Figuring out what slots to host on your platform can be a daunting task, with thousands of options and hundreds of suppliers. It gets even harder when you figure in localization, emerging trends and customer demands. To understand how Hero Gaming does it, our Becky Liggero Fontana spoke with CCO Sam Brown.
Hero Gaming has a portfolio of 3,000 slots titles, provided by 111 different game studios, with 100 new games added every month. They have 17 different languages, 9 websites, and a lot of work to do in deciding what should be featured where. Liggero Fontana asked how Brown decides what new slots games to take on. He answered:
“The obvious ones are obviously the region, what type of audience or theme the slot can attract itself to. So these are sort of some of the more obvious variables, and you’ll quite often see themes and clusters especially really obvious ones, like Easter games Christmas games, Mega Waves games, bonus feature games. We also look for games that are trending well on our existing websites. If we see one or two of them performing, we will try and jump on those trends quite quickly and go through our sort of extensive portfolio of suppliers and try and find more.”
But while the new thing always catches eyes, Brown noted that when entering a new market, sometimes the old hand works better. “It’s not always about new content, it’s about finding what what’s going to help us with that market entry, and ultimately what’s going to get players over the line and start them playing the products.”
There are some overriding trends though. Brown spoke about how players want a faster experience overall. “The more recent trend has been towards incredibly volatile maths models, so those trends really well and obviously the most recent of those is being able to buy directly into features and directly into bonus rounds,” he said. “Players visiting with higher frequency but lower session time, so trying to get that that satisfaction that entertainment in shorter pockets of time, and so in order to cater for that you need a math model that allows them to experience what you want them to experience in shorter time periods.”
Liggero Fontana also wondered what slots providers are doing to cater to the up and coming generation of new casino players. “The younger generation, from what we see historically, are not the valuable segment that we’re typically after,” Brown noted. “We tend to go for the sort of 30+ age range; that’s typically where you have better disposable income, a little bit less transient… What’s more important is understanding the habits of that generation, and how is that going to affect our business going forward.”
Brown and Liggero Fontana go on to discuss innovation in the slots space, and why he believes the industry is primed for innovation now better than ever. Watch the whole interview to see that conversation, and don’t forget to subscribe to the CalvinAyre.com YouTube channel.
