Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to iGB podcast iGaming Checkup with Dr. Eyal. Brought to you by iGB in partnership with RubyPlay. I am Dr. Eyal. I've been passionate about games and the people that makes them. For many years, humans have been playing games of chance even before we could write. So what is going on here?
Why gambling games are so central to our experience as a species, and why something as simple as a slot machine is also the hardest game to make sure, there are plenty of igaming podcasts out there covering industry trends and headlines, but this isn't just more of the same. We are here to challenge assumptions, invite sideways thinkers and industry outsiders, and explore the complexity of an ever evolving, fascinating and innovative space. If you are ready to think differently about igaming, you are in the right place. Let's go.
Hi, I'm joined by Zoe Ebling, VP Interactive at AGS.
Hi, Zoe, nice to have you here.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Yes, thanks for having me.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: So, on your LinkedIn, I've seen this really interesting tag, you know, like play to win.
And I find this interesting because for me, in many panels I always say that players, they play to play, not to win. So. And everyone's find this almost controversial or stranger because. No, no, no, players, they play to win. And I don't think so. I think that players, they play and they engage to play. And I was wondering, like, seeing the stag line, how does that, how does that capture you?
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Yeah, this is. I've never had this question before and really relevant to our conversation. I agree with you that, you know, maybe a player plays for an engagement, but I think at the back of their mind, they have winning in mind.
The play to win tagline that I use on my LinkedIn is sort of my personal brand. It's how I like to approach things, I guess. But if we are thinking about it in more general term as a player, and I'm a gambler myself, right, Maybe I go to the casino because I've got an hour in between errands and I want to have a fun time. But in the back of my mind, I'm hoping I walk out of there with more than I walked in.
It is a controversial statement. I like that you started off the panel with something that's a bit different or I guess the discussion.
But I do think players have winning in mind.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: The thing is, actually what we see from the research that players often experience a win event very early in the session almost as a negative thing.
If the win event is later in the session, they see it as a Much more positive thing.
You can say that of course, whenever you engage with some kind of a gaming system, you want to win, that's the sale. But I think that what we see is that players just want to engage and that's going to connect to what we are here to talk about gamification and the play experience in general.
And I was thinking, you know, like the headline is like to buy or not to buy.
And for me that to buy or not to buy, it's aimed both at players where many times gamification elements create an upsell for players and on at the same time for operators and for suppliers. There's so many opportunities of developing and buying existing gamification tools and you often ask yourself with such a large variety of those kind of offerings, is it something that we actually want to do to buy into?
Now for me, I was wondering to start off with like what, when you think of gamification, what does that entails in your, in your opinion?
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I try to always just comment things with like what's the simple kind of boiled down version of it?
For, for me, gamification combines player agency with rewards that aren't cash.
We see so many examples of this in the marketplace today.
And to your point, we see examples of this that are successful and we see examples of this that add a lot of noise and friction to player journeys. And constantly considering how gamification is implemented and what the goal is are crucial to ensure success.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: For me, when I'm trying to think of the why, like what, why was it good for?
You know, what's the hardest thing to do often is to come with a good core product.
And coming from casual, you know, developing casual games, developing social games, social, you know, free to play in a purchase, like this kind of social casinos, you find that when you've got a core product that that is interesting to players, then it's just, it's just a really good start. But that's just, just at what you start with. And your goal, the holy grail is the evergreen. You want something that players can keep on coming back to and back to. And in a way, what is almost improbable, impossible almost is, is to create that core product that is interesting enough. Like so many games out there, so many games, so many game producers, so many companies, so many studios. But then when you get something, a good core game, then gamification becomes, I would say like a lot more standardized. Like it's a lot easier now when you've got this really good core product, then start bringing those gamification elements and get to that like the holy Grail. You've got a, you know, like an evergreen. There's always something to do. There's always reason to come back and engage.
There's always more CRMs, there's always more ways of, of upselling for your players. And that's root gamification, which is a lot more standard in a way, but still it's, it's a, it can't replace the core product, but it creates that ongoing engagement. And, and I think that in how hard it is to create a good core product and how competitive it is, gamification now becomes a, like something you can't, you can't live without. And there's so many, so many ways of skinning this cat. And I find that many, many are very controversial. Even so, I mean if you think like a few, a few elements, like if you create, try to create a CRM within, within your, within your core game. So take something like a bonus buy or a buy feature or something like that.
