Mark Paling podcast transcript

Interview with Mark Paling from Electracade

Speaker key:
RT: Ronan Tighe
MP: Mark Paling

This week I’m joined by Mark Paling, Managing Director of Electracade.
In the interview Mark talks about the poor quality of games that were being developed 5 years ago that led him to start Electracade and the motivations behind the recent acquisition by Orbis.

RT: Hi, and welcome to the fifth in our podcast series, Innovations in eGaming. I’m Ronan Tighe from Foviance, and today I’m joined by my guest, Mark Paling, Managing Director of Electracade. Mark, thanks for taking the time to talk to me today.

MP: Thanks for having me here.

RT: OK, first of all, let’s start off by telling us a little bit about your background and Electracade.

MP: OK, my background is historically not within the gaming industry, so I’ve come really from a sort of left field, being involved in domestic appliances for fridges, cookers, etc, and then you go onto a stage when round about five or six years ago where I was just feeling, as a career path, not just in any product category you’re involved in, is interesting, but ultimately I just didn’t really feel like selling fridges for the rest of my life, and I’ve always been a game player and gambler to a certain extent, and therefore having the opportunity to look at starting a business in a category that I’m passionate about is probably everybody’s dream.

So in essence, Electracade started five years ago, and was set up with both myself, my business partner called Chris Woodcock, and what we really set about doing was just looking at the gaming side of the industry, predominantly soft gaming initially, and just looking at a lot of the product that was out there at that time, and from a player’s point of view, what was good, what was bad, so on and so forth, and then it became quickly apparent that some of the portfolio products out there in the marketplace, although functional, could have been just so much better with, in our opinion, not a considerable amount much more effort, so really what we strive to achieve as Electracade was to build a portfolio up of classic fixed odds games, so it would be Keno, scratchcards, hi-lo games, the roulette, blackjack, slot machines, and so on and so forth, but really focusing on three key areas, so the first one, which is absolutely critical is establishing really compelling game play, something that a player will want to come back again and again and again, and enjoy the entertaining experience that the product can offer. In addition to that, because obviously that’s the centrepiece, it was also important for us to really look at the graphical and audio aspects of the product, and take that up to the next level, because again a lot of the product that certainly existed five years ago really just wasn’t up to par, and I think that was a mixture of the technology that existed at the time, and frankly clients’ desires to have better and more immersive products. So that’s really what we set about doing, and Electracade as it stands right now, with the strength of the core product portfolio that we’ve built up, in a market-leading situation where we can deploy products via multiple different back end suppliers into sportsbooks, casinos, bingo networks, poker networks, etc, and we have a client base of market leading businesses in each of those categories.

RT: How did you go from having the idea of wanting to produce better games to the actual doing it – was there a major learning curve in terms of how, again to understand how would you develop games?

MP: Not really that, and maybe it’s the magic of building games, and I think all game development studios, whether they be independent or in house, you can put as much statistical information behind it and skill sets behind it, but ultimately what actually makes that finished product is the development studio’s understanding of what makes a great game, and probably a good example of that would be the iconic gambling game of roulette, where again at the time we were just seeing loads of standard layout versions of roulette, where you see the wheel and the table layout, bets were placed, very functional, but the actual ball movement of getting that result out there, which ultimately is the biggest thrill, if it’s in a real casino, you don’t stand there looking at where your chips are, well you can, you look at where that ball drop – is it going to hit the number? – isn’t it going to hit the number? So what we did on that was really change the way that roulette was built, so instead of that traditional layout, we had a full 3D wheel on the screen at all times, which would account for about 50% of the screen real estate, and to ensure that that ball movement was as compelling an experience for the player as possible, rather than just using some fancy physics engine to move that ball around, we spent several hours and days with TCS John Huxley, the land-based casino manufacturer, filming hours and hours and hours of ball movement footage and audio, and then effectively sampling that and putting it into the product, so we very quickly went into the marketplace from saying, you have so many “me too” roulette products into having something that truly was a different player experience to anything that existed out there previously.

RT: You were recently acquired by Orbis – what was the motivation behind the deal from your point of view?

