Casino July-Aug 08 P42-44 24/6/08 09:55 Page 42
META GU
Meta GU
Meta Games Universal’s creators claim the application can save
significant time and money when it comes to developing slot machine
games. Casino International caught up with Owen Cullum to find out
exactly what they've got up their sleeve…
G
enerating game content can be time-
consuming and expensive _– and for
good reason. It's highly-skilled work, and
making games which appeal to particular
cultural demographics is very difficult
indeed. But Meta Games Universal claim to have the
solution which will speed up time-to-market for slot
manufacturers and save a lot of money, too. Cargo is
the name of their solution, as Owen Cullum
explains…
Casino International: Tell us about the company
and why it evolved…
Owen Cullum: Meta Games is a small company, types of content or the same content in different
started a year ago by developers who are experienced ways to fine tune it to the market place. Content was
in casino and video lottery terminal [VLT] already the bottleneck even without being server-
development. Myself and my cofounder have many based and the need to move quickly against the
years experience of developing software and software competition and to move to keep up with regulations
systems. We were both employed by Cyberview who is already a problem but this new technology is going
were pretty much founders in the area of server-based to speed that up.
gaming systems. I was responsible for developing the
CI: So how does Cargo work? What does it do?
“What Cargo doesn't do is
OC: Cargo will enable people developing games to
develop them faster and cheaper – so in its basic
to make software
form it's a productivity aid. However, we like to call it
developers redundant, as
an 'enabling technology' for games development. Not
only is it going to bring about the needed
they are free to develop
improvements in development efficiency, in terms of
new technology.”
cost and time, but it enables the development to take
place in a different way and allows much more
flexibility. So now it's just much easier for a large
US variant of the platform and getting it approved in manufacturer to say to their customers, if you want to
the US. It was the first class III server-based system have a customized version of that game, that will not
approved in the US. Part of the Cyberview be a problem. For example if they wanted to go into a
experience, for us, was that we learned an awful lot new foreign market with a game that prospect is
about gaming development technology and also going to be much easier.
about the ways the market place worked; particularly What Cargo does is brings about a number of
the regulators and the regulatory environment. technical and business benefits: From a technical
The reason Meta Games came about – and Cargo – point of view it allows there to be a much greater
was that the real bottleneck when introducing a new separation between the game designers and the
gaming system happens at the content production developers. Presently when you want to produce a
stage. Anywhere where you have slot machines it's the game, the game designers and the software
content that makes people play the games, if you developers have to work very closely together.
don't have the content no-one will play. Players need Bottlenecks occur as there are typically only a few
to have the reward, both in terms of entertainment software developers who know the platform and
and financial gain. What this new server-based or know how to produce a particular effect, how to code
networked system is going to do is to produce new it. So you have a bunch of guys who design the
42 JULY/AUGUST 2008
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