Game by the rules



    Igor Kozhurenko is the leader of iGaming in DataArt - about traditional and online casinos, regulation of the gambling market in different countries, about the fashion for virtual reality and the search for artists and engineers.

    About iGaming


    Companies that provide online gaming services are always ready for the rapid implementation of innovations, and many ideas are first embodied in iGaming. There are several reasons for this. The first is the struggle for customers: the better the service, the, of course, there will be more users. The second is cache flow. Successful companies in this market do not need additional investments, they have money, and they are happy to invest them in development and development, if they understand that this is really necessary.

    Over the past year and a half, we have been actively building iGaming expertise, which, I hope, will be officially turned into industrial practice in the near future. The market for this industry is very large, and companies of various types work on it. But we focus on large corporations, whose annual turnover is measured in billions of dollars, and we are doing this successfully - over the past year we have signed up five new customers.

    About Talent Search


    Last September, we built a DataArt game development studio inside. We started from scratch and honestly told our first client, Glück Games, that at the moment there was no expertise within the company, but there were experienced people who were ready to form a team. We found artists and JavaScript GameDev developers, made a project, and now our studio works immediately with three or four companies.

    People with experience in GameDev never sit without work; therefore, their search is an important area that we are also developing as part of our expertise. Inside DataArt, we attract developers due to interesting projects and excellent environment, in addition, we have prepared our own training course.

    From the point of view of the technologies themselves, there are much more similarities with other industries than differences. For example, sports betting platforms are very similar to trading platforms. There are also high requirements for backend development: huge data streams, a large number of users connected via desktops and mobile devices, the need for continuous optimization of the data stream, a powerful analytics layer. At the same time, intense competition in iGaming makes us constantly move forward.



    About trends


    Gambling companies are at the forefront, for example, in such super-popular areas as virtual, augmented and mixed reality. At the ICE Totally Gaming in London in February 2016, there were only two booths of companies representing virtual reality technologies. At the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas in September, I counted nine of these stands. The trend is being traced, at the next event there will be 15-20 pieces, or even more.

    We do not yet have finished products using these technologies, but we already have test stands. Developers see huge prospects in this, the operators are less optimistic, but this year many companies managed to release wonderful VR products. We have offers for classic land-based casinos to supplement slot machines with virtual reality or to completely replace classic slot machines. This can attract new people, especially young people - older people usually go to land-based casinos, but such technological solutions can make a difference.

    It is very interesting to follow the situation with augmented reality, especially since the success of the Pokémon has proved its promise. We ourselves came up with several cases for traditional casinos, and negotiations with operators are very positive. Now the following trend is being traced: if 20 years ago all the machines were mechanical - of which coins poured with the corresponding sound - now it’s quiet in the casino. Therefore, the atmosphere is not the same as it was before. Here, with the help of augmented reality, you can come up with a lot of additional entertainment, for which people generally come to the casino. This is especially noticeable in Las Vegas, where people have been coming for a long time not hoping to get rich, but just to relax, often with whole families. It is visited by 40 million people a year, and according to my feelings, the casinos themselves, which you can go to as a museum anyway, are far from the main thing.

    About projects


    The development of one online slot game lasts three to four months on average, and a team of five people is engaged in it. By and large, here everything is the same as in projects of other industries: there is UI, there is a backend, communication protocols. But even differences in terminology are important. For example, a designer in game development is called a graphics artist, PM is a game producer, a business analyst is a game designer. The specification is called des doc - design document. Plus, there are also experts who are engaged in animation and write music.

    Many very large companies serve land-based casinos: slot machines, table games, etc. Due to the general Internet connection, they also need to go online: they want to prepare their successful games for the web and mobile phones. Here, HTML5 JavaScript technology comes first: we take assets, the gameplay of a game written in C ++ or another language, and unchanged translate it into a format suitable for the Internet.

    From a major client in the UK, ReflexGaming, for example, we received a set of graphics larger than 1 GB. But with the joint efforts of our artists and developers with the customer, we made a game weighing 40 MB, which is no different from the original in functionality. Now we are negotiating with several large companies to transfer their land-based games online, based on this case.

    A separate category that we would very much like to develop is social casinos. Unlike the classic online casino, in them you play not for money, but using virtual chips. Suppose, 5,000 chips are given out per day, you play them, have fun, and when they are over, you can either just wait for the next day, or buy them already for real money. So far, we have no experience in this area, but we are negotiating with the first major client.

