An Exclusive Interview with Chris Taylor, founder of Online-Slot.co.uk

Written by

Miona Ludoski

Last modified: Sep 16, 2026

10 min read

With over two decades in the iGaming space, Chris Taylor knows the slot industry inside and out. I had the opportunity to touch base on several important topics. We discussed the site’s history, his favourite game mechanics, and his insider take on the future of online casino gaming. Check out the full interview below. 

To begin with, and warm up a little bit, tell us what your favourite online slot of all time is?

Immortal Romance, without hesitation. It’s a slot I keep coming back to, and it’s stood the test of time in a way very few games manage. The soundtrack is a huge part of it: it genuinely pulls you into the world rather than just sitting in the background.

And the multiple free spins features gave it real depth and replayability long before that became the norm. It had character and a sense of progression, and I think it set a benchmark that a lot of studios have been chasing ever since.

Now let’s jump back in time. Online-slot was founded in 2011. It’s been a decade and a half since the site came to life. Could you tell us what drove you to start the site? And why slots?

Honestly, it came from a mixture of frustration and confidence. I looked at what was out there at the time and thought I could do better than the sites that were dominating. A lot of the content was thin, the reviews were interchangeable, and nobody was really speaking to players the way I felt they deserved to be spoken to.

Slots specifically because that was where my genuine interest was: the mechanics, the maths, the sheer variety. It’s a category with endless depth if you actually care about it, and I did. That mix of a gap in the market and a real personal enthusiasm was what got me to build something rather than just complain about what already existed.

Slots […] that was where my genuine interest was.

Online-slot.co.uk is a pretty strong and self-explanatory domain name, right? Was it your first choice?

It was, yes. Sometimes the best domain is the obvious one: it says exactly what it does the moment you read it. There was no clever branding exercise or shortlist of alternatives to agonise over.

In a space where trust and clarity matter, a name that immediately tells people what they’re going to get is worth more than something abstract you then have to spend years explaining. I was fortunate it was available, and I never second-guessed it.

Did you do it yourself, and how did you find your first collaborators? What were your criteria? Or did they find you?

I built it with a business partner who handled the development and design side, which was the perfect complement to what I brought on the content and slots-knowledge side. That pairing mattered: I’ve always believed you get further with someone whose strengths cover your blind spots than with a room full of people who all think the same way.

From there, as the site scaled, I brought in permanent and freelance people, and my criteria were always the same: real understanding of the product, a willingness to be accurate rather than lazy, and the discipline to write for the player rather than the search engine. Knowledge you can teach a bit: genuine care about getting it right is harder to find.

The UK was, and still is, a regulated market, but was it challenging back then? What has changed in the UK market since 2011?

It was a different landscape in 2011: regulated, yes, but far lighter-touch than what we operate in today. The single biggest shift came with the 2014 Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act, which brought operators serving UK players under UK Gambling Commission licensing regardless of where they were based. That was a watershed.

Since then, it’s been a steady tightening: the credit card ban in 2020, restrictions and safer-gambling design requirements, the removal of features like autoplay and turbo spins, and more recently the £5 and £2 online stake limits and the affordability and player-protection measures flowing out of the 2023 White Paper.

The direction of travel has been consistently towards greater consumer protection. As a content business, it means the bar for accuracy, transparency and responsible messaging is far higher than it was, which I actually think is a good thing, because it rewards sites that take the work seriously.

You’ve been involved in the iGaming industry since 2004. More than two decades. In the beginning, what were your criteria for choosing and reviewing slots?

Even in the early days, my instinct was mechanics-first. I wanted to understand how a game actually worked: how the features triggered, how the volatility felt over a real session, whether the maths matched the promise on the tin.

A lot of reviewing back then was surface level: nice graphics, fun theme, job done. I was more interested in whether an online slot rewarded the player fairly, whether the bonus features justified the build-up, and whether it held up over hundreds of spins rather than a lucky first ten. That information-dense, how-does-it-really-play approach has been the constant thread through everything I’ve done since, and it’s still the core of how I think reviews should be written.

Which new or up-and-coming slot studios would you like to see us work with and why?

There are a few I’d genuinely love to see more of. Shady Lady is doing interesting, distinctive work and has a real identity, which is rarer than it should be. Games Inc, Wicked Games and Sneaky Slots are all names I’d put on the list as well: studios that feel like they’re pushing rather than copying.

What draws me to all of them is a willingness to do something with a bit of character instead of yet another safe reskin. The market is crowded, and the studios worth backing are the ones taking creative risks with mechanics and theme rather than chasing whatever the current template happens to be.

Building on the previous question, who is your favourite slot provider now?

It’s a close call, but Nolimit City or Shady Lady. Nolimit City for the sheer inventiveness of their mechanics: they’ve genuinely expanded what a slot can do, and their games have an edge and an ambition that a lot of the bigger names have lost.

