If the wheel landed on segments equally as often, we could tell a few of things by looking at the machine:

• We would get the top bonus of 1,000 credits an average of once per 10 spins of the wheel.
• We would get the bottom bonus of 20 credits an average of once per 10 spins of the wheel.
• The average return per spin would be 213 credits.

Bonus wheels don’t actually pay their top prizes so often. Game designers need events that occur frequently enough to hold player interest, while offering the chance at a big payoff. To achieve that balance, game designers use something much like the virtual reel described in Chapter 3. Wheel segments can be of equal size, but not have equal chances of stopping at the indicator.

To create a hypothetical example, a 10-space wheel could be set up with 50 random numbers:

You touch the onscreen wheel and move your finger to drag it forward or backward, fast or slow. When you let go, it moves at a speed that corresponds to your motion. The wheel at the top of the game moves at the same speed as the wheel on screen, and in the end they stop on the same space. It’s a cool visual effect that gives players the illusion of control, but the result is determined by a random number generator.

When you touch the screen, either you will get bonus credits, or a “Round Over” message.
You can’t see what color blocks hide which awards, but those have already been set by the RNG.

It’s as if there is a second grid under the first. If you could see it, it might look like this:

If you pick the second block in the second column, you will get the top prize of 100 credits and keep picking.

Credit awards are hidden from view, just as on the color block game. For example, they might be distributed like this:

The order in which the awards appear changes with every play. Your pick makes the difference of what you get on any one free bonus round. However, the game designer knows that over many plays, about a third of picks will bring 25 credits, a third will bring 50 and a third will bring 75. The average award will be 50 credits, and the designer can use that in building the odds leading to a targeted payback percentage.

Penny slots needed to put more volatility in the games in order to offer players paybacks worth playing for. On nickel games, fewer credits can be a worthwhile prize. Take the Jackpot Party field of gift boxes. If a player makes a few good picks and accumulates 200 credits, that’s worth $10 on a nickel game.

At many casinos, a player who won $10 in the 1990s could have bought a lunch buffet and had a substantial meal. What if you put the same game on a penny format? Then a 200-credit win is worth only $2. That won’t come close to buying a lunch buffet – it might fetch a bag of chips and a candy bar at the snack bar. Free spin bonuses are a way to give the player a chance at bigger prizes. All the payoffs available on the main game are available, right up to the top jackpot.

That’s a format that has stood the test of time.
Many free-spin games work in much the same way.

MICHAEL JACKSON KING OF POP, BALLY:

In the “Smooth Criminal” bonus, Jackson’s music video is overlaid on the reels during free spins. At the sound of cymbal clash, Jackson stops, points, and the indicated symbol turns wild.

WONDER WOMAN, BALLY:

Wild symbols add to your potential wins. In Wonder Woman Gold, there are extra wild symbols on the reels. In Wonder Woman Wild, wild symbols randomly are added to the screen to substitute for the low-paying A, K, Q and J symbols.

TIGER TIGER, AMERICAN GAMING SYSTEMS:

All the emphasis is on big payers in the free spins bonus. All the low-paying symbols are eliminated, and what are left are long stacks of the high-payers – Bengal tigers, black tigers, huntresses and wild symbols. A screen full of the same symbol stacks brings roaring big wins.

TMZ, IGT:

You’re part of the action in a game that has a camera to capture your image. The Celebrity Spin Cycle Bonus launches when the police pull over a speeding car driven by you. You’re a reel symbol, too.

WICKED WINNINGS LEGENDS, ARISTOCRAT:

Free spins feature Sticky Stacks. Full columns of stacked symbols stick in place for the next spin, opening big win possibilities.

ZEUS II, WMS:

WMS, and now its parent company, Scientific Games, offer a number of games with respins. Zeus is one of them. If the first column is filled with a Zeus symbol, all Zeus and wild symbols are held in place during two respins. You can also win standard free spins with three lightning bolts on the reels.

JOLLY ROGER, IGT:

Players can choose their volatility in the free spins bonus by choosing either fewer free spins with a big multiplier for winnings, or fewer spins with a small multiplier.
For example, you could pick five free spins with winnings multiplied by 10, 10 spins multiplied by five, 15 by three or 20 times 2.
Pick five free spins, and you’ll win less often but have bigger payouts when the winning spins come. Pick 20 spins and you’ll win more often, but individual wins will be smaller, giving you a less volatile game.

GOLDIFY, GTECH (SINCE MERGED WITH IGT):

A different take on choose your volatility, Goldify lets players choose a symbol. Payoffs then are doubled on winners using that symbol. Doubling high-paying symbols leads to higher volatility, while doubling more frequent winners lowers volatility. You won’t find all these specific games in any one casino. Games come and games go, but bonusing tools remain available to game Extra wilds, high-paying stacks, respins and choose your volatility features all are tools in use in many games today.

