ISLE OF MAN – Microgaming is buzzing with excitement with the launch of EmotiCoins, an online slot 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.

Anna McChesney, PR Manager for Microgaming, comments: “As a marketer, to me 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 our operators’ players.”

First submitted to the Idea Factory contest in June 2016, Anna and Rob highlighted the use of emoticons in today’s world. For example, 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*.