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Penalty shoot-outs are celebrated for their dramatic, sometimes career-ending conclusions. World Cups have been decided by penalties. Months of club football and years of international football come down to a handful of moments nobody controls once the ball is struck. Players who score typically describe relief more than joy. Shoot-outs take an emotional and psychological toll on players and create a cumulative pressure that grows with each kick. During a shoot-out, the lead can change and a team that was ahead can ultimately lose. A goalkeeper can correctly guess the shooting direction and still allow a goal.
The game of soccer crosses international borders, and FIFA has 211 member associations – more than the United Nations. An estimated 3.5 billion people around the world follow the sport. During a World Cup, people in different time zones can gather and appreciate the game together. Attempts, saves and cumulative progress need no translation. It is no wonder penalty-themed games have gained a following. Ontario has a regulated online casino market with sports-themed games. Browsing the sports-inspired online catalogue at Betinia Casino Ontario shows how the shoot-out sequence can be adapted to a casino game format. Understanding game structures can help players appreciate the design of these games.
The Specifics of Soccer Penalty Kicks
Football is incredibly particular when it comes to describing the circumstances surrounding penalty shoot-outs. They are formally known as “kicks from the penalty mark.” A shoot-out is a tie-breaker and does not affect the overall record of the game. Goals scored during a shoot-out do not impact the game record or a player’s individual tally for the game or season.
Each team is allotted a set of five shooters for the series, with the players on each team alternating in order. Only the goalkeeper defends the shooter. A shoot-out series is won when a team makes more of the five shots. Sometimes a shoot-out series will be cut short if a team goes up by more shots than the other team is capable of making.
Because of the nature of the shoot-out series, it is entirely possible that a team could be eliminated from contention before a shoot-out series is completed. The shoot-out series can add a lot of drama to a soccer match because sometimes players will not have an opportunity to kick from the penalty mark.
The early finish rule is important to the nature of the game. It means the scores at various points in the game define the boundaries of what is possible for the rest of the game. Casino designers carry this visible progression into their game formats.
Keep the Order, Change the Stakes
When designers of casino games incorporated shoot-outs into their games, they kept the order but changed the stakes. Sporting events determine which team moves on and who wins the tournament. In casino games, the outcome is a payout determined by multipliers. Like shoot-outs, casino games structure a round in a way that gives players a fixed sequence of attempts. Each attempt resolves as one of two outcomes. There is a scoreboard that displays the outcome of each attempt. The round ends when the outcome of all the opportunities is determined or when a defined condition is achieved.
Penalty Shoot-Out, a 2020 arcade game, is based on this structure. In the game, players are given the opportunity to score five goals. A multiplier is shown at the top of the screen and increases with each goal scored. If all five goals are scored, the multiplier reaches 30.72 times. During a game, players always know the multiplier and their score, because it is shown on the screen at all times.
The game retains transparency about the state of a round. In a traditional shoot-out, the scoreboard shows the current state to all the fans, and in a casino game the current state is shown on the player’s screen. In both cases, players are provided the means to keep track of the state of the game.
What a Scoreboard Reveals
During a shoot-out, a scoreboard reveals the score and the level of pressure in the game. When a team goes a goal down with only two kicks left, the scoreboard in that game conveys that meaning without the need for any additional explanation. Players, coaches, and fans often interpret a score without the scoreboard telling them.
Many penalty games, including Penalty Shoot-Out, visualise this mechanic. After each successful kick is taken, the multiplier bar increases, and the number of remaining kicks decreases. The game uses a 5-segment bar to display the score and the multiplier. Each segment lights up to indicate the score and the multiplier. For the first goal of the game, the multiplier is set to 1.92x. The second goal of the game advances the bar and the multiplier to 3.84x. The players always know how many kicks remain and the current multiplier.
Penalty Shoot-Out illustrates save animations using the multiplier bar as well. When a goalkeeper saves the shot, the bar stops increasing and the round ends. The bar freezes at the spot where the goalkeeper saved the shot. This sense of finality is seen in real life when a goalkeeper saves a shot and the crowd cheers before the goalkeeper has resumed his position in the goal.
The End Goal
Each of the five goals in the full sequence expresses a new multiplier, and the jumps grow larger. The final jump represents the largest increase over any other single goal in the sequence.