At random times, flashing lights and sound effects would signal the arrival of “Money Time.”

During the Money Time period, all active players at the bank of machines would receive random awards until a full, randomly selected amount had been paid. Today, mystery triggers are used most often on games with multi-tiered progressive jackpots, but some non-progressive bonuses are mysteries, too.

Take WMS Gaming’s Super Jackpot Party, where you can get to the gift-box pick’em bonus in two ways.

• If noisemaker symbols land on the first, third and fifth video reels, you hear the cheer “Jackpot Party!” and the bonus begins.
• At random times, the chant is “Surprise Party!” and that brings the same bonus event.

There is no hint on the reels that a bonus is about to happen. It gets you by surprise.

Mystery bonuses are triggered by a random number generator, and can be programmed in several ways:

• They could launch at a randomly selected time.
• They could launch after a randomly selected number of coins have been played.
• They could launch when a jackpot or prize pool reaches a randomly selected amount.

You can find more detail on how that random selection works in Chapter 6: Video Slot Progressives, since progressives have the largest segment of mystery games.

ZUMA, GTECH:

GTECH has since merged with IGT, but under a license with online game provider PopCap Games, it introduced Zuma in 2013. A skill-based bonus event has the player take the role of the Zuma frog as it shoots colored balls to hit the moving Kahtiki Khan boss.

Players who don’t trust their skill, or would rather just have random rewards, have the option of playing free spin bonuses on Tully, Centipede or Zuma, or letting the game computer play for them on Pong or Breakout.

All of these games have carved out small followings, though none have been megahits.

Bally temporarily put skill-based games on the shelf after breakout, but in 2016 plans to introduce Space Invaders, another game with a bonus based on an arcade favorite. Gamemakers believe younger generations will demand games of skill, and are preparing to meet the demand.

When the round is over, your points are exchanged for a corresponding number of tickets, and you take the tickets to an onscreen redemption shop.

In the shop, there are shelves of gifts, each with a ticket price. You choose: Do you want to redeem a lot of tickets for the giant stuffed animal, or divide your tickets to get several smaller prizes?

After each selection, a credit award is revealed under the chosen prize.

That’s where the randomness factors in. The awards you receive are determined by the RNG, and not by how many points you’ve earned. Skilled players will earn more tickets than unskilled tickets, but their credit awards will be about the same.

Bally has used the perceived skill format on a number of games. IGT used it on Big Buck Hunter, which attacked a plastic rifle to the side of the machine for use in a hunting bonus. Better shooters got more points, but not necessarily bigger rewards.

Perceived skill games are likely to have a place in casinos for a long time, but casino operators and game manufacturers alike are banking on the big growth coming in true skill games.

With that format, customers could play together, but their slot bonuses would be different sizes. You weren’t necessarily cheering for your neighbor, because you wanted the highest-paying wedge. A.C. Coin used a similar format in Super Bankroll Bonus, which had a central column that contained stylized depictions of U.S. currency.

In the bonus event, the column whirled around and around, and where it stopped determined your slot bonus size. If two or more players were in on the bonus, they’d get different payoffs, because the currency that stopped in front of you was different than that in front of your neighbor.

This is a win-together experience because players all collect the same properties at the same time. If the dice take players to Marvin Gardens, all players win the Marvin Gardens credit award. However, players won’t win exactly the same amount. Since wager size plus speed of play earns a multiplier, you might find a win of 2,000 credits multiplied by two, while your bigger-betting neighbor has it multiplied by three.

That format had success for WMS, and it turned to win-together bonuses on games including Jackpot Party Community and Press Your Luck.

Among the collaborative bonuses are:

• Water Works and Electric Company. Players take turns choosing water valves or power switches for bonuses.
• Community Chest and Chance: Players take turns drawing cards for bonuses, including chances to launch other events.
• Around the Board: Players take turns launching onscreen dice for a trip around the Monopoly game board.

If you throw the big-money power switch, or launch the dice-roll that takes the group to Boardwalk, you’re a hero to all. If you land on a smaller bonus, others still have a chance at the big one.
International Game Technology also has players working together in Hot Roll Community, part of its Connected series of games.

In the Hot Roll Community bonus:

• Three players go to the bonus event together.
• They take turns rolling virtual dice by touching and dragging on individual screens, then flinging toward the big screen overhead.
• When one player has a winning roll, all players collect bonuses.
• A roll of 7 ends one player’s participation for the round, but the others keep rolling until all three seven out.
• Players who have sevened out keep collecting bonuses as long as at least one other shooter is active.

It’s a win-together experience, but it’s also collaborative since your rolls build bonuses for other players.