You know, there's so much, there's so much debate around that.
So if you think, yes, it's not quite, it's not quite a free element, but in a way it's an, it's a different way of interacting with the game. Like you, you have the same RTP and all that, you make a purchase a slightly larger. But you're still engaging with the game. But it gives you a very different experience. It takes you directly to the core of the game.
And people love to hit like operators. Some operators say this is horrible. Some players, this is horrible. Some suppliers say that they will never develop it on their games.
But yeah, what's your take, what's your take on, on, on like the buy feature on other, other gamification elements like this?
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say there was a lot, a lot of things you said there that I agreed with.
One being your core product needs to be the focus. I think oftentimes we see suppliers who really focus on gamification as mask to, you know, not having a strong core product. And so at AGS, you know, gamification is an incremental offering to our core product and that's how we consider the tool.
I think another thing I heard you say was really, you know, what do I think of the existing tools that are out there? And my, I like to use analogies to just bring it back to simple terms and oftentimes use American analogies, which is a.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: I don't speak American.
I am, I must speak Australian. I speak Maltese.
Yeah, sorry, sorry.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: This is a, this is a great example though. Are you familiar with Costco? That's a global brand, right? It's, it's big in America, but it's this big wholesale warehouse, right. And what's the most effective tool that they have at Costco for customer? They've got all these tools, right? They have big carts, they have, they've designed the warehouse to be, you know, something that you want to shop. But what always gets people is the free samples, right. And in a lot of ways, gamification engagement tools are like ways for either someone to sample a product or for someone to have surprise delight throughout their experience.
That then creates, you know, a secondary reaction, which is maybe continued engagement or longer session times.
That's really why we use these trigger points, right? And so if you go back to the example of Costco and you think about free sampling and you know how successful that is because either you've experienced that self and you felt that joy of like, oh, I would never try this, it's so tasty. It's right here, let me put it in my. You know, and then now all of a sudden you've added whatever amount of amount to your cart.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: I've went to Costco and I'm thinking, this is ridiculous. There's no way I'm going to pay for membership. I pay for the membership and they're giving me this massive trolley. There's no way I'm filling this trolley and oh, that's really nice. I barely had. I need to get a second trolley.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: See, I wouldn't fit in the car.
Now what about if you went into Costco and they had some confusing plinko machine where depending on what it hit, you got pick something and you walk up to it and you're like, I don't even want to play this. I don't like any of the rewards, right. So what's so impactful about it is that they have found these triggers that really work. And I think the core of what you're asking me is, is gamification great? Yes, when it's implemented correctly and when it's thoughtful of the player journey and it makes them have some type of feeling that elicits more engagement and community.
So that's really where we can put things into buckets and oftentimes where we see gamification fall down is when we have these really friction filled events that break engagement with customer and it actually ruins the momentum that you've built because they're having this amazing great experience and then they get to, you know, this and it's confusing. And you know what? Now I don't even want to play anymore. Now I want to just go check out. So that's really what, at a core, we have to make sure that we're reviewing. And not, not to kind of belabor this topic, but in preparation for this, I was thinking of, you know, pieces that I might want to talk about and where I see gamification do well and not. And what I think we always all start with. We always start with the player, right? But a lot of times what happens when you're on the R and D side is you've got this idea of how to impact the player and you've sold your customer on this idea and then when you go to implement it, right, you always have to make changes. Hey, we can't implement it this way. This is the workaround that works better with our system. And these are real life things that people who are working on these challenges in our industry are faced with all the time. And as you make iterations and decisions here, you move further and further away from the player. And where we see solutions that really work is where they keep the player front of mind throughout the entire development process to ensure that we have those free sample moments.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: But it's funny that you say that the free sample, I totally connect. There's lots of research, by the way, looking at the word free. When we hear the word free, we would rather Dan Ariel in his book Particularly Rational, he talks about two chocolates, right? One is of really low value you get for free and another one you have to pay 10 cents for, but it's worth a dollar. So rationally you should really, you know, you should really pay the 10 cent. Everyone goes with the free one. Like everyone 90 go for the free one who's an inferior product. But you know, when we looked at the bonus buy that would have feature at RubyPlay, we when we started implementing it, I was quite kind of curious to see what does it do? Does it actually upsell? Do we see change in behavior from embedding behavior, is it like players to what we see? The streamers are just like buy, feature, buy, feature, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.
