Concept Gaming Ltd

About the Company

Concept Gaming Ltd is a Cardiff, UK-based online casino game development company providing HTML5 and advanced integrated software creations designed for play on desktop or mobile. Their most recent titles are fully dynamic and adapt to any display, orientation, or resizing. U.S. players can look for their games at Vegas Crest Casino.

The company was founded in June 2010 by J.R. Doughty, Huw Ford, and Jim Preedy and operates from the same Fairwater Workshops address as Ford and Preddy's earlier company, pioneers in SWP and other games, Skill 4 Prizes. Doughty is former COO at Football 1x2 Ltd, now a part of 1x2 Networks.

In addition to their bar kiosk games, Skill 4 Prizes had some early successes with hybrid skill and fixed odds games when they partnered with GTech (now IGT) subsidiary Finsoft in February 2007. At the time, Finsoft provided a gaming and sportsbook platform and counted bet365 and Paddy Power among their customers. The Skill 4 Prizes corporation had been dormant for some time and was dissolved several months before an incendiary issue dominated online gaming news sites with Finsoft possibly altering payout models of some Realistic Games deployed on their platform in late 2012.

Upon launch in 2010 Concept Gaming deployed their Pulse platform and were working in partnership with Microgame S.p.A. (not to be confused with Microgaming). In 2010 Microgame controlled about 30% of the Italian poker market. Their People's Poker Network comprised some 130 partner sites and counted over 1.5 million gaming accounts.

The Cardiff company's content has been supplied to Betsson, Leo Vegas, NYX, Xpro Gaming among other well-known names.

Software and Games

The company counts over 55 titles in their portfolio including virtual football, slots, casino, and mini-games. Many of the existing titles are available for bespoke customization such as simple color changes or branding, but the company also specializes in creating new and unique games for their clients. As a boutique specialists firm they are able to offer the flexibility needed to incorporate existing or newly supplied graphics or create everything from scratch.

The Pulse platform and random number generator (RNG) are certified in multiple jurisdictions. The platform was built in Erlang, PHP, MySQL and Javascript/Ajax and has been deployed on Linux and Windows server systems.

The company website displays only a few images of their games and no paytables or working models are available, but they can be found at various online gaming sites. This may be due to the possibility the bulk of their portfolio was developed for other providers and may have been licensed off such as when Parlay Ent restructured and sold off most of their assets, but that is unclear. The current portfolio of more than 25 slots at Vegas Crest is far superior to any previously known Parlay-branded games.

Games like Abandoned Park offer rudimentary 3D graphics of a creepy amusement park and pay both ways, have expanding wilds, and a graduated multiplier bonus that pays up to 5x on spins following any win. There is a random chance to win the jackpot on any spin as well.

Hollywood Reels offers a well-rendered 3D splash screen highlighting the main characters and features. Game load time was slow, but the Vista Gaming delivery system is just like that sometimes with over 800 games on tap. They may have still been working out the API as well, as our desktop test connection pegged 3.6Mbps giving plenty of bandwidth for almost any instant play game. While the game was certainly more entertaining aesthetically, it also had an oddity in RTP that created a lower return percentage when playing less than max lines. This makes the maths model difficult to fully understand and creates a situation where advanced players are not in control of the game's volatility without losing theoretical returns over the long run.

The Final Analysis

In an effort to present enticing and enthralling mechanics to help players get the most enjoyment possible out of the games we reviewed briefly, they may have alienated some advanced players who prefer not to be sitting ducks even with high RTP like 98.10%. Without deeper detail, we can't determine if the range of 71.90% - 98.10% + 1% for the progressive jackpot is due solely to the progressive.

Looking into the history of the known players at Concept Gaming, and not taking into account the new talent in art and animation, we are looking at a company with at least 40 years of experience in the top tier alone. We're looking forward to playing more of their titles and seeing what innovative breakthroughs Concept Gaming holds for the future.

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