Vladimir Malakchi, chief business development officer at Evoplay Entertainment believes skill based games, though popular, are not for everyone at the moment.
Speaking on the Innovation in Slots panel at the SBC Barcelona Summit, Malakchi stated that skill games within slots will become more popular through the shift in generations. He stated: “When we talk about Dungeon [Evoplay slot title] it’s about the new era of player mainly from people who are from the gaming industry as we wanted to merge the gaming reality with the gambling industry.
“As we see from the younger audiences, from 21 to 35, it is a very popular product. The older audience preferred a more old school product, not skill based just usual slots.
“From another point of view, we have titles that feel like skill games such as Football Manager or Penalty Shootout which was made for a betting audience. When lockdown happened we had to support our partners who have a betting audience yet they’re not so interested in slot games, they need to feel like they do or influence something.
“Skill based games are really popular but they’re not for everyone but I think it will become more popular because their audience is growing up and it’s more about another generation of audience and another generation of players who are more demanding about this.
“Operators need to start integrating games that offer more of a skill-based feel to it, after all when it comes to this audience, it’s all about entertainment.”
As part of the panel, Malachi was joined by Tobias Svensen, CEO at CasinoGround, Josefine Hellstrom, head of casino at Casumo, Nicolas Van Malderghem, head of casino at Napoleon Sports and Casino and Savvas Fellas, managing director of Lindar Media with Alexandre Tomic, co-founder of Alea, moderating the session.
Yet Tomic, quoting the CEO of Evolution, believes that, with the convergence of the gaming and igaming industry in recent years, the igaming industries future competitors will ‘more likely’ be Rockstar or Amazon than people coming from their own industry.
Nicolas Van Malderghem followed Tomic’s claim yet insisted the igaming industry is a decade behind the gaming industry. He said: “The igaming industry is where the gaming industry was ten years ago. Where we are now with opening up with social and skill games this is going to help the industry to also open up to a broader audience.”
Tomic, diverting the conversation to Svenson, believes that slot streamers have the most knowledge when it comes to slots due to their heavy engagement with games over a long period during a single sitting.
Svenson commented: “I think our industry is quite late to adapt. I jumped on the scene in 2015 but the use of influencers in the cosmetic or fashion industry had already been a proven concept for years. I think we’re a bit too stuck with what we’re used to.
“The Megaways is a perfect example. The minute somebody innovates something fairly simple and succeeds, everybody jumps on it. Last year and this year is part of the Megaways license.
“For me the whole COVID situation has disrupted how we do the whole social aspect of our real life. You’d rather sit and meet your friends on Zoom or Skype now than actually meet them. I would really like to see some innovation within the same type of area of gameplay. A social community playing with a purpose and following a narrative.”
Yet on the subject of innovation, Fellas believes the bar, at the moment, is too low. He concluded: “I think that when we say innovation our bar is too low. I like Megaways, I get and understand it but is it really innovation? I really don’t believe it is innovation and if we keep talking about that as innovation we’re never really going to get there.”