MP: From my point of view, really as the market involved, Electracade as a business is still quite a niche business, and although we’ve got an incredibly strong team at what we do, and a depth of portfolio of 80 to 100 products over the last four and a half/five years, it’s becoming more and more apparent within the marketplace, as more clients are out there, the demand for games are bigger, that having a bigger partner relationship with Orbis would give us additional resources and links into the market, and one of the key strategies behind that deal is that Orbis themselves have their existing portfolio of circa 150 plus products, of which they’re evolving another 10/15 products every quarter, currently those products, some of which are absolute killer apps, such as Chain Reactors and Supercubes, those products currently are really only available to Orbis clients who have the whole Orbis back end package, such as Paddy Power and Ladbrokes, etc, and so one of the key benefits this deal offers both Electracade and the market in general is the ability to be able to take the Orbis portfolio as well as the Electracade portfolio, and to be able to reposition that product out into a much wider marketplace.

RT: Is it going to change the games that you specialise in? – or will you keep on doing what you’ve been doing all along?

MP: We will continue to do what we’ve done all the way along, I think probably one of the changes Electracade will see far more so in the next few years, with Orbis continuing to build the strength of traditional gaming product and new innovative product that they build, Electracade will focus a large proportion of its new build content in the branded category. We’ve already had experience of working with brands such as Monopoly, Emmerdale, Top Gun, etc, and Electracade currently own the exclusive distribution rights to the Top Trumps brand worldwide for all internet gaming; we have numerous other brand options that we’re working on at the moment with a depth of portfolio potentially of hundreds of brands that we can bring to the market. So Electracade will still continue with the innovation part of it, because the secret of a strong branded product isn’t just a case of slapping a brand on a product, it’s working out what brand will work within the customer’s eyes, the player’s eyes, but also ensuring that whatever that brand is, that the game play, innovative playability that it has, very much is part and parcel of the brand itself.

RT: Around the issue of brands, how do you see that area developing in the future?

MP: I think branded product really came to a fore in a big way with the Endemol Deal or No Deal product some years ago, and that was a huge success within the marketplace, and since then you’ve had numerous other major branded games coming into the market, and certainly over the next 12 months there’s going to be a lot more of that content, purely because, as a player, if you’re presented, and again this could be at a pub environment for a quiz machine, for example, if you’re presented with a range of different gaming products, and some of those products are branded, you naturally gravitate to the branded product, because it has familiarity. Now in some cases, as a player, it might be, the name of the game for example would be Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, and whether you like Who Wants to be a Millionaire? or whether you don’t, you’re more likely to play that product because it has credibility, you’re familiar with the game play model that goes with it.

RT: Is there any correlation between the amount of time you spent on developing and innovating products to their financial success?

MP: Yes and no, going back to the roulette example we discussed earlier on, the roulette product, because it’s such an iconic product, that took a huge amount of time for us to develop, so we looked at, that was almost a three, three and a half month constant development process to get that product absolutely right within the marketplace. Subsequently though we’ve also had products where we’ve built a product from start to finish in a week to ten days, purely on gut feel, experience, what’s going to make a good product, and a product like that can go into the marketplace, and also be a huge success, and then this goes back to the, in my opinion, the development of the games, as much statistical analysis as planning as you’d like to make, but the magic of what makes a good game ultimately is just down to the playability and understanding why that is compelling for the front end player.

RT: As a supplier of games, do you ever get frustrated that you can’t completely control the delivery of them?

MP: Not so much from the playability point of view, because as a quality control process for Electracade, as we deploy that product via multiple platforms, and again with our independence we’ve connected to six or seven different back end systems, and also directly into clients’ proprietary systems, but almost without exception, when we deploy that product to live, we still strive to ensure that the playability is exactly the same for the player. In terms of speed to market, yes, that’s a constant issue with the industry, and that’s made up really of three parties being involved in that connection process, so you have the game developer itself, you have the back end platform and you also have the front end client, all of those processes theoretically are a nice seamless process, and you can deliver a product and get it to live in a short period of time; in reality, although it happens at a reasonable speed, it’s never as fast as you would necessarily like it to be, and we’re in a good position because of the experience that we’ve had, we know all of the different back end systems in depth, and therefore we can deploy with efficiency, and obviously one of the other strengths of the Orbis/Electracade acquisition or joint business venture is that effectively now we’re part of one of the industry’s largest and most efficient back end systems as well, so although we’ll work with other platforms, we’re kind of one and the same, so as we develop new product, that we have a much close integration process with the back ends going on as well.

RT: What markets are you currently operating in? Is it based on the operators that you’re supplying to?

