US Social Gaming Talk of the Town
Jamison Selby, President of Rubystone, discusses the competitive social games scene in North America and the gap he's identified for PeakPlay, Rubystone's flagship brand, ahead of its launch in over 40 states and Canada.
Jamison, you’re the President of Rubystone and the President of Ruby Play Network, the former having roots in Christchurch in New Zealand. Could you flesh out Rubystone's relationship with Ruby Play Network and where Gaming Rewards Group fits into the picture?
So, Gaming Rewards Group is a behemoth beast with a whole slate of companies doing different things, from independent game studios to crypto and real money. Ruby Play Network is their core real money game team based in New Zealand building all kinds of interesting systems. Tey specialise in building social casino sites, but they also work in other areas such as working directly with bingo hall operators to create sites for them to bring their players online and player loyalty tokens.
Last year we decided to take advantage of the opportunity in the US market, incorporating entities in the US and centralising assets over here so that we could tackle the market. And that's where Rubystone ultimately grew out of - a US cousin of sorts to our family in New Zealand. Tis gave us the opportunity to create an entire structure in the US. We may look small, but over our shoulder we have over a hundred people and dev teams with two decades of experience in games and gaming who've achieved all kinds of things. Tey know how to build stuff and have done so for massive companies. Tis gives us an enormous amount of strength. Tat's where Rubystone came from, and it serves as the US arm of Gaming Rewards Group and cousin company to Ruby Play Network.
PeakPlay is set to be Rubystone's flagship brand, gearing up to launch
in over 40 states and Canada. Te North American market is incredibly competitive, so you must feel there's a gap there for the company to penetrate?
100 per cent. Just the sheer size of the market opportunity for a start. Te market has been evolving for quite some time, but the wave started to crest last year as everyone began to realise the market opportunity is massive, the legality and the legal territory has now been hardcore proven and tested in court and suddenly you have major companies from payment providers to the largest game studios in the world sitting up and paying attention. Tey are looking at US social gaming and promotional sweepstakes, trying to figure out how it works and asking: can we operate in this space?
From our perspective, we looked at that and saw that everyone's coming, including companies that never would have looked twice or even known about this space, and we have the strength and capability to be on the early wave of the fast followers. We can bring a lot of tools into the market that don't currently exist. Taking advantage of that opportunity was a no-brainer. We simply must go as it's just way too big of an opportunity.
You mentioned legality there. What regulatory issues and hurdles have there been of late?
Over the course of time there have been some court cases in various states including a major one in Washington which involved social game operators clarifying their operations. Tey were questioned
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