The doors of SBC Summit Lisbon are officially open and in the final episode of iGaming Daily’s Path to Lisbon series, listeners got the chance to from one of the most exciting keynote speakers from the recent CasinoBeats summit.
Award-winning game programmer and the creator of DOOM, John Romero, spoke about what the igaming industry can learn from video game design.
After recounting his own journey in game design, Romero moved on to speak about how game design has evolved with the development of new technology and the challenge this poses for game designers.
He said: “Many innovations in the slot world happened because of technology innovations and this is basically the same in the world of video games.
“But we’ve passed the point where technical innovation beats design innovation. The technology available today is incredibly powerful. We can make anything appear on our screens at high frame rates with fully encompassing sound so now it’s time for the design to shine.”
Another point highlighted during the keynote was what Romero described as the “comfort zone”. When related to video games, this refers to the sights and sounds of the game that make a player “comfortable with the experience”.
“To keep a player in your game, you need to make them comfortable with the experience,” he explained.
“This means the soundtrack, sound effects, characters, dialogue, graphics and aesthetics are so comfy that players want to stay in your game and the longer that they’re in your game, the higher the potential that they will buy something if the game has viable content.”
Relating this to igaming, Romero used the familiarity of slots that integrate well-known popular entertainment brands such as Wheel of Fortune or Ghostbusters as an example of creating a comfortable gaming experience.
He explained that employing techniques such as replaying iconic audio loops, film clips and long video segments within a slot can help to “put players into a comfort zone.”
“They have the potential to put players into a comfort zone by replaying iconic audio loops, film clips and long video segments.”
