Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming November 2014 12 Taiwan’s Jumbo Technology is in many ways the archetype of the Asian-based supplier that honed its trade designing games for markets the big names wouldn’t touch. “We are a privately held company and so we are able to approach the target market much faster and efficiently due to our corporate structure,” explains Ned Hsu, the company’s creative director and chairman of sister developer Alphabet. “The public companies have to adhere to strict compliance standards in their own countries which are not applicable to certain Asian jurisdictions that are in the process of developing their domestic gaming markets.” Geographic diversity has always been Jumbo’s strong suit, and its current portfolio of 29 or so slot titles is weighted toward generic, cross-cultural themes. The company has lavished more R&D on electronic bingo than any manufacturer in Asia and has not one but two innovative platforms to show for it: a flexible slant-top called EZ Bingo featuring a four-level mystery jackpot and Lounge Style Bingo, a stadium-style platform comprised of couches and personal flat screens centered around a GLI-certified mechanical ball-drawing machine the size of a ’60s-era Univac. “They’ve done a great job with their bingo product, and they’ve been successful with their bingo product,” says Jade Group’s Joseph Pisano. In Myanmar the company has been a major supplier going on 15 years and has clicked fabulously, in Laos as well, with a number of Chinese-themed titles, and the company moved decisively a little over a year ago to leverage a multi-level mystery progressive around this fact: Lucky Lucky, it’s called, and it shows off to great effect the animation and graphics skills for which the Taiwanese are justly celebrated. It’s supported by four equally colorful, high-volatility titles that play off the link theme: Lucky Dragons, Lucky Qilin, Lucky Phoenix and Lucky Lion. The Philippines has been another winner for Jumbo, marked by the deployment of a casino management system from its sister companyGAMATechnology connecting the entire estate of state-run operator/regulator PAGCOR and encompassing some 5,000 machine games. In all, the GAMA Casino Management System is connecting around 10,000 EGMs across the region. Mr Hsu points out that GAMA was created to serve the needs of smaller operators—the sector, interestingly enough, that also spurred Jumbo’s prodigious growth as a supplier of electronic multi-player table games. Long Dragon Baccarat, which has found particular favor in capacity-constrained Macau, is a multi-table variation on Jumbo’s automated Video Baccarat Multi Player, which introduced a technology that allows players to virtually “squeeze” the cards. Long Dragon targets another obsession of Chinese gamblers, their fondness for devising elaborate predictive systems based on the patterns formed by previous hands as these are colored into different types of grids (blue for “Player,” red for “Banker,” green for “Tie”), or nowadays as they’re displayed on the LED scoreboards fixed to every live table. Long Dragon takes its name from its “long dragon indicator,” the first on an e-table, a horizontal pattern of either blues or reds formed by an especially long series of “Banker” or “Player” wins, which players liken to a dragon’s tail and consider good luck. The platform goes this a step further, multiplying the appeal by connecting each player to up to eight tables simultaneously—that’s eight sets of past performances—and each table is set in a richly animated virtual environment brought to life on a 47-inch widescreen. There are some fun carnival-style features woven in as well, like random payouts for wagers on “Tie” or “Pair”. A similar scope for interactivity is built into the company’s sic bo and roulette platforms, and Alphabet is expanding on these with fully automated multi-player platforms that envelop the bounce of the dice or the spin of the wheel in special effects lighting and sound. Alphabet Sic Bo and Roulette feature 22-inch touchscreen displays configurable in island or single-terminal settings, with optional side bets, random pays and the very saleable factor of faster game play than their live counterparts. Cover Story A Dragon by the Tail JUMBO TECHNOLOGY Long Dragon Baccarat has established Jumbo as an e-table force.