No, what we actually see is that players, they drink in moderation. You know, maybe they'll buy one or two or maybe three.
So overall we don't see impact on the wallet, but what we do see is a huge impact on retention.
So it's kind of like in Costco. Hey look, I will try this Pizza, you know, I love this pizza.
And oh my God, like you change retention at the D30 retention of games when players interact with the buy feature and buy it maybe two or three times can go up by a factor of two or three. So it's not just a small, like a small change. It's a massive change while not breaking the wallet. And then for us, when we said, okay, a really interesting way of creating gamification around that is can we award it? Can we create a system? When we take, instead of buying, you know, the feature, we can give the operators the ability to award that feature. So then it's really free. So then they can have, you know, like they do it through a, through a, an element of an upsell.
And then yes, it might be on a deposit or a bigger deposit. Now you get some kind of a awarded feature or something like that. But at the core of it, we see it as a retention tool, not as a wallet, as a wallet enhancement tool. And I think that's one really interesting thing is that in my experience, I haven't been able to really see evidence that you can increase wallets. So say if you have a player and their budget is $50, that's the budget.
Can you consistently now Somehow turn that $50 into $80? Like I found that you can't. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's not the right mission. Like you, maybe you want to increase your share of the $50, but you will not turn this $50 to $80 that easy. So what's your take on that?
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Well, it sounds like you have some research that's supporting your claim.
Is that just what you're seeing with, with the products that you've created and the impact that they have on players? Or is that tied to like a larger research study?
[00:16:05] Speaker A: My access to data on the operator side is limited. But I can see that when, when I've got a really successful product, what I see is I just cannibalizing more of a market share of, of other, of other suppliers rather than all of a sudden, you know, the players are coming and it's like going all nuts. Like it's, I don't see this kind of comments from operator ever. It's like, okay, let's do this. And now we will see our players change the behavior in this way. Like, I don't see it.
I haven't seen, I haven't seen it consistently. I haven't seen it. But that's the data I've got and my view on actual Real money igaming players is, you know, is limited because I don't have direct access to players. I just see their behavior.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Got it. Thanks for clarifying.
So I agree with you in that we don't have enough access to data to be able to definitively say yes or no. However, my experience like outside of AGS and just it takes a whole ecosystem of things to make that type of impact on a player. And I don't think it's just the supplier alone with product and potential features that can make that transformational of an impact.
But I do think, and I have seen evidence of it being possible when sort of developing an all encompassing ecosystem that's considerate of player.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: But you know, like you love talking about incrementals. I've seen a few of your posts and panels and I was thinking, you know, like if you think of like theoretically can you end up increasing the wallet not by really increasing the wallet, but then by true creating incrementals then you have other channels that then take, take maybe a percentage of other leisure budget the, the a player might have through that incremental. So you know, like my spend on Netflix which you like to, to you know, to give them. So if, if as a supplier I create some kind of a content that is Netflix Netflixes.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: And then I can actually get some wallet share from there through those. Because incrementals essentially is just looking at these different, you know, different verticals really. So, so, so what do you think about that?
[00:18:40] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm trying to think of where to start.
I think a lot about that. I think you definitely hit it on.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: That for almost a whole year though. Anyway.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Hey, I am, I'm glad someone's paying attention.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: I pay attention. It' me. I'm the one that paid attention.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: So why do I have this approach? Right?
I have this approach because I operate in the digital business and something that is super core and very relevant to AGS. As a company that has got land based online footprints.
