California-based Synergy Blue arrived at last week’s ICE London trade show with a display of some of the most unique products yet in the nascent skill-based gaming genre.
What makes the product library—a mix of arcade-style shooter games and hybrids that employ both skill and luck—unique is the software platform on which it is based, called Hybrid Arcade Future-Based Gaming, or HAWG. One of the capabilities of the platform is that games can be converted to partial or pure chance-based formats easily.
In an interview with CDC Gaming Reports, Synergy Blue CEO Georg Washington said he company’s developers try to navigate a space where skilled players are rewarded and players of all skill levels are entertained.
“We’re trying to give more entertainment back to the players,” Washington said. “Most of our games we tone down in terms of difficulty compared to a normal video game, because they involve money. You’ve got to give players good value for their money and an entertaining experience, but you don’t want to make (the games) too challenging, because players will wind up losing too much money.”
Synergy Blue displayed 10 of the company’s 19 gaming titles at ICE, highlighted by one of the company’s hits, “Lucky Karts,” and a hybrid skill/chance game called “Locked and Loaded,” with wagers similar to a normal slot machine but a unique 3D base-game play in which the player uses a plastic gun as a controller to shoot enemies who pop up in a Wild West town.
Washington told CDC reports that Synergy Blue’s game library is designed not just to offer skill-based arcade and puzzle games for millennials, but to appeal to the wider slot audience.
“The people who are gambling right now are baby boomers,” Washington said. “In order to be successful, we need to appeal to those folks. Their expectations have changed too. Ten years ago, that player was happy just pushing the slot machine buttons, now they want something more engaging, something like they get on their phones.”
