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John Parsonage represents the Commercial side of one of the industry’s most ambitious teams: Rogue Gaming! His company emphasises innovative designs, whether in maths or the visual aspect! Watch Mr Parsonage as he reveals some intriguing details in this exclusive interview:
So how was the show until now?
It’s been good, it’s been hectic for long, but it’s been very good. Everyone’s very positive about it, so, so far, so good.
What was your most popular slot released in 2022?
In 2022 we launched a slot called Fuji San, and that was in the Japanese market, with Veeam and John, and it’s been a very popular game in that market. We’ve recently just launched it into the UK, with Palies, and it’s done really well. So I think it’s the mechanic of that game which makes it really good and the mechanic with a Japanese theme which made it work particularly well in Veeam and John, and now we’re gonna reuse that mechanic and launch a new version of it which is called Preider, and that’s coming in 2023.
Which game do you consider to be the greatest hit of 2023?
I got this new game coming out, it’s called Hong Kong, so it’s a bit of a twist of the King Kong theme, but it’s not a slot, it’s based on a slot mechanic, but instead of spinning reels, you are actually building a tower. So you basically pay money for blocks, and you get so many blocks, and the higher you get up the tower, the higher Kong climbs up the tower, and the higher he gets, the more you win. So it’s a really, really niche product. But everyone we’ve shown it loved it, so we’ve got high expectations for that game. So that’s hopefully gonna be our biggest hit for 2023.
Which was the first slot you created?
The first slot we created was Catch a Wave, and it was a 9-high row mat, but the game had different size reels. So basically, the reels come across, and they came in waves. Sometimes you got 9 high, and sometimes you got 3 high, so there’s a lot of volatility in the game. That was the first game we ever created, so obviously, it’s quite unique, and that’s how we started – we wanted to start unique, and everything beyond and in between it’s being unique, and new games in 2023 are even more different. So everything is really new and really innovative. So that was Catch a Wave, that’s how we started, and we’re actually doing a new version of that one now, with a respin feature. So now when you get winning symbols on the waves, the winning symbols lock in place, and then all the reels respin, so it’s a respin feature. So we are launching that, that’s called Davy Jones, and that’s launching in 2023.
How do you come up with those ideas, who does it?
Honestly, we’ve got a really creative team. One of my co-founders, Dan Lamond, comes up with the ideas, basically, they are all his ideas. We’ve got a couple of ideas that have come from our developers, our CTOs got a really good idea called Pitch Perfect, and, in fact, that game about Hong King came from one of our junior developers, Tom, that was his idea, and he basically built it from scratch. So yeah, we’ve got a very creative team, ideas come from within.
Are your games targeted at a specific type of customer? What’s the type?
At the moment, we were only live in Japan and the UK, so we’ve got limited distribution. We’re about to go live globally, or not globally, but in Europe. We’ll know more in the next 6 to 8 weeks. But we think our games target a much younger generation, from 18 to 30. So it’s not a traditional 5 by 3. It’s innovative in the mechanics, so we think it’s gonna attract the younger generation of gamers, and maybe the UK, European focus is kind of where we’re hitting. But that’s our guess, I mean, that’s kind of where we’re targeting, but until we get content live, we’ll get a better stir there.
How do you know a slot will attract a lot of customers? Do you have a recipe for success?
Well, we don’t know, we don’t really know, but what we have is that we can come up with ideas, and we can very quickly create something like a prototype, a really basic prototype, something really basic which we can play. So we create this prototype, and we play the mechanic, just really basic blockup*. And at that point, within our team, we’ve got a bit of gambling experience, so we’re all familiar with what works. And we play this really basic demo, and at that point, we can say, “It’s something in this”, or we can say “, That’s no good,” and get rid of it, and it hasn’t cost us anything. But if we think that there’s something in this mechanic, we’ll evolve it a little bit more, and then we’ll put some math into it and balance the math, and that’s how we do it. We can basically start with something simple, play it, evolve it, keep progressing it, to the point where we think, “Ok, this is where we’re gonna go with this”. So, we don’t really know, but we certainly have a feel for it, we gamble, and that’s sort of our process, our recipe.
This is very nice, very artsy, to be honest. Did the recession affect the industry?
Well no, not for us, no. Our business has been busier than it ever has, so no, it hasn’t had a negative effect at all.
That’s good to hear. I want to know your personal favourite slot.
Of my games or of anyone’s games?
Both.
My favourite slot…well, I really like a game we’re just going live with Bally, a game called Wildfire West, which is a reel-based slot. With Warfare West, you get wilds which expand the reels, so you have a wild on the top reel, and it expands the reels down, so you can increase your chance of winning. So that’s pretty much my favourite game, it’s really fun, the art is really good, and even one of the characters, which is a dog, is modeled on my pet dog, so, smoking. So that’s pretty much my favourite game, and it’s doing really well, so all good.