Over time, Brian Christopher has been privileged to be one of the first to debut new games at the casino. He’s been among the first to play games like Dollar Storm and Whitney Houston upon their debut.
Most recently, he debuted the brand new Squid Game slot machine at Yaamava’ Casino in Highland, California. If you didn’t see the live stream, here’s the video:
Observant viewers of the video were curious about one thing – if it’s a new slot, and it’s debuting for the first time, isn’t that Grand growing fast?
I may have missed it – if Squid Game is exclusive to Yaamava’, how can the grand be growing so fast? Is this game linked to other games in the casino?
Chargersgal on YouTube
How is the progressive growing that fast if there are only those machines at that casino?
Shannon Lynch
If you were the first to play it how does the grand increase before you started spinning it?
Mr012366 on YouTube
Chargersgal has the basic idea down. Many new games, particularly ones with themes, have what are called Wide Area Progressives – they’re linked to multiple casinos, and oftentimes linked to multiple games within those casinos as well.
A great example many players are familiar with is Megabucks. There’s all sorts of different Megabucks slots. When a new Megabucks slot comes out, it’s linked to that massive jackpot that the other slots are already helping to build. So it doesn’t start at the reset point because it’s being linked to other machines that have that progressive already.
You can see other examples of how wide area progressives are linked across casinos and machines at IGTjackpots.com, where they list the various games and locations linked to each wide area progressive. (Squid Game isn’t an IGT game, but it hopefully helps illustrate the idea.)
There’s a few practical benefits of this. For one, linking new games to existing progressives doesn’t require a manufacturer to have a ton of different gigantic jackpots they’re liable for across various games. For players, the jackpot grows faster, since more players are helping them to grow. And this means the potential for bigger prizes.
As old games get decommissioned, it makes it easier to deal with since the progressive remains active on other games. So some of the things we’ve talked about in the past about what happens to progressives when machines are decommissioned isn’t really needed – it’s still available, just elsewhere.
And of course, for a new game, it avoids one of the challenges of a new game in that the progressive is already established – you’re not starting from the minimum amount on day one, so if someone wins it right away it’ll be at a higher number, and make the game that much more enticing out of the gate.
We love questions like this – players are very observant! We always encourage players to submit their questions, and we’re happy to shed light on how things like this happen.
Have a question? Submit yours here!
