It has been a year to remember at Scientific Games. Andrew Goodale, the company’s head of global content for interactive, offers iNTERGAMINGi an inside view.
THE last 12 months witnessed major change at two of the gaming industry’s biggest names, as Scientific Games merged with WMS Industries.
The company’s Andrew Goodale looks back on a remarkable period and to the challenges ahead.
INTERGAMINGi: Tell us a little about the year your company has had - the deals, the successes?
AG: “2014 was an exciting year for us all around; we’d integrated our Barcrest and Williams games libraries from the Scientific Games/WMS Industries merger, when the Bally merger was announced. This introduced an amazing opportunity to drive our business forward, with the integration of technology platforms and games content, while maintaining our concentration on creating great games to empower our customers’ gaming sites.
“Adding content from our Barcrest studio, beyond the world-famous Rainbow Riches theme, to our game-server library has been a priority for the interactive division of Scientific Games in the second half of 2014. We have seen how the numbers for one pilot customer have increased massively on getting this content live and we are now at a point where we can start to distribute this content to our entire customer base, which is great. The next few months will really start to pay dividends with the content distribution, particularly for those clients who offer their players the same game content in retail locations.
“We continue to see success with the differentiated game play styles from our Williams content studio, with titles powered by engines like Colossal Reels continuing to perform and unique new games like Cool Jewels and Nemo’s Voyage showing early promise. We have also had some great success with third-party brands such as KISS and The Wizard of Oz, with KISS: Shout it Out Loud! mobile due out in Q1, 2015. The IP we have with the The Wizard of Oz is amazing.”
When we last spoke with your company, you were pioneering simultaneous multichannel releases - is this still the approach or are you moving towards a mobile-first strategy?
“Mobile has been a great opportunity for us, as the games we have released have done phenomenally well. We are seeing a significant shift in desktop to mobile numbers. Multichannel releases and game availability remain key for us going forward. We have learnt a lot over the last 14 months and this is one area where we really have developed our strategy in line with our customers, to get the most out of our new game launches. We know from our data that if we can tie in a desktop and mobile launch, this is great. However, if we can tie this in with a retail launch of a game, or get within a month of this launch, then you really hit the sweet spot."
Read the full article in the latest issue of iNTERGAMINGi