This is something I come back to all the time, right. From an online business. We don't have the same butts in seats phenomenon that the land based business has. Right. So if I'm a land based supplier, I want a butt in seat of my cabinet 24 7. If someone is not sitting at my game and playing, I'm losing money. Right? You don't have that same phenomenon in the online side because we have so much more space. Right. There's obviously a finite amount of homepage placement which is really important for business.
But what, what, what other digital businesses can we look at and see who's been transformational leveraging incremental products? I mean, we come back to Netflix time and time again, right? But what you can do with an online business is take a product that's really niche and market it accordingly to a specific player and actually find a lot of value there. And so I think as we move more and more into a digital space, what you're going to start to see as certain shifts is that you're going to need these personalized incremental approaches to a variety of games and people. And what we're going to see is that companies who can figure out how to sustain personalized incremental initiatives at a mass bulk rate, which is possible with AI, they're going to be more successful at just scaling in a digital space, because digital space needs that, right? If you don't do that, you're going to miss out. That's the key for how you revolutionize product in a digital space. Right.
And that's why I focus so much on incrementals and the business picture. And I don't know if this is a good visualization or not. That I try to paint for people is like, if you think about your opportunities, right, and, or your revenue, it's based up, your revenue line is based up of all these different opportunities. And if I'm a supplier, maybe it's different games, right? And then features are in there and some games are smaller and some games are going to be a big hit. So you have all these sort of circles that are stacking on top of each other and that's what makes up your, you know, we're going to hit this revenue because we have product and features and all these things that are getting us to this number. Well, when you take AI, right, you basically fatten all those bubbles immediately because you're just finding efficiencies within there. And then what I think of for incremental is I think about the thickness of the circle, right? So there's a way that you can inflate opportunities, but then there's also a way that you can thicken opportunities. And then when you have intersections of opportunities, which is another thing that I focus on, what's. Where is the intersection of land and online? Where is that convergence that, that, that opportunity where they hit and how can I thicken that? And so all of a sudden, when you're thickening your walls of opportunities and you're inflating, that's how you get to really big growth. Opportunity.
And that's how you see companies that are able to grow much faster than market rate, which is what AGS has been able to do in the past year. So these are like philosophical business principles of, of how I achieve, you know, better results than the competition. And I appreciate your paying attention to the nuance behind that. And I know we've gotten a bit away from the, the gamification discussion, but that's what I see gamification is, is an incremental ad. And if we go back to the Costco example of what's the. You're o. You're. You're going to always start with what's the best sort of opportunities and then how do you iterate on top of that? And in a digital space where, you know there's the black box is endless, how do you create systems that capitalize on that so you can outsmart your competitors?
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Right. We used to say, you know, back when, when I was in Politica, now it's Ruby's that sometimes when the sky is not the limit, it's kind of a problem.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: And I think, look, with that for us now we launched a new studio, we call it Mad Hat and it's fast games and the first game, we're launching a notion around this, it's actually a marketing campaign pretending to be a game. So it's kind of like a mind game. Mind when you select things on zero but which with chilies, the idea is that players will be able to create content where they hit the mind. They have to eat a chili and they need to stream it. Right. And then so that's kind of like the idea of how this game works. But the idea is that how can we create content that is good content and then connect that good content as a vertical to do this kind of work. Now I don't expect this game to be like a massive GGR maker, but it can be a really strong branding maker, it can be a really strong marketing maker. And for me that's really interesting. It's really interesting thing to explore.
Yeah. So I went off topic but it is a bit of a gamification but you know, like eating chilies with your friends, it's fun and it's, it is.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: And look, you're talking about the major components here which are like engagement, community. Right. When we, we're trying to solve for these intersections and it's a hard thing to do and we have to be willing to, to try, you know, off the wall ideas and there's space too. Right. You could never do that in the land based casino because it would be too expensive. Like this is where we can play and have fun and possibly find the next big thing.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I read, I read your recent article when you talked about the strong core products in land based and it's, it's kind of gives you an, an easy fix into online. But I think that we do have advantage in igaming with the speeds and the ease in which we can try stuff even in a regulatory environment, it's still a lot easier than to actually have a physical slot.
So yeah, I totally agree with you there.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: To interject gamification into this. I think that you're right.
