We often hear from players who feel slots are too much of a tease. Five hold and spin balls, two bonus symbols, and then that next spin has the one that was missing…
This time it’s a question that flips the script:
Why do so many games that spin for money (like link games) never have money even spin past when you are down to the last one. I can’t believe there isn’t a way to “show” the money without it hitting – at least you feel like you have a chance.
Roxan D.
The hold and spin bonus, which is what you’re describing as ones that spin for money (the industry term for it is Cash on Reels) originated with Aristocrat, an Australian company with global success and acclaim for the innovation they’ve done over the years.
They popularized (although they didn’t invent) the Cash Collect feature found on games like Spooky Link, and introduced the first three bag game with Fu Dai Lian Lian, among other accomplishments in recent years.
But the Hold and Spin bonus is among those that have proven to be time-tested successes, with Lightning Link recently reaching 10 years on casino floors with no signs of dying down, and Dragon Link doing even better. These are premium games, which means casinos pay a daily fee to have the privilege of offering them, yet casinos have banks and banks of them.
Now, to your question about why there’s not more teasing big numbers. Because the games originated in Australia, they were created with Australian regulations in mind, and as it turns out games have much stricter rules when it comes to what’s allowed and what’s not in that country.
Bag games with perceived persistence, for instance, are not allowed there, so despite all the popularity of those formats here, they wouldn’t fly in Australia, at least not in the way they’re offered here.
Another regulation that the Link games follow in design is that the reels can’t give an indication that something will happen visually with more frequency than it can actually land. This is why one of the hold and spin spots appears empty during the most hold and spin bonuses. It’s not empty – it’s just really hard to hit (which makes sense given the Grand is not supposed to be a prize that’s awarded very often).
So it wouldn’t surprise us to expect that for similar reasons the games don’t tease big prizes like the Major more often than they’re supposed to appear, and indeed it does seem to show up more often, whether as a winning ball or not, with higher bets, consistent with the odds of winning it being higher as the overall bet goes up.
So that’s why those games in particular don’t tease in certain ways like other games made for the U.S. market might be inclined to do so since the regulations on those types of things, while they exist to some degree around near misses, aren’t nearly as robust.
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