52 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • MARCH/APRIL 2022 When we hear the word evolution, we might think of an animal like the giraffe and how its neck got to be 500% bigger than its original size- taller than the average man in the world’s “tallest country”- which scientists believe started out regular size. How does a neck (or anything for that matter) transform so radically, and what does a giraffe neck have to do with the Gaming industry? The first answer is that it doesn’t. The transformation is the result of smaller changes, repeated across time to meet current conditions. Due to environmental conditions, giraffes faced increasing competition for easily reachable vegetation sources. With natural genetic variation, some giraffes had slightly above-average neck lengths and got to eat the few higher up leaves other animals couldn’t reach. Over time there was a domino effect. Better nutrition meant better health, which meant more and healthier offspring, increasing the incidence of the long-necked trait in the gene pool. As longer-than-average-necked giraffes mate, the longer-neck trait not only becomes dominant, but with each generation the average neck size grows a little, until finally, we have our sixfooted-neck giraffe. Just as the giraffe had to evolve in complex ways to continue its very existence, so too has the Gaming business. The difference is that our modern, digital world is in a period of radical transformation. We’re asked to quickly adapt to meet new (and sometimes extreme) conditions such as COVID-19. So how can we even fairly use the word evolution in Gaming, when we’re operating on a completely different, condensed timeline? Evolve is what we all do every day and what we must do, as our very survival depends on it. It’s the path I’ve followed with Tournament One and Gameology, its evolutionary successor. EVOLUTION OF A GAMING COMPANY I founded Tournament One in 2004 to meet the growing demand for high-quality, engaging content in the nascent online Lottery and Gaming space, with a focus on sports-oriented games. From my 20+ years as a Cable TV Systems owner, I understood the importance of entertaining and engaging content to both attract and retain customers willing to spend money and time, for the right kind of quality entertainment. Our games went a step further and offered the chance to win prizes. We’ve had a number of firsts, such as developing a Rubic’s Cube game for IGT and the GA Lottery. With Pop Cap Games (now EA) and IGT, we converted 5 Bejeweled games and 2 Plants Versus Zombie games from skill games to predetermined games with Lottery fixed odds. After the launch of our first Bejeweled game, Debbie Alford, President, Georgia Lottery, said “…just that one game was responsible for producing 25% of all Online E-Instant revenue for the Georgia Lottery.” Tournament One was awarded four patents for various gaming mechanics and proprietary algorithms we created for the project. These are actively used in our games in the marketplace which continue to earn a steady stream of revenue, with multiple titles generating over EVOLUTION in the GAMING WORLD Rick Perrone, Founder & CEO, Gameology and Tournament One
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