Shady Lady for that same spirit of doing things their own way. Both, to me, represent studios that treat slots as a craft rather than a production line, and that’s exactly the kind of work I want to champion.

What position and importance did slots hold before, and what do they hold today?

Slots have gone from being one product among many to being the absolute centre of gravity for the online casino industry. In the early years, they were important, but they sat alongside table games and everything else as part of a broader offer.

Today they are, by a distance, the commercial engine of the sector: the volume, the innovation and the player attention are overwhelmingly concentrated there. That shift has raised the stakes for everyone: studios invest far more in standing out, and for a content site it means slots aren’t a section of the work; they are the work. The category has earned its place at the front, and that’s why it deserves to be covered with real depth rather than treated as filler.

Where is the best place in the world you’ve visited to play brick-and-mortar slots?

The Wynn in Las Vegas is hard to beat for the sheer scale and quality of the experience: it does everything at a level most places can only aspire to.

But I’ll always have a soft spot for the Casino Admiral in Gibraltar, which is my local casino. There’s something about playing on home turf that no amount of Vegas glamour quite replaces. So the honest answer is the Wynn for the spectacle, and the Admiral for the heart.

If you have to pick one of the two for the rest of your life, would it be brick-and-mortar or online slots? And why?

Brick-and-mortar, every time. As much as I’ve built my career online and love the convenience and variety it offers, you simply can’t replicate the feeling of walking up to the cashier to collect after a win.

The atmosphere of a real floor (the sound, the energy, the people around you, the sense of occasion) is something online can imitate but never truly capture. Online is where the industry lives now and I wouldn’t be without it, but if I had to choose one for good, the physical experience wins on feeling alone.

When it comes to slots, what do you think the challenges are in the wider industry today?

The biggest challenge is standing out in a market that’s producing more games than anyone can realistically keep up with. Volume has exploded, and with it a lot of sameness: plenty of releases feel like variations on a handful of proven templates rather than anything genuinely new. Alongside that, the regulatory tightening in markets like the UK means studios have to innovate within firmer boundaries, which is a real design challenge.

And there’s the ongoing balance every serious operator has to strike between commercial performance and genuine player protection. For content sites, the challenge mirrors it: cutting through the noise and giving players information they can actually trust when there’s so much undifferentiated coverage out there.

Providers have developed along with slots, and therefore various slot series. Which is your favourite (if there is only one)?

Relax Gaming’s Money Train series is a standout for me: each instalment has genuinely raised the bar and built on the last rather than just recycling the name, and it’s become a benchmark for what a high-volatility feature-driven slot can be.

I’ve also got a lot of time for Hacksaw’s ‘Le’ series: there’s a consistency and a character to it that keeps me coming back. If you’re forcing me to one, Money Train, but I’d fight to keep both on the list.

How do you see the future of online slots?

I see it getting more mechanically ambitious and more personalised. The studios that thrive will be the ones treating slots as a genuine craft: deeper feature design, more inventive maths models, mechanics that reward players for actually understanding how a game works.

At the same time, regulation will keep shaping the product, particularly around responsible design, and I think that ultimately pushes the industry towards quality over quantity. There’ll always be a flood of templated releases, but the games and studios that endure will be the ones doing something distinctive.

I’m optimistic as the ceiling for what a slot can be creatively is higher than it’s ever been.

Speaking of the future, how do you think AI is impacting slot games and developers? Are we about to see fully AI-generated slots?

AI is already influencing the industry, mostly behind the scenes: in art and asset generation, in maths modelling and simulation, in speeding up the parts of development that used to be slow and manual.

I use simulation and modelling tools heavily myself, so I see the value first-hand. But the idea of a fully AI-generated slot that resonates with players is further off than the hype suggests.

The games that land emotionally (the ones with a soundtrack that pulls you in, a theme with real character, features that build genuine tension) still come from human creative judgement.

AI will become an extraordinary tool in the developer’s kit, accelerating and enhancing the work, but I don’t see it replacing the human instinct for what actually makes a slot fun any time soon.

In your opinion, what is the future of affiliate sites, both globally and in the UK?

The future belongs to depth and trust. The era of thin, interchangeable affiliate content is over: search engines and, frankly, players themselves have got far better at spotting it. What survives and grows is genuine expertise: sites with real experience, transparent methodology and information you can’t get anywhere else.

In the UK specifically, the regulatory environment raises the bar further, which actually favours the serious operators who take accuracy and responsible messaging seriously. Globally, the picture is similar: consolidation around quality, with the substance-light players squeezed out.

I’m confident about the future for anyone willing to do the hard work of building genuine authority, because that’s exactly what an increasingly demanding market rewards.