INTRALOT INTERACTIVE
MARKET FOCUS
SPONSORED EDITORIAL
Games & their ecosphere
As the setup for any successful egaming business continues to become more complex, Evaggelos Litos of INTRALOT Interactive examines the need for consistency across all sectors concerned
As an egaming operator, would you say you offer your end customer a product, a service, or both? Even though it may not be a difficult question to answer, the way you approach it de?nes to a large extent success with the end customer. The product perspective (‘better games’, ‘best odds’, ‘highest jackpot’ and so forth) is certainly important for an online operator or game supplier, yet the most successful operators aren’t necessarily the ones with the better games, best odds or highest jackpots. Equally important are service aspects like security, customer support or VIP management. As different segments of the gaming market converge, operators and suppliers alike realise the importance of combining product and service aspects so that games are made available to the end customer within the appropriate ‘ecosphere’ (all product and service aspects external to the game). In effect, emphasis goes towards creating a Universal Gaming Experience for their customers – this is what ultimately de?nes successful online gaming operations. Like any interactive product, online games are effectively interactive content, meaning that they may have a short lifetime and that frequent if not constant renewal is required. Hence the increased industry focus on the ability to ‘aggregate’ and ‘curate’ gaming content and, more importantly, seamlessly integrate it into the ecosphere without disrupting or diminishing the effect of the other available content or the overall experience. Each game will naturally create a different experience. Some are about chasing big dream wins, some about skill and reputation, while others are about fun, communities, progress and achievements. Each game, therefore, is launched so that the relevant ‘ecosphere agents’ are enhanced whereas others may not be as important. INTRALOT Interactive addresses this need through the Games Nexus, our games content aggregation bus. It is a key component of our Universal Gaming Suite and offers an ideal basis for quick and deep integration of any third-party gaming content in the gaming platform. It makes available all horizontal services of the platform and is usable across all games, while also integrating all services into the platform to enable uni?ed player account management and games administration. The Nexus allows us to have a very fast timeto-market for new games and a uni?ed approach to bonusing, loyalty and cross-selling. It also offers the very important independence from the constraints imposed by each gaming subsystem in terms of player management and optimisation activities. Uni?ed approach Also important to the management of a universal experience is the uni?ed management of user touchpoints, which are all the devices or ‘interaction’ endpoints/manifestations of the operator’s offering. These combine devices furnished by the operator as part of a physical presence at a POS, and all devices used by the players to access an interactive offering. Our architectural approach is that every touchpoint is a network node, all common aspects are uni?ed and any touchpoint individualities are treated as close to the touchpoint (from an architectural perspective) as possible. This has allowed the Universal Gaming Suite to support diverse operational needs, which combine retail networks, internet, mobile and tablets, iTV and serverbased gaming on self-service terminals, without compromising on any of the common customer or content management features. Online players and customers may have been used to having a different gaming experience on the mobile device, on their PC or at the retail shop. The more operators effectively integrate the gaming experience, the more customers will expect a uni?ed experience. They are effectively customers of a single operator and this needs to be manifested across every potential interaction including passive reception of information or content. With the ever-growing heterogeneity of an operation with so many channels, products and processes, consistency and continuity can no longer be considered a ‘nice to have’ feature. In the retail environment, customers expect to be see a product in an accessible and familiar environment – the same principle applies in the universal gaming experience; content and the possibility to participate in games should not only be ‘available’ but also ‘familiar’ and perceived as uni?ed, so customers may gain access easily from any touchpoint they choose to use.
EVAGGELOS LITOS
Evaggelos Litos, INTRALOT Interactive’s head of business development, has been key to acquiring new and maintaining current business for the group, after first joining in 2005. Evaggelos’ prior experience has been in the mobile telecoms and banking sectors, in senior technical and business roles.
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