SPINNING WITH WHITNEY
IGT’s Whitney Houston Slots brings the images and music of the superstar to life
By Frank Legato
Slot supplier IGT pioneered the entertainment theme as applied to slot games nearly three decades ago with Wheel of Fortune, and the company has never lost its touch in marrying slot play with entertainment.
The company put its signature on a variety of entertainment themes, from Goonie’s to Sex and The City and more. Over the years, IGT has enhanced its hallmark theme list of TV and movie slots with popular music stars such as Blake Shelton, Adam Levine and Dolly Parton.
IGT’s new Whitney Houston game brings the music genre forward in spectacular fashion.
“We’re always looking for new brands that ignite the creative passion of our game developers, but also fit within our core product portfolio strategy to engage a broad range of slot players. This particular brand presented a unique opportunity, because Whitney was such a popular performer and singer. So, we could create a game centered around one of the most iconic artists of all time.”
—Jennifer Fales, IGT’s vice president of global brand licensing and social gaming
With Whitney Houston Slots, IGT has outdone not only its own slot brands, but just about any music-themed game in history. The new slot game brings its subject to life in an immersive experience of sight and sound, with an array of sensory experiences ranging from music videos to concert footage to audio that takes you back to the late superstar’s heyday.
It turns out Whitney Houston was a natural choice for a slot game. “We’re always looking for new brands that ignite the creative passion of our game developers, but also fit within our core product portfolio strategy to engage a broad range of slot players,” says Jennifer Fales, IGT’s vice president of global brand licensing and social gaming. “This particular brand presented a unique opportunity, because Whitney was such a popular performer and singer. So, we could create a game centered around one of the most iconic artists of all time.”
Never mind that Houston smashed sales records with her music, with 200 million-plus records sold, eight consecutive multi-platinum albums, seven consecutive No. 1 singles (topping the Beatles by one), and 400- plus career awards. It is her crossover appeal that has made her popular with a wide swath of fans. “Her reach spans generations,” says Fales. “So, when the licensor reached out and I brought this opportunity to the team, there was a lot of excitement.”
Fales adds that Houston’s fan base matches nicely with the demographics of slot players. “We found that Whitney’s fan base really matches up with our core player—35-plus, about 55 percent female, 45 percent male, a good mix.”
BUILDING THE GAME
If Whitney Houston is the perfect slot theme, the team that put the game together justified that perfection. The Estate of Whitney E. Houston and song publisher Primary Wave Music provided a slew of great images, two music videos, concert footage from Houston’s performances for U.S. troops in South Africa, and audio of five top Houston hits—a sweet collection of assets for IGT game designers to work with.
“They are fantastic,” Fales says of IGT’s partners in the game. “We worked together to pick assets, and to hand-pick photography that they felt represented her, but also that we felt would work well [in a slot game].
“Then, our team leveraged all of those Whitney assets from over the years and paired them with proven player-favorite mechanics, bonuses, exciting slot experiences and things like Lock & Respin, free games, a wheel—features that we know are proven successful and exciting to players. They’ve created a truly special game.”
Just as good as all the “Whitney assets” was the canvas on which IGT’s game designers would present them. It’s called the SkyRise cabinet— 11 feet tall, with two vertically positioned 55-inch 4K LCD monitors. With four lined up in a bank, the top displays create a video wall. The top screens interact with the individual games. “It really creates this immersive, concert-like experience,” Fales says.
The artwork also is stunning—awash in purple, Houston’s favorite color, the background intermingles with the beautiful colors in the videos and concert footage.
IGT has applied all this sensory input to create a rich collection of bonus features, starting with a “persistence pot”—a pot directly above the reels overflowing with platinum records and gold stars, which travel up to the pot from the reels. Randomly, platinum records fall from the pot back down to the reels to help trigger the main bonus.
The base game is a 243-ways-to-win format, with wins formed by adjacent symbols. Six platinum records on the reels—often helped with the records falling from the pot—trigger the main Lock & Respin bonus. Here’s where the huge top display is utilized to full effect.
Starting out with a three-by-five reel array and three spins, the reels spin to reveal platinum records bearing either credit amounts or one of the three lower jackpots—static prizes of $80 (Mini) and $200 (Minor), or a progressive resetting at $500 (Major). Every time a record lands, the spin count returns to three.
If you land three records, a second three-by-five reel array stacks on top of the bottom frame, and the feature continues. Get six more, and a third array activates; 14 more on top of that, the top fourth reel array activates. This allows the player to amass a huge bank of bonus credits and jackpots across the four game screens, and, if any one of the game screens fills with records, it triggers the Grand progressive, resetting at $10,000.
The feature continues until three spins without a record, or until all four game screens fill with records.
“The game is a celebration of her career over the decades. We didn’t pick a decade; we looked at the whole expansive career that she had. And I think that’s what’s particularly fun.”
Back in the primary game, three scattered wheel symbols activate the Wheel Bonus and another crack at huge payoffs. The big screen shows the wheel spin from the side. The slices include the Mini jackpot with a 3X multiplier, the Minor with a 2X multiplier, the Major, Grand and even the Platinum progressive. The remaining slice awards 10 free games.
The free game bonus utilizes Houston’s 1980s music videos. “The free games bonus goes into a whole new color palette and theming,” says Fales. “That bonus is based on the ’80s, so it has a neon, retro look.” The background music is the smash hit “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
Houston’s music plays an integral part in each of the game’s features.
“Each bonus has a particular song associated with it,” Fales says. “We took these player-favorite mechanics, and then we infused a music inspiration into each. As the persistence pot is growing, as you’re collecting platinum albums, there’s certain music associated with each event.
“The designers were very conscious of what music would fit with what mechanic, and what theme or decade to bring into each bonus. So we’ve been very purposeful in how we’re pairing songs with mechanics or moments in the game to really amplify the player experience.”
ROLLING OUT
IGT staged a big celebratory event at each of the first casino locations launching the Whitney Houston games, with slot influencers including Brian Christopher, Jackpot Beauties and SC Slots providing live streams of the launches at California’s Yaamava’ Casino, Hard Rock Atlantic City and Michigan’s Island Casino & Resort.
Fales says new installations are being done every day, with the game available at Valley View, the Barona, Palma Real, Mohegan Sun, The Plaza and elsewhere at press time.
She says players have flocked to the new game. “The launch events had great turnout, and great excitement, and following the launch events, there’s been heavy traffic on all the games. It’s been fantastic.”
It’s a good bet the Whitney Houston franchise will be long-running for IGT, including an online version to be released later this year, and maybe even a sequel or two as time goes on.
“The game is a celebration of her career over the decades,” Fales says. “We didn’t pick a decade; we looked at the whole expansive career that she had. And I think that’s what’s particularly fun.”
SLOT TYPE
Five-reel, 243-ways-to-win video slot; hold-and-respin, wheel and free game bonus events; .01, .02, .05 and .10 denominations
PAYBACK % RANGE
87%, 89% (wide-area progressive); 87%-95% (standalone progressive)
AVERAGE HIT FREQUENCY
Approximately 30%
TOP JACKPOT
Progressive; $500,000 or $50,000 reset
