MegaWays | A History
In 2011, an Australian company named Big Time Gaming was founded. The minds behind the scene, Nik Robinson, Huw McIntosh, and Ian Schmidt, have been in the industry since the late 1990’s. After a successful run with NT Media, the group moved on to create Big Time Gaming and haven’t looked back.
What is MegaWays Slot Machine?
MegaWays is a slot engine that takes a 6-reel slot machine and adds a variable to each reel. The reels can be different sizes every spin (from 2-7). In the standard Megaways game, the amount of pay lines varies from 64 all the way up to 117,649. Matching symbols from left to right pay out regardless of if they are in a direct line.
Nik Robinson said the idea came from the desire to be the “Thought Leader” of online slots. The reception was a little slow and didn’t gain major popularity until the second game was released with the new engine.
The Growth of MegaWays
In 2015, Big Time Gaming released Dragon Born, the first MegaWays slot. It was received fairly well, but didn’t get the recognition that Robinson wanted. A year later, with the release of Bonanza, MegaWays exploded in popularity. Some sources credit Bonanza as the first true MegaWays game because of how quickly it grew in popularity. Now, of the over 50 games under Big Time Gaming, nearly half of them carry the trademarked MegaWays tag.
By 2018 it was easy to see that players enjoyed the different play style of MegaWays games and other slot providers took notice. Red Tiger Gaming was the first to approach Big Time and secure a license to start creating MegaWays games. In the 8 years since MegaWays was invented, many of the industry’s top providers have gained a license to release MegaWays games. The list includes: Pragmatic Play, NetEnt, iSoftBet, Red Tiger Gaming, and the list goes on.
As long as Big Time Gaming allows the license to be purchased, providers will continue pushing out MegaWays games, and I for one couldn’t be happier.
Copied but never Replicated
The brainchild of Robinson, McIntosh, and Schmidt has had many “copycat” versions hit the scene, but none with the popularity. In the 3 years since getting into online slots, I have come across my fair share of fake MegaWays games. While some of them were entertaining, they just didn’t have the polished feel of the real thing. Big Time Gaming’s creation has created too much clout for anyone to try and challenge for the title of most innovative.
What Next?
Big Time Gaming continues to produce quality games and interesting ideas. Since MegaWays was released, they have also released MegaPays, MegaQuads, MegaClusters, and quietly are the creators of the Bonus Buy, that has taken the world of online slots over completely.
Big Time doesn’t release slots very quickly, but every time I see them on the “New Releases” at ChipsGG, I get excited. I have never seen a Big Time Game that I didn’t absolutely love and I for one cannot wait to see what new mechanics they push out in the future.
Credit: Esbon251