Gaming Machine Grouped Held Value Symbols
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Solution Overview
Problem
The gaming industry faces challenges in creating gaming apparatus and games that balance yield versus randomness and volatility to encourage player participation, while also improving processing speed and efficiency to support advanced graphics and features.
Innovation Solution
A gaming system with an electronic display and input devices that includes game-logic circuitry for initiating a feature game by randomly selecting symbols, holding value symbols in place, and modifying their values, allowing for cumulative awards and payouts, thereby enhancing player engagement and processing efficiency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If the gaming apparatus uses an internal or external random element generator to create luck, then player participation is improved, but the balance between yield and randomness becomes difficult to maintain
Solution Approach 1:
The symbol set is segmented into different types (standard symbols, value symbols, wild symbols) with distinct functions. Value symbols are further segmented into those that can be held and those that cannot, allowing the game to separately manage randomness (through random selection) and yield (through controlled holding and cumulative value accumulation).
Solution Approach 2:
The game dynamically changes parameters such as the number of value symbols held, their cumulative total value, and which positions are locked. These parameter changes allow the system to adjust the balance between randomness (more symbols to select from) and yield (accumulated value in held positions) during different phases of gameplay.
2Ease of operation
If the game offers advanced graphics and special effects to make games more entertaining, then player engagement is improved, but processing speed and efficiency deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The game determines game outcomes, symbol selections, and value assignments in advance through random number generation, then presents these predetermined outcomes through the graphic interface. This separates the processing-intensive random determination phase from the display phase, allowing advanced graphics to be rendered without slowing down the core game logic and random element generation.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed is a gaming system including a gaming machine. In response to a triggering event, the gaming system initiates play of a feature game including a plurality of standard symbols and value symbols, the value symbols being associated with one or more values. Value symbols adjacent to one another are combined into a larger composite symbol and held in place on a display device, the standard symbols then replaced with replacement symbols randomly selected from the standard and value symbols. When the replacement symbols include another value symbol adjacent to the composite symbol, the new value symbol is also combined with the composite symbol, increasing its size. At the conclusion of the feature game, a reel associated with the composite symbol is displayed and spun to select an award from a set of possible awards based on the size of the composite symbol.