphasize fun, accessibility and time on device. “They’re noisy, they’re in your face, the animations are out there, the features are really exciting,” as Mr Aubrey describes them. Sky Rider takes Aristocrat’s popular Max Stacks technology—stacked symbols added to the reels on each spin, with both the symbol and stack generated randomly—and spices it up for the gambler with some of the company’s vaunted 5 Dragons math in the form of selectable free games. “We’ve added a bit of Aristocrat DNA into it,” as Mr Aubrey puts it. Storm Queens offers a less volatile experience that innovates onMax Stacks with an oversized block symbol, the MEGA SYMBOL, that unlocks the feature when it appears on reels 2, 3 and 4 and can combine with stacked symbols on the ends to fill the screen. Macau is the target for both, but then that’s hardly surprising. It’s a US$1.79 billion machine gaming market, the largest in Feature