Inside Asian Gaming

July 2012 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 21 IGT profitably for our customers,” according to Craig Churchill, IGT’s senior vice president of international sales. More than half the games featured at IGT’s stand were designed to focus on local markets with the themes, dual languages (Chinese and English), and math models demanded by Asian casinos and players. The array of games included classic Chinese themes such as West Journey Treasure Hunt and Golden Three Kingdom, as well as the strongly Chinese- themed Four Great Chinese Beauties, Big Dragon Lounge and Pearl Dragon. Among the systems products under the spotlight was IGT’s sbX™ server-based experience. Inside Asian Gaming Publisher Kareem Jalal caught up with Mr Churchill at G2E Asia 2012 for a video interview, excerpts of which can be viewed online at the IAG website, www.asgam.com . The full transcript of the interview follows. Kareem Jalal: The watchword for IGT globally is market attuned games. What does that mean to you? Craig Churchill : Market attuned games to me is all about ensuring that we are producing games that really resonate with the patrons and consumers. It’s all about games that consumers want to play, more than anything. It’s our job to ensure that we’re producing games and we’re designing games that are much more meaningful to the player. As an example, we’ve been doing some very extensive research over the past 18 months on getting that deep psychological understanding of the motivations of players in local marketplaces. It’s not about anymore designing games for North America and putting them into the Asian marketplace or any other marketplace. It’s about really getting to a much deeper level of understanding the Asian player and producing games that resonate with them. So that’s been something you really began in earnest 18 months ago. How are the fruits of that processes being reflected at this year’s show? In earnest about 18 months ago since I joined the company. I think what you’ll see here at G2E Asia is, I guess, our very first important step into bringing those sorts of games to market. It’s about not only localizing for language, but it’s also to ensure we get the themes right, we get the underlying mechanics right and we get the math right as well. And you can see some of the examples of the games here, where we think we’ve got a really good first stab at that. I think in the next 6 months and the next 12 months and the next 18 months, you are going to see the next batch of games that are even more localized than the ones previously. So this is only the beginning? Yes, this is only the beginning. Absolutely. I guess it’s also happening elsewhere in the world? Here, of course, you’ve got the Asia-attuned products on display, but just briefly, what else is happening elsewhere? What we’ve really done is identify the big growth markets for gaming, for slot Asia-Attuned IGT has recently released a slew of what it describes as “market-attuned” games in Asia and around the world. IGT Senior Vice President of International Sales Craig Churchill describes how the company set out to develop games that really resonate with Asian players Four Great Chinese Beauties Craig Churchill I nternational Game Technology (IGT) showcased a portfolio of games tailored to the specific demands of Asian markets during G2E Asia 2012. The games and systems on display were “designed to deliver performance and