PREVIEW: SBC SUMMIT


AI can build a game. It can’t build a reputation


By Andrew Pink, Head of Brand & Communications at Play’n GO, the leading supplier of gaming entertainment to the online casino industry.


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pend enough time at any gaming conference and you’ll notice that the industry is having the same conversation everywhere.


The technology is moving faster than ever. New studios seem to appear every month. New tools promise to reduce development times, streamline operations and unlock levels of productivity that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. And now, of course, artificial intelligence is accelerating that transformation even further. For operators, the result is an industry overflowing with choice. At first glance, that sounds like a positive development. More suppliers should mean more competition. More competition should lead to more innovation. And more innovation should ultimately benefit players. But abundance has a funny way of creating its own challenges. When every supplier claims to be innovative, when every roadmap promises growth and when every commercial conversation sounds broadly similar, the difficult question is no longer what to choose. It’s who to choose. That’s a subtle but important distinction. For much of online gaming’s history, suppliers were largely viewed through the lens of content. If the games performed, the relationship prospered. If they didn’t, both parties moved on. Today, that feels increasingly outdated.


Operators are no longer simply selecting content providers. They are selecting long- term business partners whose actions, reputation and values become intertwined with their own. That matters because players don’t experience the industry in silos.


They don’t separate the operator from the suppliers delivering the games. They don’t distinguish between the platform, the content and the broader ecosystem that sits behind it. Instead, they judge the experience as a whole. The same is increasingly true of regulators, investors and commercial stakeholders. Every partnership sends a message. Every supplier relationship says something about how an operator chooses to conduct business. Operators are, rightly in my view, starting to take a global view of their game suppliers’ activities. And that global picture for many suppliers is – being as generous as I possibly can – mixed at best. Perhaps that’s why I find some of the current discussion around AI so interesting.


34 SEPTEMBER 2026 GIO


the next quarter. They want suppliers who understand that success is built through collaboration rather than transactions. At Play’n GO, those principles have shaped our business for more than two decades. Of course we’re proud of the games we’ve produced during that period, but brands are not built on products alone. They are built on experiences. They are built on relationships. They are built on whether partners know what to expect every time they engage with your business.


One of the findings from our most recent brand research that resonated most strongly with me wasn’t linked to game performance or corporate awareness. It was that Play’n GO is perceived as the industry leader when it comes to being easy to work with.


For a communications professional, that’s perhaps the most gratifying brand metric imaginable. Because nobody can advertise their way to that perception.


There is no doubt that artificial intelligence will transform our sector in meaningful ways. It will make teams more productive. It will unlock new forms of creativity. It will help businesses operate more efficiently and bring ideas to market faster. What it won’t do is build a reputation. A reputation remains one of the few assets that cannot be generated, automated or scaled on demand. It must be earned.


It is the product of thousands of interactions, hundreds of decisions and years of delivering on promises. It is built during difficult moments, not easy ones. In the choices a company makes when nobody is watching. In how it responds to challenges. In whether partners feel confident placing their business in your hands year after year.


Technology can accelerate almost everything. It cannot accelerate credibility.


In many ways, that reality is becoming more important as barriers to entry continue to fall. Launching a games company today is infinitely easier than it was twenty years ago. Access to technology has improved. Development processes have evolved. Expertise is more widely available. The number of suppliers competing for attention continues to grow.


Yet despite all that change, one thing remains remarkably consistent: operators still place the greatest value on reliability.


They want partners who do what they say they will do. They want businesses that think beyond


It can only be earned through thousands of interactions between commercial teams, account managers, developers, marketers and operators. It reflects behaviour rather than messaging. Culture rather than campaigns. In other words, it reflects the reality of what it feels like to be a partner.


The same thinking underpins many of our most visible brand investments. Take for example our partnership with the TGR Haas F1 Team. This isn’t simply an exercise in generating awareness. They are associations with organisations that understand what sustained performance looks like. Organisations that recognise that success is rarely the product of one brilliant moment, but rather the cumulative effect of consistency over time.


And perhaps that is where brand ultimately derives its power. Not from what a company says about itself, but from the confidence it creates in others.


As AI continues to reshape our industry, content will become easier to create. New suppliers will continue to emerge. The volume of available choice will only increase. Yet all of that simply makes one question more valuable than ever. When operators have dozens of potential partners and hundreds of potential products to choose from, who do they feel comfortable building their future alongside?


Because AI can build a game. But it can’t build the reputation that makes somebody choose it.


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