Who Are WMS? A Look at the Slots Software Designers
WMS is best known to online casino players as a designer of casino games, especially slots. But the Williams name is in fact a truly historic one, in gaming industry terms. Many companies involved in online gaming are youthful to say the least: many have yet to achieve their first decade in business, and most formed in the 21st century or very shortly before.
Yet WMS can trace its roots back as far as the days of World War Two, when the Williams Manufacturing Company was founded in 1943. Harry E. Williams, after whom the company was named, was an engineer and designer who produced many early amusement and gaming machines. He was particularly involved in pinball machine manufacture, and was reputed to have invented the “tilt” mechanism which prevents pinball players from cheating by moving the machine.
The company continued to grow and was re-formed into something more like its modern incarnation in 1974, when it became Williams Electronics. This re-structuring saw the company diversify from being involved purely in pinball and amusement arcade game manufacture into the fledgling coin-operated video game console industry. This increasing focus on computerisation would stand it in good stead as the market moved steadily from solid state mechanical technology toward computer gaming and eventually online gaming.
After a modicum of success with the design of licenced movie themed pinball games in the 1990s, the company finally abandoned pinball manufacture to concentrate on computer based gaming at the turn of the century. WMS had entered the real world slot machine market for the first time in 1994. This proved to be a successful venture, and it was a natural progression of this move which saw the company take advantage of the burgeoning online gaming market.
The company adapted its land based machine designs for the digital market, offering its new online formats to UK based players in 2011, following up in the United States a year later. In July 2012, the company was renamed Williams Interactive, in order to reflect this change in its market approach.
Inevitably, its new found success was noticed by its bigger rivals and October 2013 it was effectively bought out and taken over by its larger American competitor Scientific Games, who paid around $1.5 billion for the privilege.
Today, WMS remains a wholly owned subsidiary of the Scientific Games and continues to focus on design of a range of online slot designs. It has a total of around a hundred different titles in its portfolio, and these are widely available on many of today’s most popular casinos.
The games provided cover most of the popular slot genres, with some excellent titles in the range. WMS designs include games like Amazon Queen, Raging Rhino, Spartacus: Gladiator of Rome and Zeus. Ironically comic titles are also a speciality, with OMG! Kittens and Invaders from the Planet Moolah being particularly memorable titles. Licenced music, TV and movie themes are also a strength. Elvis the King Lives and its Bruce Lee titles remain very popular amongst fans. Pharaonic fables are also very much in evidence: Egyptology remains one of the most favoured themes in slots and WMS have games like Lady of Egypt, Egyptian Riches and Rome and Egypt to keep the fans happy.
Parent company Scientific Games is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. WMS games are licenced via the casino site they are played on. Look out for the UK Gambling Commission registration logo at the bottom of the relevant casino home page to ensure the site is regulated for United Kingdom based players.