Structurally, the game is very close to a real-life shoot-out. The first penalty in a shoot-out feels intense, but the pressure is spread out; there are still eight kicks to come. Each player understands that as the shoot-out progresses, the pressure and importance of each kick increases. The casino game gives a number that represents this increasing value.
After each goal, a player has to make a key decision. They can take what’s on the board and end the round, or take a risk and attempt to score another goal. In a real shoot-out, of course, players can’t make this decision; players take their penalty kick and then move on. In this game, you have to decide if you want to take the money and end the game, or you can continue playing and take the risk. Continuing means the next kick may advance the multiplier or end the round with a goalkeeper save, in which case the player loses the accumulated payout. The Super Bonus is awarded if a player scores all five goals without cashing in early.
In sport and in casino games, the shoot-out format is used in different ways. Skill, pressure and nerves determine the outcome in sports. In the casino, the outcomes are determined by the software. This game is designed to look and feel like a shoot-out, but in reality it is wearing the suit of a shoot-out while using chance to determine its outcome.
The Final Save
The goalkeeper is the agent of finality in all formats of the game. In a real penalty shoot-out, the effect of a save is to change the psychological state of the contest. A save in a casino game ends the series of events and thus ends the round.
In Penalty Shoot-Out, the multiplier bar stops where it is and the bar resets for a new round to begin at 1.92x. The outcome is shown immediately. The game then gives the player the opportunity to begin a new round.
This interpretation of the save draws attention to the artistic presentation of the save. The animations show the goalkeeper moving to block the penalty kick. Once the save is registered, the system immediately presents the player with the opportunity to begin the next round.
What creates the drama of the early-collect decision is that a player could reach the fourth goal when the board shows 15.36x. This player has passed three potential save points. The fifth kick could increase the multiplier to 30.72x, the maximum award for the sequence. The game does not hide the multiplier that is at risk. It displays the value in the bar. The game removes the mystery to create the maximum drama.
Reading the Sequence as It Unfolds
The shape of the sequence in each round of a penalty shoot-out is fixed. In Penalty Shoot-Out, there are five kicks per round. There is a visible bar. The reward multipliers retain the same ratio. This allows the player to quickly understand the structure and progressively engage with the development of the sequence. In the example above, the multiplier is 3.84x with three kicks remaining. The next goal would increase the multiplier to 7.68x with two kicks remaining. The player can always view the current scoreline, and, like a real-life soccer shoot-out, a person joining the game mid-round can instantly determine the state of the game. Like real life shoot-outs, the game allows the player to take breaks and come back to a clearly displayed state of the game.
This format of game builds a framework for a series of variations. Some of these variations include team selection, visual theming, or alteration of the round structure. One type of variant assigns a different multiplier at each step of the round, changing the shape of the risk-reward opportunities presented by each goal. Ultimately, the framework structures the design and maintains the progress indicator as the primary component.
Chance Wearing Football Boots
The skill involved in each kick, combined with the theatricality of a goalkeeper saving a penalty, creates the drama of a penalty shootout. What makes a shootout so compelling is that the outcome can turn on a single kick. Ninety minutes of action can conclude with a surprise and in many ways feel random. On the surface a shootout may appear random, but in reality a penalty kick requires skill, and a goalkeeper can make a real difference in the outcome of a shootout.
Just like shoot-outs, penalty games progress in a series of tense, unyielding rounds. These games, however, lack the element of control that is found in a real shoot-out. In a penalty shoot-out, a player places the ball on the penalty mark, reads the goalkeeper’s weight distribution, and decides the top corner to aim for. In penalty games, there’s very little the player can control. The software decides each result independently. Players make a different, but significant decision. They can choose to collect the prize, forfeiting their shot, or take the shot. It is a game of chance where the player controls the decision to collect or continue, not the outcome of each kick.
Penalty games become more interesting once their structure is understood, rather than simply watched. The game developers don’t actually simulate a shoot-out. They build a structure of a shoot-out around a series of chance-based outcomes. The game retains the familiar structure of the shoot-out. The football language makes the sequence readable, and the goalkeeper makes the ending feel earned. Penalty shoot-outs and these games differ in nature, and it is worthwhile to appreciate what the game is trying to accomplish.
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