Atomic Slot Lab
The first in a series of articles exploring Bragg’s roster of in-house studios, Niklas Mravlje, Bragg Gaming Group’s Director of Product Marketing, discusses the ethos of Bragg’s Las-Vegas-based proprietary content studio, Atomic Slot Lab.
What unique qualities does Atomic Slot Lab content bring to Bragg’s gaming platforms? What’s different?
The main word I would use to describe Atomic Slot Lab is consistency of quality and experience. While the themes, volatility, mechanics and art styles may change, the attention to detail within each math model remains. Atomic Slot Lab prides itself on that. Atomic Slot Lab games have a long life and tend to outperform competitors over time. While other brands usually focus on the 30-50 days around the release date, Atomic Slot Lab performs for the first six months and far, far beyond that period. Atomic Slot Lab delivers an experience that seasoned players will gladly return to time and time again, and it offers our operator partners a consistent brand that their players will remember.
What is the signature design of an Atomic Slot Lab title? Is there a specific gameplay element, be it a particular game mechanic, sound quality or graphics style, that Atomic Slot Lab specialises in?
For a long while, the brand’s signature was the win celebrations, which we illustrate in the form of emoji’s. They tend to be very polarising, people either like them or they don’t, but one thing is for sure, they remember them! We recently started testing the effectiveness of the emoji’s by releasing some of our Atomic Slot Lab games without them, and players quickly noticed their absence and communicated this back to us. It was a great way to find out that we were proceeding in the right direction, and something we’ll look to utilise again.
What makes Atomic Slot Lab special is also the things that you don’t see, in the mathematical models we use for example. You and I, not being aficionados might not see these things, but undoubtedly a regular player of Atomic Slot Lab titles will recognise the math models used when they encounter one. Our mathematical models for Atomic Slot Lab are different to those we use in our other studios and in other regulated markets and use data and preferences which are unique to players in the North American market.
How does Atomic Slot Lab calibrate its titles to the specific tastes of online slots players in localised markets around the world whilst maintaining this identity?
We adjust our mathematical models based on the markets where players access our titles. We’re constantly using data and information on customer preferences to adjust these models, which is a consistent thread, not only for Atomic Slot Lab, but all Bragg’s studios, and it’s something we’ve been recognised for in multiple awards and accolades. If you played the same game in both the U.S. market and the European market, the playing experience would be markedly different. While players in the EU often tolerate a higher volatility and lower win frequency, players in the U.S generally tend to prefer the opposite.
Studios in the States tend to be focused mainly on entertainment-driven game mechanics with multiple bonus features. Is this the case with Atomic Slot Lab? Is a variety of gameplay styles important, or is specialising the best route for a new studio in the market?
It really depends on the game, some may be more feature heavy than others (the likes of Fairy Dust, Vegas Royale or Dreamy Genie), while others may not feature any major mechanics at all (20 Celestial Fruits, Divine Wine), the latter are usually utilised for player acquisition or the onboarding of new players, as offering bonuses on those tends to be cheaper.
A good example of this would be our Mermaid Pays slot, which has a simple mechanic, but is extremely volatile, a title which is predominantly aimed at high-rollers and VIPs. We like to include this in the presentation when we talk to our operator partners, to make sure they are in the best position to target the right player groups. How the operator presents a certain game, can make or break how a game can be accepted by the player base.
What are the benefits of being a Las Vegas-based content studio? Does this give Atomic Slot Lab an advantage or edge on competitors?
There is no better location for Atomic Slot Lab than Las Vegas. It’s the factory floor, it’s one of the best environments for the development of slots titles. Many land-based slots companies call Vegas home, and with a Vegas office, we can get in on the ground floor and meet them in the right environment. It’s a definite advantage for us in the U.S. market. At the same time, we’re in the best place to witness player trends, see the types of slots that we might want to develop, learn about our competition and see how our slots titles perform on the casino floor. Additionally, many experienced developers call Vegas home, so we’re able to recruit from a pool of some of the best heads in the industry.
What are Atomic Slot Lab’s top performing games? Is there one that stands head and shoulders above the rest of the portfolio?
Fairy Dust & Dreamy Genie were historically our highest performing games. The former is loved by our Dutch players, while the latter performs exceptionally well with players in Switzerland. Flash forward and these days, Jester’s Vegas Experience and 7 Shields of Fortune are now leading the rankings. Jester’s is based on the easily recognisable mechanic that Fairy Dust offered but has surpassed it. 7 Shields of Fortune rocks our internally developed “Connect & Collect” mechanic, which is available across multiple titles and has gained significant popularity with players in both European and American markets.
One of the issues facing the industry is a tendency to focus more upon quantity than quality of content output due to the short average life span of casino games. What is Atomic Slot Lab’s approach to this challenge?
The crucial thing for Atomic Slot Lab is a strong emphasis on quality. If we are not happy with the quality of the content, we do not release the game, it is that simple. That is our duty of care to not only our operator partners, but the players as well, no one would be interested in poor quality content, so we constantly strive for excellence.
Mathematical models are the most important component for us with game art and visuals coming a very close second. Many of our competitors perform better in the initial 30 days following release, but Bragg will outperform them over six months and the longer term. This comes from through recurring visits of players, and the quality of our content, as players appreciate the efforts of our math and games mechanics teams.
What’s the content roadmap for Atomic Slot Lab in 2025? What will be the main focus?
Atomic Slot Lab is going to supercharge its roadmap in 2025, with a schedule to release a whopping 16 new titles over the next 12 months. The main focus of Atomic Slot Lab during the period will be so-called ‘perceived persistence’ slots. These are types of games which have been flagged as in demand and very popular by our operator partners as part of the regular feedback we solicit from our customers in the natural course of our games development process. You can get a sneak peek at this through our Gold Gobblers! game, planned for a February 2025 release.
What’s your ultimate vision for Atomic Slot Lab?
We want to make Atomic Slot Lab a household name to every player out there. Our vision is to cover a vast number of regulated markets, which we are already doing, making the brand recognisable to a wider mainstream audience. We plan to achieve this by delivering consistent excellence and pair it with an impressive variety of marketing efforts through our FUZE marketing and engagement toolset, which targets both operators and players. Today we have a substantial portfolio of 30 recognisable and proven games, something which puts us in a great position to really start growing the brand going forward!
