First lessons in slots: Lessons #13 and #14

Lesson #13: Warm colours vs cold colours

Graphic artists will tell you that there is a big difference between warm colours and cold colours.  And, of course, there is. They will automatically assume that because it is true that warm versus cold colours help us make decisions in almost everything, then that affects slots as well. 

One assumes that’s correct as well. 

But I tested that pretty early in my career. 

This is the test I did: I looked at the top games at the time and saw that warm colours and cold colours had no influence on a game being a top game.

That was a shocking revelation, and yet, it was true. 

To be a top game you need many, but not all, of this list: a great theme, a great math, great symbol choice, and sometimes great features. But you do not need warm colours nor do you need cold colors to be a top game.

Small sidenotes: Tastes also change regionally. I had the opportunity of testing top games in various casinos. For some casinos the top games were all warm colours while for others the top games were all cold colours.

The lesson here: create slots in both warm and cold colours, and don’t be afraid to use either one. 

Lesson #14: Social is fun

This was the major breakthrough of Playtika: when it launched Slotomania. 

Social slots were nothing before Playtika created Slotomania. You could basically say that even though there were a few attempts at creating slots on Facebook not for real money, until Slotomania skyrocketed, there were no social slots. 

The top team of Playtika came from real money slots with 888. But when they created Slotomania they did some things you never do in real money. 

Slots are a serious business. Slots were almost always serious in how the symbols were drawn. There was little humor in it.

One of their main changes was to make the art fun and humorous and funny. The characters were exaggerated. The non-characters were exaggerated. 

They realised that to play not for real money, players would expect the game to be a lot more fun. 

And they were right. 

Players’ expectations when playing social slots was to have fun more than to make money (since they couldn’t make money in social). Later, I would find out you can create more ‘fun’ in math as well. 

This is one of the few things that real-money slots companies find very hard to understand when trying to create their own social slots.

Guy Hasson worked for Playtech for three years before becoming Playtika’s content manager, responsible for the content of Slotomania and Caesars Casino. He is now a social slot consultant, specialising in game popularity.