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Colin McDonagh appointed CSO at Pronet Gaming

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Colin McDonagh appointed CSO at Pronet Gaming

Sales expert joins progressive provider’s growing team at ICE

Pronet Gaming has appointed Colin McDonagh as Chief Sales Officer as it swells the ranks of its management team ahead of a push into emerging markets.
The industry stalwart, who most recently spent four years as Sales Director at Sporting Solutions, has more than a decade of relevant business experience and has a reputation for delivering contracts with tier one bookmakers and global lotteries.
His appointment follows that of Bobby Longhurst as Chief Commercial Officer, who will lead the charge at this week’s ICE London.
McDonagh will oversee sales in growing yet under-serviced markets with the company’s new-look platform, which provides tailored online sportsbook, casinos and retail solutions.
Colin McDonagh, CSO at Pronet Gaming, said: “We have a unique take on platform provision, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to join a real industry disruptor at the start of an exciting journey.”
“I think there’s a huge amount of potential in emerging markets, particularly with a bespoke, market-specific offering, and I look forward to being part of a talented team as we look to secure our ambitious goals.”
Bobby Longhurst, CCO at Pronet Gaming, said: “The knowledge and industry experience Colin brings to the table is clear for everybody to see and he is going to be a major asset to Pronet Gaming.
“We have set ourselves some very tough targets, but he is the perfect person to lead the sales team. I am confident it won’t be long before we’re celebrating our first of many new deals together.”
Colin, Bobby and the rest of the team will be demonstrating Pronet Gaming’s full product offering on Stand S3-260 at ICE 2020.

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Gaming Corps: innovating the classics with Piggy Smash

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Gaming Corps: innovating the classics with Piggy Smash
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Author: Connor Blinman, Head of Games at Gaming Corps

Arcade-style games have long been a firm favourite for casino players, and in 2024, there are very few signs of that changing anytime soon. But what is it that makes them appeal to players?

Well, for Gaming Corps’ Head of Games Connor Blinman, the answer lies in the simplicity, clarity and nostalgia of these types of games; this is what makes arcade games stand the test of time.

Over the years, Gaming Corps has garnered a wealth of experience in the arcade space. But back in January, the games developer set out on a mission to combine that love of arcade-style games with the world of traditional slots. This blend, Blinman believes, will no doubt cement Piggy Smash’ position as a player-favourite.

A twist on a classic

From the outset, it may then seem that adapting a player-favourite would be extremely difficult. As the adage goes, why fix what’s not broken?

Gaming Corps’ Piggy Smash is, however, promising to bring something completely new to the overall gameplay experience with the incorporation of mechanics that “the casino industry has never seen before”.

Blinman said: “Gaming Corps is one of the very few providers within the iGaming industry that is able to offer such a wide variety of products in our portfolio. From classic slots to table games, and from Mine to Crash games, we really do have it all.

“When we were creating Piggy Smash, we have found the perfect balance between all of these products. We wanted to emulate the style and design of the arcade-style games that we all know and love but combine that with the style of mechanic that you would find in a traditional slot game.

“It’s the best of both worlds; Piggy Smash appeals to both slot and arcade fans, and we’re so happy with the results.”

According to Blinman, the secret to combining two classic verticals is ‘simplicity’. This is where the Smash4Cash™ comes in.

Piggy Smash is the first of Gaming Corps’ titles to incorporate the new Smash4Cash™ mechanic. When the player places a bet, a hammer comes smashing down to smash open the different coloured piggy banks in the hope of revealing different cash prizes. As the name suggests, you smash things open … for cash.

“You don’t want to over complicate the experience for players,” Blinman continued. “This is why we wanted to keep the Smash4Cash™ mechanic as simple as possible. This new mechanic is offering something to the online casino space that hasn’t ever been seen before; “the way the game plays, the way the wins and features are awarded, and also the way the player can look forward to see their potential upcoming winnings where if you trigger these features you instantly know you’re going to get a significant win, this makes the game like nothing else on the market.”

“During the development process, finding the balance between simplicity and innovation wasn’t as easy as it sounds. We had to make sure that the game we created appealed to all our players. Slot players know what they like, and more importantly, what they don’t.

“We had to try balance that sense of innovation with something we knew players would enjoy. That’s part of the reason why we went for a nostalgic theme too – there is a reason these classic themes become player-favourites.”

A sense of nostalgia

It’s evident from playing Piggy Smash that the team wanted to create that sense of nostalgia and familiarity – you only have to look at the inclusion of piggy banks as the main symbol to see that.

As Blinman explained, everyone grew up with piggy banks. They would sit proudly on your windowsill until the point when you were able to smash them open to count how much you had saved up.

Blinman continued: “It’s hard to find one symbol that everyone can resonate with. But when the team were brainstorming ideas for Piggy Smash, it soon became apparent that everyone had a piggy bank in one form of another.

