Week Two

The second week here at design works gaming looked pretty similar to the first in terms of the overall goal, but after watching how the programming of a few games was done, we began to really start writing some code ourselves. There actually is quite an extensive amount of use of excel in the entire process, which makes me wish I learned some of the “secret techniques” of excel beforehand to help make it all go just a bit faster and smoother. Learning them on the spot though is pretty cool, even though it may seem boring to most, and I found it pretty interesting how streamlined everything is and how much you can actually do when you know all the different commands and whatnot. The excel sheets contain most of the data that determines all the details within the final game, such as what symbols show up on the reels and how much you get paid for certain combinations. Similar to how the coding worked, we created an excel sheet for our game by starting with a base from a similar game and replacing the details with the ones from our game.

The coding itself is done in C#, which, while a bit different than Java, reminds me a lot of all the wonderful and not so wonderful memories from AP computer science, the main one being having absolutely no idea why anything and everything works but being grateful that it does. Luckily a majority of the coding was already done in other games and the main job was to simply find it and fit it into the new game, though there often occurred errors throughout this process, and scouting through the code to find the source was both satisfying and aggravating.

As far as the facebook slots games goes, we actually developed a much more organized method for playing and gathering the data. However, the monotonous process of pressing the spin button and waiting for the inevitable loss with the occasional bonus game every 10 to 20 spins grew quite boring. It’s a good thing this data is apparently extremely important to the company, or I would have lost motivation to do it a while ago. That said, I’m glad we’re actually having some sort of impact here, and I hope that as we continue on to harder and more complicated games that those games will actually be used in the online casino as well.

Week One

My first day had some interesting events, right from when I arrived on site. The most noticeable one would be the construction going on in and around the building, creating an interesting environment with seemingly unstable floors and loud noises everywhere I looked. Nonetheless, work had to be done: after some quick introductions to everyone in the office, Brant discussed with Max and I what our main goals going forward would be. The overlaying concept would actually be more focused on online casinos rather than the traditional land based ones that we’re all used to. This is most comparable to those facebook games that you might have seen random friends sharing to try and get more credits. It turns out that the “Free to play” model of online games is very lucrative, luring people to spend money on the games through additional purchases to get more credits.

To get familiar with what we were working on, we were told to simply play some of the popular casino games on facebook for a few hours, taking note of what seemed to work well and what was not so enticing. I noted certain things like how often I won and how often I was offered to make some sort of purchase in the game. While playing games for hours might sound like a great job, these games really are not what I would call entertaining for me, and this makes sense when you look at the main demographic that primarily plays these kinds of games: women above the age of 40. Being an 18 year old male, I am far from qualified from being able to tell exactly what appeals to these ladies, but that was indeed my task.  Luckily, there are a lot of casino games that already exist, so there are plenty of examples to pull data from.

After hours of seemingly endless slots spins, we decided to move on to our next task. Now we were going to go into the programming of these games, with the intent of being able to program several games that would actually be playable in the future. Compared to the rather dull facebook games, the programming aspect was a much more difficult challenge, involving choosing a game, comparing it to another already programmed game with a similar style, and then using that game to program the new one. We’re planning on continuing this process for a few weeks, expanding to more advanced and complicated games as we gain more experience.

The Beginning

Hello all and welcome to my blog!

My name is Armin Malakian, and I am a senior at BASIS Scottsdale. As a senior here, I've been given the incredible and unique opportunity to conduct research on any topic of my choice for approximately 10 weeks during my third trimester. I’ve chosen to focus on what I consider a fascinating topic that I’m sure everyone is familiar with in one way or another: gambling. Now I’m sure most of you reading this are not heavy gamblers, but when i refer to gambling, I really mean the basic principle of risk-taking that molds what we know of as gambling. To be more specific, I want to delve into what goes into creating slots machines, including both the statistics and programming behind them, as well as the designing aspect that makes the games so appealing and addicting to players that keeps them coming back for more, despite knowing their chances of winning are rather low. Here is where I will be relaying all of my experiences during my internship at Design Works Gaming, a company that specializes in 3rd party casino game development.

Throughout all my classes at BASIS, I’ve always found myself able to comprehend and succeed in the more math oriented classes, as all the lessons and concepts easily “clicked” in my head much more so than any other classes. Though I can’t really explain why, these classes simply appealed to me more and even during my final year at BASIS I am taking the AP Statistics course, which relates heavily to my research. This mentality fueled my desire pursue this topic, as slots machines feature a heavy amount of both statistics and programming, as well as many differing strategies behind the design process of the machine and game itself, including small aspects that many people would not consider such as sound effects and colors, but also deeper concepts that deal with how our brains interpret risk. The final result is a product that is able to create a profit for the casino. During my internship, I will be working along with a classmate of mine, Max Waaler, under the guidance of Brant Frazee, a senior game mathematician at Design Works Gaming.

I hope you enjoy reading along with me on all these adventures as I attempt to unfold what goes on Behind the Scenes of Casino Slot Machines.