Light & Wonder VP Game Development talks about the future of Any Ways slots

Rob Proctor, Vice President, Game Development, iGaming at Light & Wonder, explains the impact of Megaways within the iGaming industry, why the mechanic has since become saturated, and how Light & Wonder is shaking up the iconic ‘Any Ways’ genre.

Paylines within online slots have progressively grown larger in recent times. While players can still access games with traditional 10, 25 or even 50 paylines, the online environment has allowed developers to be more creative in how wins are paid out. We began to see a rise of 243 ways slots popularised by Microgaming’s Immortal Romance, along with 4,069 ways with Scientific Games’ Raging Rhino, and then of course Megaways games came along, offering an incredible 117,649 ways. Since the launch of Megaways, we have now seen games feature an astonishing 1 million ways to win.

Megaways is truly one of the greatest game mechanics to have graced iGaming in the last few years. We have seen on OGS, across all global markets that it has captured players attention like no other feature.

Everything changed within the online slots industry when Big Time Gaming released Bonanza, as it was the first time anyone had seen a game with such high win potential. I still vividly remember watching replays of the game’s biggest ever win at 14,000x. At the time, this really blew us away as wins like these were only possible within a jackpot slot. Now, any spins within the base gameplay could secure an explosive big win out of nowhere.

Bonanza Megaways opened a lot of a doors for suppliers, providing them with the confidence to be more daring with the gamesthey produced, especially when it came to volatility and top prizes. High volatility games certainly were not the norm back in 2016, and the Megaways mechanic changed the face of the industry, as players could suddenly win life-changing sums of money.

You just have to look at studios such as Nolimit City, Push Gaming and ELK to see how they’ve been inspired by the big money prizes on offer through the Megaways gameplay.

Above all else, the success of Megaways comes from its simplistic design. Not only do these slots offer an unparalleled number of ways to win, but players can easily actually tell when a big win is on its way just by looking at the reels. The more symbols in play, the higher the win potential.

As fantastic as the mechanic is, and as successful as it has been, Megaways has evolved to now being used as a promotional tool more than anything. Suppliers are adding the Megaways mechanic onto a game to pull in an instant string of players on the back of the brand name.

In my humble opinion, the market is saturated with an abundance of Megaways games. Of course, the demand from players for these types of games warrant the continued development, but almost every single iteration now follows the same concept a top bar with wilds dropping and 117,649 ways.

Ultimately, the Any Ways genre needs to evolve to ensure players remain interested.

Introducing Mighty Ways, a new player experience

At Light & Wonder, we sat down and discussed how we could approach the Any Ways mechanic in a new manner, differentiating ourselves from Megaways, but including the same impact whilst offering players a sense of familiarity.

After plenty of conversations and testing, we decided to create a mechanic that featured ‘increasing ways’, so as players win, they progress and unlock more and more ways to win. Although there are similar mechanics out there in the marketplace, they are done in a fixed pattern. With the Mighty Ways mechanic, the more symbols players win on, the bigger the winning ways become.

We designed Mighty Ways so that we had a great deal of flexibility as to what we can achieve. Mighty Ways games can be played on 6 reels to make it look like a traditional Megaways game, but additionally it can be played on a 3x3 or 3x5 setup. As we design more Mighty Ways games, we’ll become more creative as we experiment with different layouts and incorporate other mechanics.

Internally, there’s an expectation that our Mighty Ways mechanic will be firm favourite, so to ensure that it gets as much market penetration as possible Light & Wonder have developed a roadmap that will see Mighty Ways added to legacy games in the same way that suppliers have always added the Megaways mechanic to their major titles.

We genuinely believe the Mighty Ways mechanic will bring a good balance of new and exciting gameplay without causing confusion about what is actually happening with each spin. Big money slots with thousands of ways to win do not need to be overcomplicated, and Light & Wonder is proving this.

Image credit: Light & Wonder