“Once we had settled on the idea of piggy banks, we turned our attention to the wider design. We thought it would be quite fun, but also slightly cheeky, to theme the game around a bank vault.

“From an audio-visual perspective, we wanted to give our team the opportunity to express themselves. They managed to come up with something that is very quirky, but highly engaging. The simplicity of the Smash4Cash™ mechanic really helped the design elements shine through to create something truly exciting.”

Keeping players on their toes

Since the base game for Piggy Smash has stuck with a relatively simple concept, Blinman explained that Gaming Corps wanted to find new and innovative ways to make the overall experience engaging for players. This is where the idea to add additional features to the game came about.

The first of the four features, Instant Win, gives players the chance to win a mega-jackpot of up to x1000 the total bet. When activated, the Rampage feature – which Blinman noted was “an equivalent to free spins during a traditional slot” – triggers the hammer to transform and smash up to ten different piggy banks in a row, for free.

As the name suggests, when the multiplier feature is activated, the value of the next piggy bank that is smashed open will be multiplied by up to x10. And the final feature, Multiplier Rampage, is a combination of both the Multiplier and the Rampage feature. When this is activated, consecutive piggy banks that are smashed open will be a Multiplier.

Blinman said: “Since the concept for Piggy Smash is quite simple, we wanted to find a way to keep the game as dynamic for players as possible.

“The RTP of the game is 97% – the reason for this is that it gives players the chance to get a feel for the overall game and the experience it has to offer. Traditionally, arcade games tend to have a high RTP, so we wanted to bring that to Piggy Smash.

“But if you look at the game’s volatility, this is considered to be low-medium – I’d say this sits at a 4/10 on our scale. The maximum payout that we observed in simulations is 1120x total bet but wins of 1000x via the fixed Jackpot feature are more likely – hitting on average 1 in 99000 bets. We are confident that players will thoroughly enjoy Piggy Smash and any new additions to the Smash4Cash™ series.”

A look ahead to the future

Of course, when Blinman mentioned “future games”, we had to ask him about what the industry can expect to see from Gaming Corps in 2024. It would be rude not to.

As expected, the Head of Games wanted to keep his cards relatively close to his chest, as not to give Gaming Corps’ secrets away. However, he did tell us that there is plenty more titles in the pipeline for 2024 – “at least one a month”, to be exact.

“As we edge closer into 2024, I feel like it’s important to highlight that we are always looking for new ways to elevate the player experience and introduce new ways for our players to enjoy our games. With that said, the team has been brainstorming ideas such as “Bonus Buys” which would allow the player to get a short cut to the Rampage or Multiplier Rampage feature,” he concluded.

“There are also new themes and narratives on the horizon too, as you’ll soon see with our upcoming title “Rampage!” so stay tuned for that!”

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Interviews

How has 3 Oaks Gaming’s Flip to Win promotional tool set the market alight

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How has 3 Oaks Gaming’s Flip to Win promotional tool set the market alight
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In 2023, 3 Oaks Gaming enjoyed a breakthrough year, with its powerful portfolio of slots and promotional tools resonating with players worldwide. With 2024 still in its infancy, 3 Oaks’ Flip to Win tool has proven to be one of its most successful released, with impressive stats showcased across a number of facets. We caught up with 3 Oaks Gaming’s Promo Marketing Lead, Maria Osyka, about how the tool has put the distributor on the map.

 

Promotional tools still have a hugely important place within the market. Much like a new slot game, a successful promo tool needs to be unique and stand out in a saturated environment. Numerous tools will keep being churned out with no outstanding differentiator, and this is what makes Flip to Win so distinctive – an emblem of how a tool can entice players by keeping it relevant and fast-paced.

How Flip to Win works

Flip to Win is a proprietary in-game bonus engine, guaranteeing randomly generated prizes to reward players throughout a gaming session.

A trio of cycles takes players on a rapid adventure, returning to the main game after the initial flip, repeating the sequence twice more, with the ability to enhance player retention and acquisition. This provides the ultimate gaming experience. Since being introduced to the market, the tool itself has gone from strength to strength, enjoying spectacular results since launch.

Positive results across multiple indicators

Within two hours of the campaign going live, the Average Bets and Average Rounds indicators of the promo winners showed an increase of 127% and 143% respectively.

When we compare a player’s session to the following week,   with the same number of hours by the Average Rounds indicator, we can conclude that participation in the Flip to Win campaign has a positive effect on the length of the spin session, exhibiting a 45% increase.

With the Flip to Win tool to the fore, the average session duration indicator shows that the length of time participants play for is extended by approximately 25%, ensuring that retention dramatically increases.

Thanks to these results, the effect of the Flip to Win promo tool has reached its goal in terms of retention, extension of sessions, and bets placed.

