Danny Gordon (Four Leaf Gaming): Bringing the Game to the Player

14th November 2024 - 15:30pm

In an exclusive interview with Strikewild, Danny Gordon, the Director of Games at Four Leaf Gaming (FLG), offers fascinating insights into the company's innovative approach to slot game development.

With a vision of "Bringing the game to the player," FLG is making waves in the iGaming industry by focusing on creating exciting and accessible experiences for every player.

This interview delves into FLG's data-driven approach, their balance of innovation and player expectations, and offers a sneak peek into upcoming features that promise to revolutionize the slot gaming experience. As Four Leaf Gaming expands into new markets and pushes the boundaries of game design, Gordon's insights provide a valuable glimpse into the future of online slot gaming.

How does your vision of "creating end-to-end excitement and opportunity for every player" translate into your game development process?

"It starts with a deep live analysis of market conditions, then an assessment of how players play our games and tailoring the player journey around these metrics.

At FLG we really understand what our average player will experience matters, not one in a million, one of our initiatives is “Bringing the game to the player” and it’s all about giving every player the opportunity to see the best of all of our content."

How do you balance creating innovative features with maintaining familiar elements that players expect in slot games?

"At the core of this we have a team of experts with 50+ years combined experience in all of the contributing areas to this, we have an amazing Technology team led by Alex Bown (Director of Technology) that strives to be able to enable us to get the most out of technology to truly innovate as I’m certain will be evident in some of the new to market features in upcoming games."

Your games, like Buffalo Blow and The 3 Bears, seem to draw inspiration from diverse themes. How do you choose themes for your slots, and what inspires these choices?

"The two main factors in this for us would be what is popular and how would we do it differently, when we can satisfy both criteria in a way that appeals then that’s awesome. More importantly though we want our content to make sense to players Buffalo Blow innovates in the buffalo space with an over-arching gangster theme, but at its heart it still has the traditional expansion mechanic that players know and love from any Buffalo game. "

Can you explain the Dueling Jokers mechanic in your Dueling Jokers Dream Drop game? How does it enhance the player experience?

"Dueling Jokers was our first Cluster Pays game. The main mechanic are the multiplier wilds that are added to the reels as the player achieves wins and they bounce around creating clusters and multiplying wins as they go. If they land next to each other they can also boost each others multiplier creating even more win potential.

I think players really like the predicable nature of achieving these joker wilds but really enjoy the unpredictable nature of how the interact with the reels when they do appear. We carry this feature through to the Dream Drop Jackpot bonus to create a really unique jackpot round."

Your game Everest features a unique Sherpa's Trail bonus. How do you come up with these innovative bonus features?

"We had been discussing an expanding ways game concept for a while and Everest theme lent itself really well to this type of game. Every win expands the reel set with an extra row and if you reach the top, Free Spins is triggered.

We wanted to create the feeling of achievement and grandeur when achieving the free spins bonus with all spins taking place on this huge 10 high reel set which for a ways game is really unique as it leads to some crazy win sequences. The idea for this one was lead by a mechanic we had wanted to do but layering on the Everest theme allowed to expand on this idea even further."

The Curse of Ra slot has a max win of 10,000x the bet. How did you balance the game's volatility with this potential payout?

"Every game is a balance between those big wins and ensuring its still a fun game for the majority of players by balancing the payout distribution to ensure there are enough smaller regular wins. Every game is different. It’s a iterative process working with our world class game mathematicians to find a balance that works with the individual features of the particular game. "

The Gold Rush Frenzy Megaways slot is a reskin of your previous release, Wild Buccaneers Megaways. What motivated the decision to adapt the mechanics to a gold mining theme?

"We created Gold Rush Frenzy in cooperation with Kindred as the original game performs very well for them and they wanted a game with the same features with a new theme that works in their main markets. The mining theme made the most sense and it brings a fresh new look and feel to the game whilst staying true to the core successes of Wild Buccaneers Megaways."

Your slots often include multiple bonus features like Free Spins, Super Spinner, and Nitro Spins. How do you decide which features to include in each game?

"I think you will be surprised the levels we take this to in 2025 and beyond, we are just getting started, but ideas wise it’s a combination of above, market analysis, strong creative, great supporting tech (as our biggest enabler), and a commitment to innovation.

Fun Fact: Three senior leaders in our business used to head up innovation for a huge gaming company so when I say people have great experience in these areas its truly being driven throughout our business."

You've acquired a license to operate in Sweden. Are there other markets you're looking to enter in the near future?

“Oh, say can you see” …. I would be lying if I said we didn’t have huge plans for our content in the USA, but outside of this LATAM looks to be a huge opportunity for us too and we could never rule out some emerging markets."

Can you give us a sneak peek into any new games or features you're currently working on?

"I’m actually very excited about an accompanying product suite we have designed called Fortune Features which will give you multiple ways to play our games your way with at least 6 options of buys, ante bets and enhanced modes to choose from.

On par with the excitement around this every 2025 game, we will deliver, has a new-to-market feature in there look out for, e.g our highly interactive, Cannonball Cash feature in Wild Buccaneers: Triple Treasure and then something in every game beyond this it should be a huge 2025 for Four Leaf Gaming."