Interactive
BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE LIGHTNING BOX
Lightning Box: Striking the sweet spot
Lightning Box's Michael Maokhamphiou explains why having a sixth sense for player preferences enables the slot developer to produce successful games across multiple gaming verticals
How have your slot games performed across land-based, online, mobile, and social in recent months?
As with other suppliers who work across the industry verticals, the last few months have been something of a mixed bag.
Michael Maokhamphiou, Operations and Programmer Manager, Lightning Box
Michael Maokhamphiou is an experienced operations and programme manager at Australian slots studio Lightning Box with over a decade’s worth of experience in the gaming industry. Prior to joining Lightning Box, he worked in a number of roles at SG Digital and Konami.
The spread of the global pandemic and the localised lockdowns that followed were bad news for anyone associated with land-based casinos and retail betting. We were no exception and have had to put some projects in the UK, Greece, and the U.S. on ice for the time being.
P126 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA
Te spread of the global pandemic and the localised lockdowns that followed were bad news for anyone associated with land-based casinos and retail betting. We were no exception and have had to put some projects in the UK, Greece, and the U.S. on ice for the time being.
As the shutters went down, however, the players from these venues sought alternative gaming opportunities as respite from the frustration of social isolation. As a result, we saw a 20 per cent boost in online revenues during May and June.
We were also able to continue releasing games via our platform partners without disruption. As for social, it has been steady and we have released a tailored version of Chicken Fox, one of our hit games, with our new client ‘Ruby Sevens’, who are one of the top social casino operators.
What all of that proves is that being able to vary your portfolio for different players in different settings is always going to be advantageous. And never more so than in difficult times when one particular vertical takes a hit.
Few slot developers in the industry continually produce successful games across verticals. How do you manage it?
It’s hard to point to one single factor, but we like to think that having a good balance in a tightly knit team is important. Our co-founders Peter Causley and David Little have a wealth of gaming experience and other, younger members contribute crazy new ideas.
Between us, we focus on producing game mechanics that appeal equally to casinos and their players. Tat has allowed us to produce a strong range of games that are available across large parts of Europe and North America.
We play an awful lot ourselves and have developed a sixth sense for that player sweet spot; what works for them and what engages them to play our games. Good maths models that work in the three gaming verticals are an important role in that, obviously. But our design team is a big part of our success too. Every team member contributes to the end product. We’re lucky that the level of creativity that generates often gives us a dilemma when deciding what to produce next.
What are the most common challenges you face juggling between the various platforms? Is managing this balancing act more difficult than people may think?
Te biggest challenge is often deciding which game design or maths model is suitable for what platform. Sometimes it’s a bit of guess and we use an all-platform release to give us the performance data in order to decide. On other occasions a good way to test a new game is to see how it performs on social.
If it appeals to players, we can look at
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