It has shown that it primarily affects important KPI indicators as short, three-hour campaigns can influence these parameters, which means a win-win situation for both the operator and us at 3 Oaks Gaming.

The quality and unique nature of promotional tools has never been more important!

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Industry News

From Concept to Casino: How AI is Streamlining Game Development and Enhancing Player Interaction

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From Concept to Casino: How AI is Streamlining Game Development and Enhancing Player Interaction
Reading Time: 7 minutes

 

Kevin Corti, Head of Game Design, RAW iGaming.

From its incorporation in early 2021 the casino game provider, RAW iGaming, has sought to think and act differently in a sector that many are increasingly considering to be all too often inhibited by risk aversion and cloning. With its motto of ‘Stand Out or Stand Down’ it is with no surprise that RAW has committed itself to applying AI to all parts of its business and, most importantly, to its product development.

 

But exactly what benefits can AI bring to casino game providers, and how specifically can it be applied?

Like many of our peers in this industry, our teams at RAW attempt to absorb as many AI articles as we can and to experiment with as many AI tools and technologies as possible, driven by the desire to make a better, more successful gaming experience for players.

Every evening we go home feeling like relative experts in AI only to come back the next morning to feel like complete novices all over again. Such is the pace of developments in Artificial Intelligence right now.

Does that sound familiar? If it feels to you like new AI companies, software and services appear in your LinkedIn feeds by the hour, or by the minute, then you’re not alone, and you are likely wondering where to even start with bringing AI into your business.

At RAW, we have broken this down into two distinct areas:

  • The production pipeline; the processes that go into creating new casino games.
  • The product offering; our vision for enhanced player experiences.

 

1 – The production pipeline.

This is how a game provider goes about organising and empowering its teams to conceive, design and develop new online gaming products. This very likely represents the lowest hanging ‘AI fruit’ for most organisations. In fact, we would argue that studios should consider it to be the bare minimum required to remain competitive. Simply adopting a few of the vast array of AI tools and technologies likely moves the needle – if there is a hypothetical ‘average’ artist, animator, mathematician, developer, designer, or product manager, then AI can quickly make them ‘above average’. But on the flipside, not doing this will very soon mean that they become ‘below average’, and in an industry as competitive as ours, that’s a place you and your business cannot afford to occupy.

 

So, where can AI play a part in your studio?

Firstly, colleagues should understand that the goal of utilising AI in the game production pipeline is to augment and supercharge our teams, not to replace them. It’s natural, in this nascent stage of AI adoption, that colleagues in some roles (art being an obvious example) may view tools such as Midjourney and DALL-E as a threat to their employment. At RAW we see it as a way to help our artists to concept, to experiment, to explore multiple avenues to automate rote tasks, and as a tool to communicate what’s in their minds to fellow team members, stakeholders and customers.

Consider this – when you’re working to select a theme for a game, why limit yourself to two or three options? Why not explore a dozen? Or a hundred? Especially now that the effort involved does not increase. And then, when you’ve settled on the overarching theme, why not quickly visualise a multitude of styles to execute it in? This alone should unquestionably lead to an explosion of fantastic-looking and attention-grabbing games in the not-too-distant future.

How many times do people in product roles and who lack artistic training struggle to accurately convey the vision they have in their heads? How much time and money has been sunk into digital products only for the product owner to apologetically utter, ‘That’s not really what I had in mind.’ Now, they too can generate visuals to be able to better communicate what they want, saving time and money (and reducing conflict).

The procedural generation of art assets (e.g. symbols) offers potential efficiencies but is, perhaps, more suited to F2P casual games developers which have to produce vast libraries of purchasable or collectable items. That said, casino games providers can potentially apply it to the creation of families of Royals or UI elements, for example. That approach could be particularly useful if you have clear house/product styles that can be fed into whatever tools you are using.

Developers are increasingly benefiting from using AI-driven code assistants These advanced tools transform the way developers work, accelerating code creation and ensuring precision, while also providing more room for innovative problem-solving. Take Amazon CodeWhisper in Visual Studio Code as an example: developers simply jot down a comment detailing the desired code, and it will promptly recommend a comprehensive code snippet that they can modify as required. As they begin to draft or tweak the code, the assistant consistently offers suggestions to bridge any gaps. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. These assistants serve as proactive sentinels, identifying mistakes early on, thus reducing time spent on debugging. Moreover, AI code assistants enhance the calibre of a developer’s code, providing expert insights to craft efficient, sustainable, and secure scripts. They’re also invaluable for delving into unfamiliar programming languages. Implementing these tools optimizes every facet of the development process, regardless of your project’s nature. It’s no surprise that numerous leading development groups have already adopted many of the available solutions.

Moving away from art and programming, when it comes to using tools such as ChatGPT to generate or improve text content, with only a little guidance, staff will quickly reap productivity and empowerment rewards. It can be used to help draft, craft, or refine content for multiple purposes such as game rules, game specifications, pitch presentations, game content, game sheets, web and other product copy.

