Interactive OPENWAGER
Kick-starting switch to social gaming 2.0
G3 talks to social gaming provider, OpenWager’, about the opportunities for casino operators in the social gaming space and what OpenWager plans to do differently
What is OpenWager?
OpenWager is a B2B social casino company, set- up 18 months ago with the aim of building the best white label, social casino in the market. We’ve seen the tremendous 20 per cent growth in B2C, but that’s something that hasn’t reached the smaller land-based or even the media companies that we’re looking to work with, who simply can’t build their own social casino in order to reach those players. We customise our platform for individual companies and help brands of different shapes and sizes to retain their online audience.
Who is this targeted at?
There are a couple of different customer groups, starting with the land-based vibrant audience playing games for fun and money. Many jurisdic- tion in the US don’t allow play for money online. There are social mobile casino games available, but if you look at the social market it’s largely dominated by Caesars and DoubleDown. That said, it’s a very large market – revenue for B2C is currently around US$4bn. Our solution enables us to present a semi-customised solution very quickly. If you’re a land-based operator without a social mobile offering, then we can provide a plat- form that will stop your customers playing some- where else. We also have a scaleable product that we can size appropriately.
Myself and the team have been working in online games for 20 years, across multiple platform evo- lutions - console platforms, web-based gaming and social games. We have been building leading edge platforms for years and really liked what we saw in the social casino space, and thought there was potential to apply the historical talents of the team for the benefit of land-based operators.
What games content are you drawing upon?
We’ve assembled different studio teams, slots teams and some third-party providers working on a complete suite of games for the launch, includ- ing black jack, poker and baccarat games. We include all the social elements, payment and data collection and all the analytics you need. We inte- grate into existing casino management systems to give the operator a single view of their operation.
7 2 How was the platform developed?
When we deploy it’s on iOS, Android and Facebook, in addition to the customers who are driven by the parent property. There is a market- ing incentive that enables operators to offer their own branding in games, ensuring players have a deep affinity with the brand.
We haven’t announced any casino operator tie- ins just yet, but we are looking to announce deals by the end of the year. It is a long conversation, but one that it is getting easier over time as the numbers coming out of social gaming are so spec- tacular. It’s becoming hard to ignore and I think most of our customers are extraordinarily well informed and fully aware of changes taking place
“Customer management and data ownership represents long-term value and we have
no intention of competing with our partners.”
due to social gaming’s impact. It was different to two years ago, when there wasn’t as much public data. Now we can see that the overwhelming trend driving the growth is mass availability of mobile devices almost as powerful as games con- soles. And we can also see that the quality of the gaming experience is rising all the time.
Signing the deal with USA Today was huge for OpenWager and a great example of how the OpenWager platform can tap into a wider audi- ence under-served at present by social games. It’s the ideal demographic. We give USA Today cus- tomers great games and they start attracting and retaining the interest of their audience.
What’s OpenWager’s unique proposition?
In terms of OpenWager’s USP, I’d say it’s our deep social features, which trump current social casino market leaders. I think a lot of features out there
John Cahill, CEO and Founder, OpenWager. John is a games industry veteran with over 25 years of industry experience. He's been involved in the building of several large scale, massively multiplayer game platforms and selling them to industry giants. Prior to starting OpenWager, John started and ran
Meez.com, a leading teen-focused social media community which today has over 8 million users. Throughout his career, John has held executive roles at companies such as Stateon (CEO), Yahoo (GM, Mobile Games), Shockwave (SVP Operations), and SegaSoft, where John was VP of Technology.
right now are social and web 1.0. If you look at the next generation offered by OpenWager, we are presenting real-time tournaments, real-time gifts and free spins, interaction in meta-games, the ability to send help and gifts - the kind of advanced feature sets that you’ll see in a game like Candy Crush Saga. It is very important that the meta-game level deepens the experience and generates more fun so that engagement increases across the board.
It’s also vital that you have teams whose role it is to keep social gaming eco-systems alive, which requires major investment and manpower. Service operation is a skill that we bring to the table, providing the know-how to run a commu- nity successfully.
Why should casino operators trust OpenWager with their clients?
One of the things we have designed-in from the beginning, is that we make sure customer data belongs to our partners and does not belong to OpenWager. We are Fire-walled off with Chinese Firewalls, ensuring that we can’t access that information. It is made very, very clear, that data ownership resides with our partners. Customer management and data ownership represents long-term value and we have no intention of competing with our partners.
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