Interviews
Exclusive Q&A w/ Daniel Eskola Head of R&D at Relax Gaming on the release of Money Train 3 and its commercial success so far
Money Train 3 has now been live for over a month. What can you tell us about its performance so far?
We couldn’t be happier with the reception of Money Train 3! Internally, the expectations were high following the success of the record-breaking prequel, but the results have exceeded our forecasts. The sequel has outperformed all of our previous launches, it’s been enjoyed around the world and our operator partners are seeing phenomenal results. It’s a fantastic time for Relax and speaks volumes about the hard work and dedication that went into the game and evolution from the original Money Train.
We have seen quite a few maximum wins from the game already. How important has this dynamic been to the initial success of a game?
Creating attainable maximum wins is an aspect of our content that we do not take lightly. We believe in fairness and showing integrity through our work, creating effective maximum win caps is just one way of ensuring this. In its first four days, the game had already hit fourteen 100,000x bet wins, which sent a clear message early on about the achievability of the wins and doubtlessly encouraged others to play the game.
Moreover, we often receive emails from players asking for replays of their big wins, wanting to relive the amazing rush of winning big, this shows us that we succeeded in building up the thrill-factor. With this in mind, we feel that with a transparent business model like ours, the outcome is usually positive on all fronts – players enjoy themselves, which spills into fantastic results for our partners and of course, Relax Gaming. iGaming is not just about winning money of course, but it certainly contributes to a more trustworthy and entertaining experience.
Which mechanics have resonated most with players?
One of our latest additions, the Shapeshifter, has had a great response so far and makes for an extra exciting Bonus Round as it adds tremendous anticipation to each respin. The feature was inspired by player feedback so it’s incredibly rewarding to see that our team satisfied Money Train fans in this way. This feature, together with the persistent Necromancer, the Tommy Gun and Persistent Collector/Payer have all contributed a new dynamic to the Money Train mechanic.
The research process our team is accustomed to garners fantastic results and demonstrates their passion for building great games and knowing what their players want. Operators offer a huge helping hand in this regard as well, as they share all sorts of insights that funnel into our concepting stages.
Were there any lessons you took from the release of the first two installments that proved useful with this game’s introduction?
Absolutely, each game was built on the last and was a better game because of it. Listening to player feedback took much of the guesswork out of the production and helped us hit the mark on the scale that we have. The concepting stage took longer than usual as we knew that we had to deliver a bolder and better experience than the already extremely successful Money Train 2, the end result speaks for itself. The truly unique feature of the Money Train series is that there are so many different combinations of special symbols to achieve the max win and each game in the series becomes more complex as we push the limit whilst still keeping the game easy to understand for the players.
There was a great deal of anticipation in the run-up to this game’s release. That’s obviously a positive thing from a commercial point of view, but how do you go about maximising the potential of that?
We spread the message across our operators by hosting insightful meetings, webinars and presentations improve their ability to promote the game upon release. We’re transparent in everything that we do and we like to involve our partners as much as we can, we believe that the deeper the understanding of a game, the easier and more natural it feels to promote it. Keeping our communication channels open is a great way to spread the word about success like this.
It’s early days, but are there any initial thoughts about a Money Train 4 or a new Money Cart game?
It’s a tad too early to tease anything in this regard. The project will require an enormous amount of ideation and conceptualisation to ensure we can keep impressing the market and improving the quality. For us to consider building Money Trian 4 we have to be certain that it will be even more innovative than the last.
That said, we will share that we have some very exciting productions underway. Dream Drop Jackpots is still making headlines with frequent winners and fresh titles, and now, paired with Relax Rush (our recently released suite of promotional tools), even more creativity is about to be unleashed!
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