MP: It’s based on the operators that we’re supplying to, but in essence, because the portfolio is as extensive as it is, both Electracade’s own, and also the addition of the Orbis 150 games, we are currently delivering to multiple platforms, so we deliver to casino platforms, sportsbook platforms, poker platforms, bingo networks and also dedicated gaming sites as well, so again we’re lucky that we get full visibility to multiple areas of the market, and that also helps us with both our current development and future developments as well, because very much what we’re seeing is that a product such as roulette, for example, on a particular platform like a casino, will traditionally be the number one or number two product, because of what it is. However, the same portfolio of product, if it’s deployed on a bingo platform, simply won’t work that way. So for example, roulette on a bingo platform – yes, it does work, but the bingo player is less susceptible to roulette and really wants more of a softer gaming entertaining experience in between the various different bingo games, so we’ll see something like a very soft slot machine significantly outperforming the roulette or the blackjack on those different platforms as well.

RT: And does that affect the products that you’ve decided to develop, or does it affect the promotion that the operator puts on the product, once it gets into the environment?

MP: It’s a combination of the two; what the operator does in terms of promoting a product to a large extent is out of our control, now obviously we try and drive that, so that if we are supplying a new sportsbook client, for example, and we have past history that a game, a particular game, is a very strong performer on other sportsbooks, we will obviously work closely with that new client to suggest this product deserves top billing, and if you promote it in a particular way with banners or sportsbook page advertising, you’ll drive a lot of new revenue for it. In terms of game builds yes, that’s exactly what happens, so you’re using the branded market as well; again some of these brands that we work on, as we’re developing the game play that goes with that product, we will be conscious of the fact that the brand will fit within a particular player demographic, and that the game play will try and match that as well.

RT: Do you think the operators are currently competing on the basis of innovation and experience at the moment?

MP: Yes, very much so – it’s clearly a very competitive market out there, and there’s pros and cons of each of the operators that we work with, but they’re constantly striving for the edge, the point of difference, that’s going to make them a better and more compelling platform for their particular player base, but that’s not necessarily just content, it’s about offering a more comprehensive package, so whether that’s a bingo platform, poker, casino, gaming, etc, but also in terms of how those products are displayed and made available to the clients as well, so game portfolio selection, exclusive deals, that’s always an opportunity out there, but equally as big a difference can be made by simply marketing and presenting those products in a better way to the client, and looking at the game specific tabs within any particular sportsbook/casino soft gaming platform, how those games are laid out within the games page, how many games are visible at any time, how they’re promoted, what sort of icons are used, make a significant difference to the player’s feel within that site, and therefore how comfortable they are, variance in between the various different products that are available to them.

RT: What innovations do you see in your area that’s going to change the experience for users?

MP: I think ultimately it will be constant evolving of new products and new player experiences for the player, so that again this really brings us almost full circle to Electracade starting, it’s a case of looking at areas in the marketplace where either the products currently aren’t strong enough and improving those products, or looking at new areas, particularly in terms of branding content. I think on top of that also, as well as the game build and the types of products that you bring into market, improvements in things like broadband penetration and more advanced versions of action script, which allow for more sophisticated coding, more sophisticated graphics, will just help enrich the player’s experience to a much greater extent.

RT: And maybe outside what the user sees, is there anything in the industry you see that’s going to change in the next couple of years, will change the way how maybe games are delivered to users?

MP: Electracade’s experience is predominantly on internet based gaming, but obviously we’re already starting to see the emergence of other platforms to a greater or lesser extent, so mobile gaming, interactive television, all of those areas are showing further strength, and I think will continue to grow, particularly as the platforms tend to standardise themselves as well, and also the technology advances, so interactive TV gaming, to a large extent four or five years ago, there weren’t many products within that particular space, and I think the quality of those products certainly had room for improvement, whereas some of the latest offerings on those platforms, again you’re starting to see a better general playing experience, better graphics, better audio, a faster and more responsive betting process that makes it ultimately a more entertaining product for the customer.

RT: And finally, is there any company, apart from yourself of course, that is exciting you at the moment with the products they’re bringing out and the things they’re doing?

MP: The two other game developers in the marketplace that are impressive at the moment are NextGen and Ash Gaming, both of which, like Electracade, are pushing the barrier in terms of bringing compelling products into the marketplace, and obviously those companies do represent competition to Electracade, and to Orbis and other gaming development studios, but at the same time the industry’s incredibly fast moving, player demands change all of the time, and having new and innovative products from those different platforms constantly keeps pushing things forward as well, so although competition’s there, it’s really healthy for the industry to be constantly pushing out newer, fresher ideas, different ways of looking at the gaming experience for the player, as opposed to just putting out the next hi-lo game, the next slot machine, the next version of roulette.

RT: Right, that’s it, thanks very much for participating in the interview, and thanks to you all for listening. Please come back to Foviance.com next week to download the next podcast in the series.

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