Why do so many iGaming games still feel the same?

Games are very similar. I think what really differentiates is the design of the game.

Let's talk about the crypto trading games.

Yeah, we launched Trader, our first crypto trading game. We've just announced a second game, which is called Tap Trader.

Who is it for mainly? What kind of studios are you targeting?

We're all kind of desirous to find niche type games.

So, what's the latest on that?

Yeah, we've just got certification of 10 of our original games.

Can you clarify what's Originals, what's Exclusives?

Exclusive is sort of premium brand content. Originals...

There's a lot of things happening with Tequity.

Yeah, it was just seeing more and more demand.

Barcelona, Dubai, São Paulo, Madrid, and now we're here in Manila. And we spoke to leaders, experts, as well as industry pioneers talking about what's happening in Asia, what's also happening with the Filipino gaming market, and the wider Asian region. This series is brought to you by Kensho Media. They have been helping iGaming companies rank higher with SEO since 2008. This series is also brought to you by Quantum Gaming.

They help companies with white label and turnkey solutions in emerging markets. This year we're doing the Real Roadshow initiative as part of iGaming Real Talk, where we go to iGaming events all around the world and cover the insights from the ground. Stay tuned and subscribe to iGaming Real Talk. Hello and welcome back to another episode of iGaming Real Talk. This one is from SiGMA Asia in Manila, and I have with me Dominic here. Again, this is the third time, is it, Dom?

Second, I think. Second time.

Feels like more, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Many more to come, hopefully.

Many more to come, hopefully.

I mean, Tequity has been everywhere. So, first of all, congratulations to you on taking on the CCO role, Chief Commercial Officer, right? How do you feel about it?

Excited, yeah. Really grateful for the opportunity. There's a lot going on, so it's a big, big role. I think for me, it's, yeah, super exciting time at Tequity. We've launched a bunch of new verticals even since I started. I was brought in initially in September, feels a bit longer, last year to kind of grow the Originals side of the business.

And that's expanded out to have a broader remit for the overall commercial strategy across the Originals and our other verticals, which I'm sure we'll talk about soon. So, yeah, super excited.

There's a lot of things happening with Tequity. I see updates almost every week now. And recently I've seen this new update about Exclusives. And I started wondering, like, what's the difference between Originals, which is originally your main product, and then you have Exclusives? Like, I'm a bit kind of lost in all the terminology. So, can you clarify what's Originals, what's Exclusives?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, I also, my role is to kind of position the business and explain it fully. So, you know...

You were Head of, VP of...

Yes, Head of, VP of Growth for Originals, right? So, yeah, just to grow that vertical. As you say, that's our own content, which is 18 in-house Originals now.

Different 18?

Yeah, up to 18 now. Going to do one a month. Been going for about 18 months now.

That's good, yeah.

But yeah, Exclusive is sort of premium brand content for operators that are looking to differentiate a little bit more. Originals is their content is differentiated, but Exclusive is kind of new games that are particular to their brand experiences as well.

So, Originals that you produce are the same for all the brands. However, Exclusives are exclusively for that client.

Very much a bespoke player. And we handle really everything there, from the math, the design. Obviously have RGS as well. And we can also help with distribution if they so wish. Or they can handle it themselves. And they obviously own 100% of the IP as well. So, yeah, it was just seeing more and more demand. It's come off the back of the Originals. People wanting differentiated content. This is the next step further.

Is completely based on the need. Maybe some of the clients that you had asked, "Hey, I mean this is cool, but we want our own."

Exactly, yeah. That's what we're seeing. So it's just being able to fill that need that we're seeing, you know, a lot more growth from as well.

Yeah. Let's talk about the crypto trading games. They're quite interesting in that sense because, you know, they combine a lot of things. And you also have a game called Trader, if I'm not mistaken, right?

Yes. Yes. Yeah, we launched Trader, our first crypto trading game about two months ago. And yeah, I mean compared to other games, the simplest way is it's real market prices, right? So we have a number of crypto tokens in there. We also have a provably fair coin as well. So there is RNG. So it's something that we've aimed very much at the kind of newbie, want-to-be crypto trader. Obviously, our audience at the moment is very much the crypto casino side of things.

So there's going to be a mix of, you know, kind of want and need from those different audiences. Some are looking just for payment rails of crypto. Some are very interested in the trading side of things. And we've just announced a second game, which is called Tap Trader.

Which we're going to announce.

We're demoing that today at the stand today. This one, compared to the Trader one, is a very simple sort of crash-meets-trading type thing. So it's a much simpler kind of perspective.

Yeah, I mean if we look at it, the crash games, in its essence, they work because they're simple.

Yes. Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And that's the original Trader one, it's for a little bit more in-depth, right? Over a longer time scale. It's real market prices. You've got to have a little bit of knowledge. The Tap Trader is very much an instant experience, so more akin to the instant Original games or other iGaming platform games as well. So, yeah.

And what other games, what other new things are coming up in the next couple of months?

Yeah, we've got a lot going on. So on the Original side, I mentioned we've got 18 games. We recently launched a game called Cross the Lake.

Is it similar to the Chicken game?

It is, yeah. So what we're trying to do here is kind of maintain the same successful mechanism, right?

Right.

