Aristocrat has been busy for a while and has been able to come up with something amazing. The company’s newest innovation, the Arc Canopy, has so far being a massive hit at G2E Vegas. Like a moth to a flame, it has been attracting visitors of all kinds to the location.
To know more about this superb project, Becky Liggero Fontana of Calvin Ayre, spoke with the geniuses behind the project. The fathers of this game are Frank Rodriguez Mechanical Engineering Lead and Stephen Shaffer, Senior Electrical Engineer.
Rodriguez was the first to talk among the pair. He told them a story of how the idea was conceived and how it got to the final stage.
“I used to work with Stephen here, he called me in one day and said ‘Look, I got this brilliant idea, we came up with the thinkBIGGER program,’ and it like was a round shape, and he said ‘But it is missing something, I cannot get it across, I need some mechanical assistance.’”
Rodriguez continued “He is electrical, I am mechanical, so I was like ‘Yes sure, I will try it.’ So I went and put it in CAD (computer-aided design) and I showed it to him and he goes ‘That is it, it will fit, it will fit in the space and everything on the floor. So we took it off running, we said let us just go for it.”
But apart from being a beautiful arc of games, what is the goal for what the canopy can offer?
Shaffer said, “Well with Hyper Arc, my main goal was I wanted a multiplayer system with community gaming, so more people would enjoy playing the game others. In the end, I really wanted to get a game space above us, because that was a space that wasn’t in use on the casino floor, it lets us try new things that we have never done before.”
It’s been a long time since the G2E Vegas floor saw something like the Arc Canopy. This elicited several questions from the visitors who came to see the game. There have been questions like how much it costs etc.
Rodriguez had this to share:
“Well, we built one and that’s not too expensive. And it is ‘Wow, do you play between each other?’ I go ‘Yeah, you can play,’ and the questions keep coming. And ‘How do you play it?’ And I said ‘Mash a button, go for it, enjoy it.’
So basically, we just provided a canvas, we want game development to make games that shoot across, or like a pirate game and they shoot cannonballs at each other, or we flick coins at each other. We just, again, provide the canvas, knock yourself out, create the game. That’s basically it.”
On the other hand, Liggero Fontana needed to know if the new design had any disadvantages beneath its arc. He said:
“So we designed this one to be the same floor space as before, the only difference is we have the game going above your head now,”
According to Shaffer:
“So this is not different, it’s basically using the exact same stuff, but now we have competition for the ceiling.”