    In addition to the game development itself, we have projects for large clients, including back-end and front-end, full-stack development for web and mobile services. It’s easier to go to them through game development, but we use this advantage to develop and cover the needs of our customers in other areas, serving internal marketing and analytics systems.

    About transparency


    The rules of the game are always clearly defined - the fact that the casino is deceiving people is a myth. Any land-based casino is an absolutely transparent organization, where it is clear where the money comes from, where you can find information about what and when the winnings fell. Casinos love to share this data, because it is an important method of attracting customers. For example, for each slot game in an online casino, the parameters are written, the main one is rtp, “return to player” is the percentage of money that the machine returns to the players. It can differ in volatility - it can be many small winnings or very little big ones - but on average rtp within the industry is 95–97%. That is, the casino takes only 3-5% of the turnover, the remaining amount is distributed in one way or another between the customers.



    The main parameters are set as initial, but we calculate all the internal mathematics: how many elements are in the slot, what mini-games are built into it, etc. We prepare such calculations on the border of business analytics and mathematics: probability theory, combinatorics. Moreover, as part of our expertise, in this part we are working not only with classic slot games, but also with skill and skill games.

    About regional differences


    The main country for our work is Great Britain. Historically, it is the most stable, all the rules are clear there, legislation is rarely changed, and the tax situation is absolutely transparent. In addition to the UK, the most important regions for us are Western Europe: Sweden, Germany, Malta and Gibraltar. And, of course, we work with multinational corporations with headquarters in the United States.

    Regional differences depend on existing laws. Somewhere, both online gambling and traditional land-based casinos are allowed, somewhere only land-based is legal, in some countries the company can engage in iGaming only with a regular casino. In America, these issues are regulated at the state level.

    In recent years, Western Europe has seen a trend towards liberalization of legislation regarding gambling. For example, in Switzerland, gambling is only allowed in land-based casinos, but there are already discussions in parliament about the legalization of online activities.

    In Sweden, the market is monopolized by the state, but even here in parliament there is already a paper on the admission of foreign companies to the market. In general, from year to year the market expands, including more and more new countries. The industry provides a good income for the state; moreover, if this activity is regulated, there is practically no place for dishonest players in it.

    About different games


    Slot machines are the backbone business of any casino. But we, for example, have a client, a very large lottery operator, for whom we make games that fill a free niche between lotteries and classic casinos. The psychology of a lottery player is different from the psychology of a one-armed bandit player or from those who bet on sports. The latter believe that they understand what they are doing: they monitor events, calculate statistics. Those who play casinos are looking for pure entertainment: they love to watch something spin, enjoy the atmosphere. Or just long press the buttons online. Those who play the lottery want a one-time action - to buy a ticket in order to get the result in a week. There is a mixed type of people: they do not want to sit still for a long time, but they are interested in spending a bit of time playing the game. They came up with such games as scratch cards, high / low - instant lotteries or “who has more” - where a simple action gives quick results. For example, we made a very successful game Snakes And Ladders: we calculated the math, made a successful design, and it just got to the site of this operator safely.

    About exhibitions


    We attend four to five events a year and prepare very carefully for them. The largest event in the industry is London's ICE Totally Gaming. It features casinos, bookmakers, analytical agencies, and payment systems - usually more than 400 participants. The huge exhibition center is always full, and the places there are very expensive, and most of the exhibitors are focused on the online business. This is event number one, and we consider it to be our home - we even hosted a private party there this year.

    But I must say that every exhibition we visited gave us new opportunities - in general, just in the gaming industry, events are a very important source of new customers.



    As for Las Vegas, huge global corporations are based there. There is an opportunity to meet with stakeholders of the top companies - then you can continue cooperation already, say, in the UK. The specifics of business in the USA is that decisions are made very quickly, so the time of the exhibition is enough to at least agree on something on the spot. The main difference between Las Vegas and London is that here the participants are mainly interested in the development of traditional casinos. Gorgeous stands, great products, new monitors, new places, new ideas for multiplayer, roulette - there are a lot of interesting things. However, five years ago, I would say that we are not interested in it - after all, we are developing software. But now we are absolutely sure that even land-based companies

    Now we are thinking about a trip to Macau next year - this is another city where you can meet with stakeholders of global gambling companies. By the way, we already have clients in Southeast Asia.

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