Hats off to Microgaming as it has launched the exciting slot called EmotiCoins developed through a staff-powered innovation initiative. Based on the hugely popular emoticon phenomenon, EmotiCoins is a five reel, 30 payline online slot born from an idea pitched by two members of staff, Anna McChesney and Rob Mercer, at the Microgaming Idea Factory, a staff-powered innovation initiative which won The Spark Award 2017.  The Spark Award is part of the Spark the Change global movement which aims to empower people and build happier work places. EmotiCoins online slot is now available at all leading Microgaming casino sites. The EmotiCoins slot game brings the beloved emoji characters found in smartphone and tablet technology to the reels of the slots.

How it all started-Anna and Rob pitched the idea

The pitch was first submitted to the Idea Factory contest in June 2016, Anna and Rob highlighted the use of emoticons in today’s world. Like, including emoticons in Facebook posts can increase the number of likes by 57% and Face with Tears of Joy is the most tweeted emoticon with over 16.5 billion tweets to date.

The themed slot idea gained the sponsorship of the Business Intelligence team from an early stage, helping the duo refine EmotiCoins by suggesting game features that were most likely to be successful, based on the typical emoticon user. Using these insights, Anna and Rob pitched a unique set of emoticons alongside the feature sets to complement the game’s theme at their final pitch to the Decision Panel (a selection of senior executives) in November 2016.

EmotiCoins was subsequently announced at the staff Christmas party in December 2016 as one of five winning ideas out of the 27 put forward, and its journey from prototype to reality was kick started. Just one month later, one of Microgaming’s game development teams fully embraced the game and began to bring the online slot to life.

According to Anna, who is the PR Manager at Microgaming as a marketer, the use of emoticons in social media and communication is fascinating; they have essentially become a universal language. 92% of the world’s online population use emoticons, so developing a themed game would automatically target the demographic of their operators’ players.

About EmotiCoins slot game

EmotiCoins has now rolled out across Microgaming casino sites, offering a five-reel, 30 payline slot game with an upbeat soundtrack and vibrant graphics that include all your favourite emojis, like the winking face and kissing face. The game offers two wild bonuses, the Wild Blast which awards five extra wilds and a guaranteed win, and Wild Stickers which are wild symbols that are held in place during free spins. The games scatter, the LOL symbol, has the power to trigger 10 free spins.

According to Lydia Barbara, Head of Innovation Strategy at Microgaming all are super excited to be taking live the first game concept driven from the Idea Factory by staff members who would ordinarily not be involved in game conception.

EmotiCoins is ready to delight players with a mixture of vibrant graphics, upbeat soundtrack and exciting wilds, brought to life by a crew of cheerful emoticons including favourites such as Tears of Joy, Kiss and Winking Face. EmotiCoins is sure to have players laughing out loud with wins of up to 92,000 coins and a minimum bet of 0.30.

The game is live with Microgaming and Quickfire operators on desktop and mobile and can be played for free or with real money with no downloads required. Give EmotiCoins a try at online casinos.