Family Feud Slots"Family Feud Slots" was an elaborately themed slot machine based on Pearson Television’s popular game show. It featured three high-resolution video displays; an industry-first, video capture system; and a physical enclosure that incorporates 40 individually choreographed lights. The impressive hardware was well matched by the company’s faithful recreation of the popular television game show. Based on multi-line, multi-coin, and multi-spin reel slots, and a multi-deck poker game, what remained consistent across the three games was the "TV Bonus". When players hit the designated bonus, the entire machine appears to shut down. A red siren spins atop a studio camera mounted to the side of the machine. The stage director appears on the camera’s video display and instructs the player ... “On in five… four… three…”. The stage director points at the player and on cue, cuts to the camera’s video feed to snap the player's picture. The camera goes dark, and the machine comes back to life with the instantly recognizable "Family Feud" theme music. It’s the bonus round. The familiar stitch work panel slides back to reveal the first contestants - a "family" of Silicon Gaming employees. A second panel slides back to reveal the image of the player that the camera had just captured. The bonus round proceeds as a question is randomly selected from the game’s database of over 1,000 questions. The top answers are “on the board” and players’ answers appear on a rotating placard. Hitting the “Answer” plunger makes the player's selection and amid shouts of "Good Answer!" and a cry of "Survey Says..." the player recieves either a 'Ding" or a 'Buzz'. The more popular the guess is, the larger the award. Players continue until they guess all the answers or get three strikes. Their awards are totaled, and they return to the game. |
Our Role in the Project
At the time of this project, our CTO - Chuck Berg - was employed by Silicon Gaming as their VP of Engineering and Chief Engineer for "Family Feud Slots". He
supervised his team of six programmers, one mathematician, one mechanical engineer, and five quality testers. He designed the "Question and Answers" database,
and hired an outside contractor to develop a tool to populate the database with content from the television show.
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Project Status
Silicon Gaming installed 80 "Family Feud Slots" machines at MGM properties on the Las Vegas Strip in June, 2000. They were an instant success - quickly surpassing
"Wheel of Fortune" in casino revenue. In January of 2001, Silicon Gaming was purchased by International Game Technology (IGT), and three years later,
IGT replaced the Silicon Gaming machines with a version of their own to minimize maintenance costs.
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Technologies Used
★ C++ | ★ Visual Studio | ★ pSOS+ | ★ Odyssey Platform |