Women putting their stamp on slot machine industry
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There might be more men working in gaming than women, but Kimberly Cohn—senior director of game design at Las Vegas-based Light & Wonder—said she doesn’t view the industry as “male-dominated.”
Cohn said the number of women who are creating some of the top products in gaming has gone up since she began working as a designer in the industry two decades ago.
“We have women at all levels of executive management and throughout game design, and a lot of our teams have women engineers and artists, and there’s female mathematicians,” she said. “We’re starting to see women in STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] really making a difference and coming in.”
Cohn and Jamie Knight, another senior director of game design at Light & Wonder, head up design studios at the leading cross-platform global gaming company, which creates slot machines and other forms of gaming entertainment played around the world.
Both designers have also recently debuted new machines on the market.
The latest from Knight’s studio include Zodiac Lantern, Money Link Revolution and Money Link Power 4. The latter is especially exciting because the Monkey Link and Power 4 brands are very popular, she said, and designers had the opportunity to pull from the history of both games while making a new, creative experience for players.
She said Zodiac Lantern—which is rolling out in Light & Wonder’s “cosmic cabinet,” one of its newest slot machine designs—will be popular among players.
“Zodiac Lantern, I’m really proud of,” she said. “I think it looks very different from a lot of games. It’s another dragon game, but dragon games are very popular. And we were able to make it look a little bit more unique.”
Cohn’s studio recently produced both Quick Hit Explosion—which she said elevates and adds a twist to a brand with which players already connect—and Ultimate Firelink Cash Falls, a mix of two successful products also debuting in the cosmic cabinet.
Ultimate Firelink Cash Falls is the first game Cohn said she has designed that will be intentionally released in a short period of time across multiple channels, so people who enjoy the slot machine can find and play it on other platforms.
Cross-platform gaming, including taking popular products not only to the casino floor but social and digital spaces, is changing the industry and providing companies like Light & Wonder with a powerful tool, Knight said.
“We have a unique advantage to make those games work across all those platforms,” she said. “We’re focusing on that more than we ever have. And there are new challenges that come with changing the way we design so we can work across multi-platforms. So there’s really great planning and great people who have come on board to help make that happen for us and make that flow a little bit easier.”
Change is constant in gaming, and Cohn pointed to the evolution of Light & Wonder’s player base as an example. Many of today’s players grew up enjoying video games and utilizing smart technology, so designers work to create experiences that pique their interest and meet their expectations.
A team of gaming designers with different backgrounds and points of view is important, she said, citing how a female perspective benefits an industry in which many slot-machine players are women.
“It’s nice to add breadth to the perspectives that make these games,” Cohn said, noting that everyone at the company brings something different to the table. She came in as an animator; Knight as a mathematician. “I think it adds to the titles that get created, as well as the game play.”
Multiple people play a role in getting games from the studio to casino floors and other channels, she said, including artists, engineers, audio teams and more.
“Being able to be close to the casinos and watching players play your games is one of the best parts of seeing all that hard work,” Knight said, emphasizing that working with her team is another one of her favorite parts of the job.
Cohn said she ‘s thankful to work somewhere that recognizes the need for and promotes women designers, emphasizing that she and Knight represent the many female designers at Light & Wonder making a difference.
“We’ve gotten to a pretty good place where we feel like there’s a lot of women now that are good designers in this industry,” Knight said. “We can make a good mark.”
This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.
