This year’s International Gaming Expo (IGE), incorporating ICEi, is over and I’m back home. My reflections from the expo are mixed.
Most positive: I was impressed by Net Entertainment and  Betsoft’s games. The quality in their games is really good. It is especially interesting to see that Betsoft incorporate their controls as a part of the game.
Most negative: The Innovative Showcase (it was a new addition addition to IGE 2010 that gave exhibitors the opportunity to present to IGE visitors) was a major dissapointment! Many of the presenters didn’t even show up for their presentations, …

It really doesn’t matter to which operator in online gaming you play with today. Gaming portals are very similar when it comes to everything from available games, user flows to registration and deposits. Bingo clients almost look identical from one provider to another. Why is that? Are software providers afraid to differentiate themselves by innovation?
I think that winners in the industry the next couple of years will be operators and software providers that put a lot of focus on the player experience. This is because you can have a really …

This year’s IGE is just a few weeks away and I’m starting to get excited about the event. It will be great to find out what will be the next big things in the igaming industry this year.
I believe the following topics (among others) will be very important for igaming companies this year:

personalisation
social media
retention
focus on the player
prototyping
innovation
development processes

I’ll be at the IGE all days so if you want to meet up and discuss igaming and user experience. I’m also working on a workshop covering many of the topics above that …

Do you develop gaming software?
Do you prototype?
If you do prototyping then great! If you don’t, then it is time to start doing it!
A prototype is a representative model of the final product.
Why should you build prototypes?
Prototyping is an interative and generative process. You’ll never get the best solution at your first try. Prototyping will give you many new ideas when you work through the prototyping process. It helps you get your ideas into something everyone can play around with. This will generate lots of feedback and ideas for new and …

It is just a little over a month left until the International Gaming Expo takes place in London between the 26th and 28th of January.
It will be very interesting to find out if there are any new innovations within the industry. Maybe some new mobile solutions? Or maybe a new poker game?
Will I see you there? I’ll be there for the whole three days this year. Wanna meet up and discuss user experience, social media and igaming?
Send me an e-mail, staffan.schroder@inuse.se, and let’s set up a meeting :)
/Staffan

Why not sign up for the weekly UXiGaming newsletter?
The newsletter will be sent every tuesday starting December 1st.
Why should you sign up? You’ll get a newsletter containing:

Blog posts posted last weeks along with comments and relevant links.
Links to industry news concerning igaming, social media and user experience.
“UXiGaming’s weekly offer”
“Question of the week”

So sign up right now! You do it here!
/Staffan

I believe that social fatures and personalized content will play a very big part in for the gaming experience in the next couple of years.
Today many instant games just opens up in a new window when you play them with no content around it. To make the gaming experience much better we need to add relevant content.
In my concept design above (done for a presentation a year ago) every game has its own “game home” where there are relevant content on the page. The game can be played within the …

Image 1. bwin’s skill games site provided by Jadestone.
Can it be more frustrating than getting an error message saying “Compability problem, you need to have Windows and Internet Explorer or Firefox to play”? (I am using a mac)
Yes it actually can!
And that is when I have logged in to the site, looked around for a while and only get the error message once I try to start a game. That is lousy player experience! It would be much more fair if they earlier would tell me that I can’t play on …

Good news for me! It looks like I will be attending EIG 2009 in Copenhagen 15-17 of September. Are you going to? And want to discuss user experience and igaming then let me know!
Send me an e-mail, staffan.schroder @ inuse.se :)
/Staffan

Image 1.
I play every now and then on Mr Green and I get annoyed every time when I am logging in.
In the image above you see that there are a number of options for you as a player. I usually click on “Login” and expekt to get the login dialogue.

Image 2.
In the Login dialogue there are two options to the question “Do you have an account already?”:

Yes, I have an account
No, I wish to become a member

Since I clicked on the login button the default should be option 1, but …

Is there a reason why the largest gaming portals today use almost the identical top navigation?
In the picture above you can see the top navigation for the gaming companies below:

Sportingbet: Promos, Sports, Casino, Poker, Games, 1v1, Backgammon, Video Games, Mobile, Financials
bwin: Sports, Poker, Casino, Games
William Hill: Sports, Casino, Poker, Games, Vegas, Live Casino, Skill, Bingo, Lotteries
paddypower: Sports, Livebetting, Poker, Casino, Financial Trader, Games, Player, Lotteries, Bingo, Mobile
Bet365: Sport, Liveodds, Casino, Poker, Games, Bingo
Betsson: Sportsbook, Exchange, Scratch, Casino, Poker, Bingo, Trader, Games
Unibet: Sportsbook, Casino, Live Casino, Poker, Bingo, Games, Skill, Scratch …