But I also think that if we look historically at any regulated market, regulation will come in one way that we can enable players to have those types of experiences where there are things like speed and other attributes that we might not be able to traditionally have. In land based, we can use gamification as a way for safe gambling so we actually layer in safety while a player can still have a session where they play fast. Maybe it's like play this, you know, take a break to get your next reward that unlocks a faster speed on this game. Or you know, I'm throwing something completely off the wall. But to your point, like how do we.
Because history will show us that we'll create all these really fun and engaging things and then regulation for will come in to protect the player and then we'll have to amend what we've done to. You know what I mean? But like ultimately that's what happens, right? How can we actually create, create a proactive stance that says, look, we want players to be able to play in the way that they want to. How can we add, how can we use gamification to add layers of player safety so that we write a new kind of chapter on how someone can interact with the game?
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Patricia, I really always believe, and maybe I'm naive, but I believe the incentives are for us to create those kind of experiences. We don't want players blowing up. We don't want this. It's not good for us.
It's not good for anybody.
I'd want you to spend a cup of coffee worth on my game a day than to spend, you know, like $2,000 in a week and say, oh my God, and that's it, I shouldn't touch it.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: So yeah, yeah. And to be very clear, like, I believe that regulations and regulatory bodies are in partnership with us and creating a safe experience. But I think we've limited our thought process into like what's possible, you know what I mean? Don't you see how we've fallen short in being able to create new avenues for, for longevity with some of these product lines and things we're wanting to create?
[00:28:16] Speaker A: I think, I think, I think yeah, it depends on the regulator though. I think other regulators that understand this create partnership with companies like ours and then we can really do well. But then in, in places where like you call yourself a gaming girl, I really love what I do. I'm really passionate about games and slot machines. I think show me a successful game, I will show you the slot machine within it. Right. And I think that when you have regulators that looking at igaming and gaming as this vice, it's a bad thing. We need to just minimize it and get rid of it if possible. That's where you end up with bad experiences with often predatory operators, predatory suppliers. This is where you get the bad things. When you got regulators that actually work with you and open minded and want to understand concept like gamifications and also you know, like how incrementals can be relevant and how you create a really good ecosystem, that's where you get a thriving, successful, safe environment for, for everybody, for, for, for suppliers, for operators and for, and for players.
Before we finish it, what's your future of gamification?
What would you say there?
[00:29:30] Speaker B: I mean everything personalized AI, right. That's the future trajectory that we're on.
But I also hope to see safe gambling gamification interjected into what we do as well.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: I'm a bit of an optimist in some respect, a bit of a pessimist in some respect. I just think that AI can be very scary, but I do think it's, it's very, it's a very powerful tool for us to create that edge. I just spoke in a panel a couple of days ago in, in SBC in Lisbon where the, the, the thing that allows operator to distinguish themselves, to give them a branding that makes them unique compared to all of the other operators, you know, is this is the thing that would, would really make them successful and, and this is what we can give them using those, those AI tools that, that specialization, that, that personalization for them to bring their brand to be the unique experience. And I think that gamification and AI would really allow us to be relevant there because we probably can design those things for them better than they can for themselves. So I think there's still a lot of opportunity.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Yes, but you're right, everything comes back to the core. It depends how it's implemented. Right. That's the sort of footnote.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: Just click the button and going up Apple spritz if you'd like.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, we I've seen some incredible uses of AI that really create transformative experiences. And then I've also seen it used in a kind of predatory. Right stance as well. And so that is why always coming back to being in partnership with regulatory and safe player protections in mind.
And I think we're at a turning point for that. Right. There's a lot of things that are happening like evolutions Nevada License that are going to really indicate which way we're going.
And that is something that at AGS we, we stay we have integrity on is what I'll say.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: I think it's important.
Okay. So it's been a great conversation. Thanks a lot for for joining me here. I'm just conscious of time and yeah hopeful to see you G2E maybe or some other place around next time in.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: The U.S. I'm always around. You'll see me.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Thank you.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of iGB podcast iGaming Checkup with Dr. Eyal. There's plenty more to come, so stay with us for more eye opening, thought provoking and stigma challenging conversations that dig deeper into the world of igaming.