But iterating it somewhat, differentiating a little bit. So, instead of choosing the one sort of volatility level in the Chicken game, you can choose in-game to go high, medium, or low, right? And then our same kind of high-quality execution of the game is just super important. So that's our new Original. And again, it can be customized, branded up like all our other games as well. We're also launching a sub-vertical within the Originals, the prediction side of things.

So the kind of webcam CCTV game as well, which we're demoing today.

Is that a new category that's coming up powered by the famous provider for the CCTV game?

Yeah, akin to that. We've got a few differences as well that we'll be releasing. I think there's obviously a new category. It's got a lot of interest. And we're looking to put it within the branded content as well. So, as opposed to being a standalone brand, it's going to be pushed as that operator's own CCTV game, branded up like the other Originals as well. So, yeah, there's lots of different opportunities with that. And the first one we're going live with in a month.

And then on our own content, we've got third-party content from the publishing side of the business. And we've recently released, with partnership with Mirror Image Gaming, something called K-pop Drop, which is the burst game.

Announcement, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So that's something that's super interesting, very different. And that also drops our first network campaign where we have a shared prize pool across operators. We're trying to find more interesting promo tools, you know, along with our free bets and network campaigns. So, yeah, that's a little bit that's been happening on our content side of things in terms of games.

Yeah, let's talk about the publishing product for a moment because you have Originals, you have RGS, you have publishing, you have Exclusives now. Which I tend to always follow, so I understand different verticals. Let's talk about the publishing product, which I think also is very interesting. Who is it for mainly? What kind of studios are you targeting with the publishing model and how does it help them?

Yeah, of course. So, we're talking, very much trying to find niche content. We keep talking about differentiated content. I think that's best identified by the studio we're working with at the moment, Mirror Image Gaming, the burst games.

Mirror Image Gaming.

Yes. Yeah, they produce these little burst game drop mechanics that, you might know Drop the Boss, the game that's super popular. So we're not looking to compete with aggregators and have huge...

Oh, I always wanted to ask this. Yeah, because you know, it looks similar on paper. You are kind of similar to aggregators, but maybe not.

No, I mean similar in that we help distribute the game, but we're all kind of desirous to find niche type games. So not bringing on the masses.

Not the Egyptian theme.

No, no. Not like that. We're not going to have 10,000 games. So we're being quite selective on that. And also targeting this crypto audience as well. They're looking for quite different experiences as well. So I think...

That's a nice little niche.

Yeah, quality rather than quantity of studios that we're looking for, I think, is super important. And we can also help with the RGS side of things as well. So, as opposed to just distributing the game, we can also host the game. So it's very flexible. RGS to RGS, there's different options for studios as well.

One thing that comes to my mind is, let's say I'm a new company. I want to launch my own games. So I use your RGS to make the games and then can I use your publishing to publish through your network? Is that the idea or not really?

Exactly. Yeah, that's definitely what Mirror Image Gaming exactly do, right?

Let's say you've already got RGS.

So that studio is completely built on using your infrastructure.

Yes, 100% on RGS. But there is an alternative if you already have an RGS hosted somewhere else, then we can do RGS to RGS.

So it's more like what they need rather than what you have.

Yeah, yeah. We can work with any kind of any studio setup and then work with them to help on the commercial side and the distribution side on top of that. And I mentioned the network campaigns, also the promotion and distribution beyond just the network that we have as well. Yeah, yeah. We were in Brazil just a month and a half ago and you mentioned a lot of updates about exploring regulated markets as well. So, what's the latest on that?

Yeah, well Brazil was hugely successful. Met a lot of partners on the ground, learned a lot essentially. Obviously coming from a crypto background, it's been a real learning experience from the start on that front. Yeah, we've just got certifications for 10 of our Original games from BMM for RNG, and so we're looking to be able to smooth into some regulated markets. Obviously it's going to take some time to expand out, but we're getting pretty close to starting on that.

So, yeah, it's been a good step forward for us.

Cool. And if we look at Originals, in-house games, what's one big opportunity that operators, crypto operators as well as the new age operators, are still ignoring today?

Yeah, I think, I mentioned the promo tools side of things, right? Games are very similar, right? We mentioned brand differentiation. I think a couple of ours are really differentiated in the design of the game, like the Chicken game, you can make a totally different game. We've got an editor that enables you to do that. So just having your own brand experiences is super important.

I mentioned promo tools as well, network campaigns, jackpots, tournaments for Originals is super important. So I think operators can do a lot more on that front, and we're trying to meet their demand on that as well with the network campaigns that we're launching this week, and then we're going to be doing them with Originals as well. So I think there's huge scope for gamifying that in terms of engagement and retention as well.

Cool. I mean, thanks for joining me again and sharing all the updates. I'm pretty sure Tequity is going to grow from strength to strength from what I'm hearing and powering the next level of innovation, as well as the trends. So I'm very excited, as well as happy, to keep meeting you, and covering these updates also from your side. Thank you for joining.

Thanks for the excellent questions. Great to be here. Thank you.

So that's it, guys. Thank you for watching. Do share your thoughts in the comments below, and do give us a like, subscribe wherever you're watching, follow us, follow Dom, follow Tequity as well, and I'll see you on the next show. Thank you so much.