Table games have been a long standing staple of any casino offering for quite some time, however, one common theme witnessed across recent years has seen numerous studios crave a desire to develop differentiated products in a bid to transition casual bettors into regular players, and ultimately improve operators’ ROI.
One recent example of this was recently unveiled by BetGames, which stressed a mission of expanding its worldwide presence, as well as stamping its authority in emerging markets, through bespoke titles that are accompanied by customisable elements to add a more personal feel.
Following this, company CPO Ian Catchick spoke to CasinoBeats regarding the group’s latest introduction, what could potentially follow, the importance of uniquely crafted games and much more.
CasinoBeats: Classic and bespoke RNG versions of roulette are the latest games to debut in BetGames’ content roadmap can you tell us some more about what players can expect? What do your versions bring to the casino classic?
Ian Catchick: The games are built for an enjoyable player experience with a simple, easy-to-understand interface that features high-quality graphics and comprehensive statistics that help players plan their strategies.
We’ve also localised the language selection options so players can choose from one of five different languages on offer as well as whichever dealer they prefer. While being RNG-based, it plays exactly like a live dealer product and benefits from a new round every 40 seconds.
The realism continues with a dealer change every half hour, just like you see in a traditional casino and along with the personalisation scope, presents a flexible and realistic roulette experience available 24/7 that suits a wide range of markets.
CB: Later in the year, you will be launching a true, live casino version of roulette. While this is a move closer to your roots of being a live entertainment provider, it’s also a slight step sideways into traditional products unlike the unique slants on classics that BetGames is famous for. What has prompted this move?
IC: We’re building on the RNG version of roulette, developing some other versions including bespoke projects for specific clients and also delivering some live varieties during the year.
It’s partly a response to industry trends but also in response to player and operator feedback, giving us a fantastic mix of product options. Using the classic roulette release as a base, we’ll also be introducing new iterations slightly later in 2024 which will offer something different.
We’re proud of the high-quality graphics, ease of play and general game standards that we have in our live portfolio and enjoy a high level of trust from our loyal customer base that plays and engages with the BetGames brand.
This allows us to offer something with both the standard, classic game, but also some new innovative versions, which we’re confident will return strong results thanks to the designed performance characteristics.
We’ve got plenty of scope and the usual BetGames knack for innovation. While we’re not going to mess with the basic winning formula of what is a market-leading game in classic roulette, we will be evolving the line further and adding to it with variations on the player favourite.
CB: BetGames is becoming renowned for its provision of bespoke products, with two versions of roulette already having been developed for tier-one partners. Is the ability to offer this service a standard part of your new product development now?
IC: Yes, it is. These two partners are examples of where you can take advantage of branding and also localise the product to match their players’ needs. So, in both instances, the presenters and their clothing, the languages and the overall feel are all completely localised along with the design of the studio. This provides unique propositions for their players, just as we did with Skyward which launched a few months ago.
We’re building all of our new games with an option to have localised and tailored solutions, and this is available for partners alongside the standard network games, so it offers something fresh in terms of differentiation. These products are completely bespoke to their players and suit their business needs. This will play a key part in our product development going forward.
CB: BetGames’ product portfolio is widening at an increasing rate. Is this a reflection of player trends, market-led, a mixture of both or neither?
IC: With every game launch, we evaluate market trends and needs. We engage with partners to get a feel from the ground and we’re always looking at different player trends and insight from a range of sources.
We’ve accelerated the speed at which we launch new content to the market, partly driven by our desire to stay relevant and inimitable but also to provide players with what we’re looking for – fast, unique, high-quality games – which is something we hear really clearly from players.
Armed with that insight, we’ve created a range of different verticals to include game shows, crash games, casino titles, RNG and sports products, which perfectly complement our classic BetGames offer. With this kind of choice in our product offering, we’ve got a range of content that suits the ever-widening player preferences across global markets, so everyone can enjoy the content that’s most relevant to them.
Of course, this is keeping us incredibly busy but gathering those learnings drives what we want to do and shapes our product roadmap. Adding in our signature BetGames sparkle provides us with a unique content library alongside some of the more popular, familiar games that operators and players demand.
CB: Can we expect more casino classics in the future? What does your development roadmap look like for the remainder of 2024?
IC: We’re launching several new games this year. While classic casino games are on the road map, we’ve got plans for new content to be introduced in our sport, RNG and game show verticals. Strengthening these and our entire portfolio, we’re planning to introduce several new customer development tools too.
Our goal is to further enhance the kind of the player experience and aid retention, while continuing to optimise our UIs, following what we did successfully with our wheel and dice games earlier in the year.
The refresh has allowed us to give players a choice as to what type of view they want to play with so they can have the sports view which gives a high range and volume of betting markets, or the casino view, which is where you can find a more populous selection of bets available, making play a more efficient, faster experience.
All these initiatives are set to significantly refine and elevate the player journey and, at the same time help our partners to increase lifetime value, reduce the cost per acquisition and balance cost. This sits very much with our vision of making BetGames the go-to gateway between sports betting and casino.
