Inside Asian Gaming

August 2008 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 47 Casino Technology Vice President of Marketing Rossi McKee have to be taken into consideration when you develop products. That’s why our approach to games,especially for the Asian market, is to develop a specific library of Asian games taking into consideration a number of factors. “These include looking at the demographics of casino players,” explained Ms McKee. “There are,for example,some hardcore players who will stick with table games but there are also tourist and entertainment players who will tend to go more for the slot games.” Casino Technology believes its experience as a Balkan company with a home base on the crossroads of Europe and Asia gives it a clear competitive edge when creating machines and systems with culture- specific as well as cross-cultural appeal. Acropolis Treasure™ is an example of a new game the company developed for tourists, including Greek tourists, who visit Bulgarian casinos in significant numbers. The display features a large medallion of the mythical hero Prometheus, who according to legend stole fire from heaven and gave it to mortals for their use.Prometheus’image is also used as the wild symbol in the game. “We understand how to serve a non- domestic market,” says Ms Stefanova. Target markets “We supply 40% of the machines in Bulgarian casinos. That market is very well developed in attracting cross border visitors, just like Macau is getting lots of cross-border visitors from mainland China and tourists from other cultures. “In Bulgaria, many people come by bus fromTurkey to play in our casinos. Many also come from Israel.We get people fromGreece and Cyprus because those countries don’t have as many casinos as we do.” The company is less than a decade old but is already developing a global presence. “We are a leader in the Bulgaria market and also have extensive experience in Eastern and Western Europe,” explains Ms Stefanova. “We work extensively in Russia and the former Soviet bloc countries and nowwe are looking at Latin America, North America and Africa, as well as Asia,” she states. “We have more than 20 offices across the world, including one in Vienna and one in Peru,” she adds. “We are very impressed with the way G2E Asia was organised and were pleased with the feedback we had from operators. That tells us how professional the industry is here in Asia.” First wave Casino Technology’s first trial offerings in Macau include Golden Bird™ and Wild Tiger™. They are two games the company categorises as volatile in playing style. Both are five-reel games, with the former offering 100 winning lines and the latter nine to 21 winning lines.Both are available in stand-alone format or as linked progressives or linked mystery jackpots using the company’s proprietary jackpot controllers. The games are also part of the company’s Gemini Series Product range, meaning they can support a second screen, providing options such as payout information, game help, or interactive animation. WildTiger™features iconic Asian animals including the giant panda, while Golden Bird™ has a specifically Chinese look. “We know that Asian people like the colours red and gold,” says Ms Stefanova. “Our new release, Golden Bird™, has those colours on the display, and the theme is a bird in a golden cage. If you travel anywhere in Asia, you see in many cultures people love to keep songbirds, so that’s an idea that players can understand and appreciate.” The game also uses fish for the game’s scatter symbol. Fish are lucky in Chinese culture because the word for fish (‘yu’) sounds similar to the Chinese word for riches or abundance. Golden Bird™ also features Chan Chu, the famous three-legged money frog with a gold coin in its mouth,as the jackpot symbol. Chinese players know that many feng shui masters advise families to place amoney frog with its mouth pointing towards the family living quarters as a good way of attracting wealth and prosperity into the home. “We still have things to learn about what customers like in this market and we have an open mind about that,” says Ms Stefanova. “We know there’s more to the Asian market than just adopting Asian symbols for our games.” Strong team The company says an important strength is its high quality research and design staff based in Bulgaria. Casino Technology’s development team has been recruited from outside as well as inside Bulgaria, but the low cost of living in the country helps to keep R&D costs down, says the firm. Locally-produced researchers have been educated and trained under the rigorous academic system inherited from the days of the Soviet bloc, with its noted strengths in engineering, computing and mathematics, and so are able to compete with the best researchers available on the international market, adds Ms Stefanova. “We have a huge R&D department and design department working on different games and producing different games for different markets,” she explains. “Research and marketing costs out of Bulgaria are lower than in Western Europe, but we have people of the same quality as those coming out of Western Europe or even higher,” she adds. “Eastern Europe, like China, has a young population and we as a company have a lot of experience in producing and designing games for young people.Young designers are very good at developing new games and young consumers are quick to adopt them. We think that will be a very positive thing in developing products for the Asia market.”