Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Jean Venneman remembers being on the casino floor at the Mirage watching strangers be among the first to play gaming developer IGT’s latest innovation at the time: the Wheel of Fortune slots.
It was December 1996, and the game—among the first to partner with a licensed brand—was debuting in a field test at the Strip resort. Venneman, now chief studios officer at IGT, was a key player in the slot machine’s design three decades ago and recalls how its spinning wheel, reminiscent of that on the TV game show itself, threw people for a loop, at least at first.
“Watching those first players play was very exciting, but also a little bit frustrating,” she said. “Because it was new, they didn’t necessarily know what to do. So they would trigger the wheel sequence, and then they would just stare at it, like saying, ‘Now what?’ And we had a big button that was flashing, saying, ‘Spin the wheel.’
“There was messaging, but it took the players a small amount of education those first early days, because it was, again, so unique in the industry at the time. They weren’t accustomed to having a separate feature of the machine do anything.”
The inaugural Wheel of Fortune machine, which Venneman said she and her team created in an unusually short time frame of just four months, was a “stepper slot,” meaning it had physical spinning reels, with the Wheel of Fortune symbol on the third reel, and an opportunity for the player to spin a wheel for the bonus.
The slot machine was Las Vegas-based IGT’s first to feature a customized sound package created by the company—so the game says and sings “Wheel of Fortune”—and accessories like the wheel. And although the latter may have been a new experience to players, Venneman said, they quickly caught on.
“It was all about the spinning of the wheel,” she said. “Players played, especially in those early days, entirely to be able to spin the wheel. In fact, there’s a couple of stories where the players would win one of the major jackpots and be unhappy because they weren’t able to spin the wheel, as well.”
It was one of the first games that created crowds that would stop and watch if they heard that distinctive sound of the wheel about to be spun, Venneman said.
The game—now a staple on casino floors—this year celebrates its 30th anniversary. It all started with a conversation between IGT leadership and Sony Pictures Entertainment, which produces the game show, about integrating the Wheel of Fortune brand with a slot machine, Venneman said.
The concept of household branding like that on the casino floor was completely new, she said. Understandably, Venneman admitted, producers of the “family show” had their concerns.
“They wanted to make sure that we really represented the brand on the slot machine as if it were a family show, as well,” she said. “And so we really did need to work through the thought process of that to make sure that we were representing the show in the most wholesome and holistic way that we could, while still creating an interesting gameplay experience for the player.”
That first iteration of Wheel of Fortune, the stepper game, has evolved into over 300 versions, from video games and video slots to machines with super spins, other bonuses or 4D, all with different variations of play mechanics, art styles, bet styles and more, Venneman said.
There’s so many varieties of Wheel of Fortune on the casino floor, and all of them are audibly chanting the show’s iconic theme, said Roger Pettersson, vice president of premium and core products at IGT.
While the game evolves, and IGT incorporates and modernizes the experience to stay on the forefront of player trends, Pettersson said the iconic wheel feature is still what they’re ultimately looking for.
“It’s just a huge part of the gaming experience in North America,” he said of the slot machine.
The game was such a success in the late 1990s that IGT and other gaming manufacturers began to wonder how else to maximize brand concepts, Venneman said. It wasn’t too long after Wheel of Fortune that many additional brands began to enter the market.
Over the years, the popularity of these games has ebbed and flowed, Venneman said. She credited the Wheel of Fortune game’s endurance over decades to the “classic as well as current” nature of the show itself. It’s been around for years, she said, but evolved also in how it’s formatted, its hosts and more.
“The fact that grandmothers and teenagers both know what Wheel of Fortune is, I think, is one of the keys,” she said. “And the other key is it’s one of the few brands in the industry that the brand has a direct tie into the bonus experience.”
Another reason for the game’s longevity is its jackpot, Pettersson said. The slot machine has made over 1,200 millionaires since its inception and has paid out over $3.7 billion, he estimated.
“It’s something that is a huge part of the brand, and it’s something that players absolutely are very much in tune of,” he said.
The Wheel of Fortune slots anniversary celebrations include the game being featured on the show itself, activations on casino floors, new game launches and more.
Both IGT and Wheel of Fortune itself are evolving and being innovative with how they treat the brand, Venneman said.
“We are 30 years into this partnership, and there’s no end in sight,” she said. “There’s no stopping us now. We continue to really enjoy creating unique, innovative content, and they’ve been a terrific partner throughout this entire time, and we couldn’t have asked for better.”