In the penultimate episode of SlotBeats Spotlight’s venture into the slot streaming community, we asked our experts what the future holds for studio streamer interaction and if both could link up to equal benefit.
When it comes to collaboration – what’s the future of studio streamer interaction? How can both team up to equal benefit?
Andy Sekula, Kalamba Games: They can both collaborate on game design. Slot streamers most often have vast experience when it comes to games, so the benefits are mutual. Both create and promote the content suitable for their audiences, and learn from each other.
I believe there’s untapped potential in collaboration between streamers and studios when it comes to organising events and tournaments to engage community members even more. Such events could be supported by a suppliers promotional tools suite, for example.
Vladimir Malakchi, Evoplay: It’s all about growth – and therefore, looking for ways to improve collaboration together. Both have the same goal – to create a successful stream that can engage players.
Therefore, the more effort we see in the production value of the streaming itself, the better the result this will be for both. For the developer especially, it’s all about creating excitement around a particular game among their target audience.
For example, we conduct about 45 streams of our games quarterly, which allows us to reach 16.5 million potential players during this period.
However, this result is not only due to the streams themselves but also of dozens of related projects, such as writing blog articles for the streamer’s audience, posting game descriptions, publishing video reviews of gameplay, announcing new products and many other things that give both such a great impact.
For such strategies to work – they have to be integrated and cover the whole marketing ecosystem. This is before we even get onto the content, which is the most important part of the experience – and the part the viewer pays the most attention to.
Will Barnes, Hideous Slots: I’d like to see more Game Providers active in the streams and videos, giving interviews, and being the face of their products!
Although the feedback can sometimes be a little raw, I think the audience is often appeased by a studio that innovates and tries new things. They realise themselves that the market is competitive – to be successful you have to go the extra mile.
Fraser Linkleter, Slots Temple: I think game studios, casinos and streamers have a responsibility to the customer to be open and transparent about the nature of their relationships with each other.
If a streamer is being paid to promote a particular game then the audience should know. Likewise if a streamer is not risking his own money then the audience should be aware of this.
I think by promoting new, interesting content, educating the audience and giving them insight they can’t get elsewhere will stand both streamer and game studio in good stead.
Long term, the streamers and studios that have been open and transparent with their audiences will have longevity and trust from their viewers.
Rory Kimber, 1×2 Network: Obviously there’s some controversy and scrutiny at the moment on streaming regarding play money/force tools, but for genuine streamers I think the future is very bright.
They spend more time than anyone playing slots and in my experience understand the gaming audience as a whole very well. As a supplier we’d love to have streamers more involved in the end process of building a game, not just on the features.
Pawel Piotrowski, Yggdrasil: It’s natural for us to come up with content that is relevant to the streaming community. We treat it as an invaluable source of intelligence and feedback on our games’ performance.
It’s kind of a symbiosis where we listen to the steamers and improve our products to make their broadcast even more entertaining. We want our games to be streamed and the streamers want great content that will keep their followers on the edge of their seats.
We also user test our products with some of the streamers starting from the earliest production stages. Their feedback is usually spot on and this way we’re able to improve the games before they go live.
