Inside Asian Gaming

July 2012 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 41 In Focus to reward players for their achievements. “Casinos have been doing this for a long time as well, creating a virtual economy through player cards,” Rodriguez said. Moving forward, with these advanced offerings will enable the industry to extend this virtual trade beyond the casino walls to old and new customer demographics, Rodriguez said, noting IGT’s recent purchase of Double Down Interactive, the developer of Facebook’s Double Down Casino. Aristocrat Technologies is also taking this virtual casino approach with its nLive product. nLive is a virtual casino solution that supports operators, taking a casino’s brand andputting it in anonline spacewhere customers can play on any mobile device and earn points. nLive launches in a play- for-fun-mode until regulation allows for real money gaming, giving players a wide range of games to choose from including poker, table games and Aristocrat slot content. The nLive virtual casino solution played a key role in the pre-opening strategy of Maryland Live! Casino, which launched a play-for-fun site ahead of the land-based casino’s opening. That site allowed the casino to communicate its brand to potential customers and build a database, ever before opening its physical doors. Super Start WMS also has been on the leading edge of this trend, having offered episodic/ persistence games since 2008. Its most recent entrant is Super Team, designed for players seeking continual random bonus action, a persistent state game, state-of-the- art technology and a customizable gaming experience. Players can switch between two teams of eight heroes that can randomly interact before, during or after any base game spin to award credits, extra WILDs, multipliers and more. Players seeking a more volatile gaming experience can play with Team Ruby, while players seeking a less volatile slot game can choose Team Emerald. Mr. Maximum, a member of both teams, can randomly award one of two standalone progressives on any spin. In addition, players can customize their personal hero, both at the casino and online. WMS’ Chief Innovation Officer Larry Pacey said the company realized early on that while player loyalty cards recognized customers with rewards based on their patronage, “there was nothing that uniquely identified the player and recognized the player, nothing that allowed them to get more invested in the gaming experience itself.” WMS launched its Players Life Web Services in 2008 with a goal of providing casinos with a tool to allowplayers to become more invested in the gaming experience. Its fi rst episodic game was Star Trek, which launched that year at the Las Vegas Hilton. The game allowed players to create an ID, save their progress, and then pick up where they left off on their casino visit. WMS then began to integrate Players Life with casino operators, including Caesars Entertainment, Ameristar Resorts and MGM Resorts International. “Corporations are definitely early adopters in order to move this technology forward,” Pacey said. “They’ve seen that players spend more time on the floor, and they come back far more often.” Episodic/persistent games, he said, cut across demographic lines, appealing both to younger players and core slot players. “What we have found is that this persistence, this episodic gaming has to really add value inside the game itself to justify doing it. It can’t just be slapped onto a game. It has to have real meaning to really resonate with the player and get the success metrics we’re looking for, which are high-earning, high- performing games.” WMS got an inkling of that success almost immediately after introducing the Star Trek game at Las Vegas Hilton. “The game had been there a day-and-a-half when the casino called to say they needed more games. The one game had been played nonstop by one player for 36 hours. We kind of knew we had something,” Pacey said. In launching that game,WMS was careful not to pile on too much information, Pacey noted. “We made it super simple. It was an educational ramp up with just a login name, no password.” Super Team is WMS Gaming’s latest foray into the persistence game space; among its features is the ability for the player to customize the gaming experience