Casino & Games
Casino & Games
Sometimes I just want our programmers to stop whatever they are doing and focus only on a new awesome idea that either myself or any another Hero has come up with. It’ s always a challenge to stop myself when this happens!
You take content from a wide variety of suppliers across your main brands. From your side, what would you like to see them do better or more of? What do they generally get wrong? I would love to see them being a lot more innovative and getting round the table with us and asking what we would like to see in a game, and most importantly what our players would like to see. After all, it’ s all about the players and keeping them entertained. We started our own boss fights feature to enable our players to progress in our adventure, and the suppliers could definitely do something similar.
Casino Heroes is focused on the Scandinavian countries, and the largest market there, Sweden, is set to regulate next year. What is your view of the proposed regulatory and tax framework in Sweden, and is this viable enough for you to take a licence? We see this as something very positive and we will be applying for a licence. All the key stakeholders and management at Hero Gaming have been in the industry for many years and we are happy to see this market regulated.
We would like to see more regulated markets because it is easier for us to make long-term strategic plans as a company, instead of being uncertain about what will happen next.
I remember when the US shut down back in 2011, I was working from Costa Rica and we had 90 % from our revenue coming from the US market at the time, which hit us hard.
What games players are playing and staking on is obviously the main factor for deciding a game’ s position or ranking on your main homepages, but to what degree and on what basis do you intervene here? Also, how is the availability of data and AI changing how you deliver and personalise this? The ranking of our games is based on game rounds so we always have the most popular games by market at the top of the lobby. We can overwrite this if we want to push something specific, as we welcome innovation from our suppliers.
We are much more likely to undertake custom development to ensure new games are well promoted if they are innovative. We love innovation and if we get help from a game provider in this area, we are ready and waiting to do our part.
Data is everything these days. We segment players by various means ensuring individual players receive the offers and game releases that cater for their needs. Recently we launched a new live casino lobby that is the first step towards AI.
It’ s innovative, it’ s personalised and it can get players to the table quicker than before. It also remembers the games they’ ve played previously and always presents these first when the player returns to the site.
Speedy Casino operates a no-registration model. How do the players here differ from those signing up and playing via the conventional model?’ We only launched Speedy Casino [ in Sweden and Finland ] on 26 June, so it’ s too early to give you an answer based on the data we have collected so far. But from earlier research we know that Swedish players love the simplicity of the no-registration and no-contact model.
To deposit players must use Bank ID, which is very trustworthy in Sweden. When a player sees this they instantly trust us as a casino, which has been a struggle for the sector for many years.
Our main goal with this new brand is to reach the players we might not reach with our adventure brand Casino Heroes or with our sportsfocused brand Betser, and of course also to simply deliver what players want – and do it better than our competitors. You may be wondering what we are working on right now to make us stand out from the competition, but I can’ t reveal that so you will have to wait and see!
Casino Heroes uses gamification and elements drawn from non-gambling games with the aim of increasing player engagement. Have you tested for how much longer this keeps players inside the casino ecosystem and its impact on other KPIs such as lifetime values, time on site, spend per visit etc? Without doubt gamification increases engagement. We have some of the best retention rates in the industry because our players are rewarded for simply playing the games they love, which in turn leads to higher lifetime values and extended player sessions
What is your primary focus for the product side of the business over the next 12-18 months? Our focus on the product side is to stay compliant and be ready to adjust our product to follow the upcoming guidelines in Sweden.
Speedy Casino actually only took four weeks to build from scratch following our first meeting about it. We already have a lot of work planned for our developers to further improve this brand and can’ t wait to release the next wave of exciting features – and of course introduce this concept to new markets.
The thing I’ m most proud of and most excited about is something we are developing right now. This is something completely new in our industry and it will be a game changer, I can seriously promise that. I have been in this industry for over 15 years and I have never been this excited before. I can’ t wait to release it.
iGamingBusiness | Issue 112 | September / October 2018 27