And then consider the potential for AI-driven character animations, spoken dialogue and text translations, and the production of audio effects and music. There’s likely no part of the game production process that is likely to remain untouched by AI.

It’s not all AI-gravy, however.

As providers of games in a regulated industry, studios are naturally going to be restricted somewhat in some respects with regard to how heavily they can leverage AI. The wider games industry is far less subject to regulation; they do not certify games that then cannot be changed (without incurring expensive re-certification). We do, however, and that means we are at a disadvantage when it comes to benefiting from applying AI in such areas as dynamic difficulty adjustments, optimised game economics, or on-the-fly procedural content creation. We cannot really leverage multivariate testing of art, logos, UI or text in games, especially the underlying math models and feature functionality. Changes equal re-certification which equals cost.

As B2B game providers, we naturally have limited awareness of the players. They’re just a unique ID in a database and we have no means to communicate with them, so in-game personalisation and adaptive gameplay opportunities are currently limited or not permitted. Or, rather, to explore these avenues would rely on close technical and commercial cooperation with casino and aggregator partners.

AI will, nonetheless, be of significant benefit to the wider industry overall with regards to key activities such as the analysis of player behaviours, fraud detection, and early detection of problem gambling behaviours. Customer support response times (and likely the quality of the experience) will rapidly improve. There are already studies in other industries that show that AI-driven first line support was demonstrably better for customers. AI offers clear potential for player/interest matching in skill-based games, and for effective personalised game recommendations. While somewhat divorced from B2B operations, these activities nonetheless promise to drive improved player NGR and lifetime value which is, of course, to the game providers’ and operators’ benefit.

 

2 – The Product Offering

The application for using AI directly in your product offering – to offer innovative new player experiences – is likely more challenging to an organisation but is also invariably where game-changing (sorry!) business value will derive. Again, remember that when it comes to product pipeline applications of AI, this will very quickly no longer be a differentiator, but merely the minimum your organisation needs to do to stay competitive.

How each organisation might apply AI technologies to achieve this is down to them and their teams – and, no doubt, kept under wraps until it hits the market – but the overriding drivers should likely be; ‘How can adding AI lead to a game that attracts broad attention, and acquires new players who both engage heavily and keep coming back for more?’

At RAW we have several initiatives underway, most of which we can’t yet divulge, but one we are able to talk about is our new interactive character engine, VIBE (which stands for ‘Virtual Intelligent Behaviour Engine’). It’s not uncommon for slots games to have character-based themes, but until now these characters have tended to be limited to mere animated eye candy; people, animals or creatures that hover next to the reels and which might utter a few, short dialogues when the player gets a win. We felt that was an approach that hasn’t improved for decades and decided it was ripe for an AI-based project.

With our Halloween 2023 game, Twisted Toy Tales™, we’ve introduced ‘Juggy’, an evil animatronic toy who is hell-bent on hunting down a group of teenagers who seek to uncover his existence. Rather poetically, given the topic of this article, it is Juggy’s errant AI that gives rise to his psychopathic tendencies. RAW VIBE™ enables us to create a character with a complex personality and a deep and compelling back story. The people who play this new game are going to experience character interactions like no other in our industry to date.

The challenges to using AI to enhance your products fall into two key camps: securing the necessary resources and ensuring regulatory adherence.

Firstly, with new AI companies, products and services dropping upon us like leaves in an autumn storm, identifying those that have potential business value is difficult. As will identifying which of these potential businesses will still be around in a year’s time. You’ll need to commit time and effort to the task of assessing them. Then you need to consider how ready those offerings are for your organisation right now.

Take, for example, an intelligent chatbot provided by a SaaS company that you might want to integrate into a customer-facing product. You need to consider important topics like network response times, message roundtrip completion rates, and service uptimes. Maybe it’s fine for the occasional ten-second delay or lost message, but maybe it isn’t? And how integral to your end customer experience is the service? Is it merely the icing on the cake, or would it be fundamental to generating revenue?

Secondly, regulatory topics remain a primary consideration. Consider that same chatbot example, above. Imagine what ‘advice’ it might give if left unchecked, oblivious to the nuances of responsible gambling.

It is likely that after a period of experimentation with externally hosted SaaS services, organisations will seek to bring the technology in-house. That will mean recruitment, training and investment in R&D, but it will also deliver the level of control that providers, our clients, and the players will ultimately demand. It will also lead to the creation of valuable proprietary tools and technologies that drive new revenue growth and which inflate business valuations. And at that point, game studios will have reaped tremendous rewards.

Will it be easy and straight-forward? Unlikely. But as we constantly ask ourselves at RAW, how long can ‘the same old same old’ be the industry norm?

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