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, …

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

People like to be around other people for many different reasons, for instance be part of a group or be recognised for their skills.
Playing on a multiplayer slots you either play against or with other players.
The design of the slot needs to be very different if it is a slot where you play WITH or AGAINST other players.
Building communities around multiplayer games where you play together will be a big part of the future gaming portals. Just look at Zynga and all their different games on Facebook and other platforms. They …

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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

Image 1. Top 25 Facebook games in October. (by InsideSocialGames.com)
Games played on Facebook have a large user base and I believe it is because of their social features. Letting players play inside Facebook and/or on their iPhone insted of having to go play on a portal is the key.
For instance Zynga’s poker have more than 17 million active players, an increase with over 3 million compared to last month.
I’ve said it in many blog posts before but I’ll say it again :) It is time for operators and gaming developers …

Image 1. A winner’s alert.
Let players post results on their social networks!
Why not let your players be your marketing people? One way of doing this is to make it possible for them to post results on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social networks. By doing so friends there will read about it and your gaming portal!
In the image above you see one example of how this could be done. You only need to associate the player account with their accounts on social networks.
I hope we will see more social feature integrated …

Ever played poker on Facebook? Or on your iPhone? Maybe on MySpace? Or on Yahoo?
Then you probably have played on Zynga Poker.
Zynga Poker is a social poker community where you don’t play for real money. But they are doing something right. Right now they have 284,740 players online.
Online poker gaming business can learn from Zynga and their poker product.
Here are a few things all poker software providers need to address in the coming year or so.

Integrate with social networks. Let the players play where they are and don’t force them …

Image 1. EIG Expo, Copenhagen.
The CEO Panel discussion was very interesting to listen to.
On the panel were the following:

Norbert Teufelberger, Co-CEO, bwin
Gigi Levy, CEO, 888
Jim Ryan, CEO, PartyGaming
David Yu, CEO, Betfair
Ed Andrewes, MD, Ladbrokes eGaming
Henry Birch, CEO, William Hill Online

The main key points from the panel were for me

B2B business will be more important and many on the panel see that media companies will go into online gaming to increase revenues and especially 888.com (with Dragonfish) and PartyGaming work hard with B2B.
Focus on CRM and retain players
bwin have put a …

The first panel session at EIG Expo talked about the future and what trends they see.
The main areas were:

innovation
entertainment
mobile
social media (voted as the trend that would have the biggest impact on the online gambling)
user experience (understanding the customer was voted the most important key factor to succeed in the next five years)

It is great news to hear that the gaming industry see the importance of social media and user experience.
The panel had the following speakers:

Mark Blandford, Chairman, Valhalla Investments
Dietmar Knoechelmann, CEO, Wirecard Payment Solutions
Adriaan Brink, CEO, iCoins and MD, Genesis …

Image 1. Registration dialogue using social media
Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect are two ways in which you today can add social content to your gaming portal and you can also use it to publish information on social networks.
I believe that we will see this on gaming portals within a year or so.
It will be especially good when players can user their Facebook (or other social network accounts) to register and login to your gaming portal. They only have to remember one login and the player can allow you to …

It would be really cool if players could create their own personalised gaming portal page! I call this a “Player-created portal page”.
Why not create widgets that players can drag and drop around to build their own page? These widgets could for instance be:

My favourite games
My friends
Bonuses
Gaming news
Upcoming bingo tournaments
….

This will give you a strong relationship with the players and a way to communicate about things that aren’t just bonuses and new games. You can supply new cool widgets which will give them a reason to come back more often to …

I follow PokerHeaven on Twitter and today they send the following:
“Don’t forget to sign-up for tonight’s €500 Facebook Freeroll at 18:30 GMT. All the details can be found here -> http://bit.ly/CgBNh“.
To be able to participate in the Freeroll you have to join their Facebook group. This is a great way of using different social media to find new players and also make current players more active.
The only thing that bothers me is that when going to their portal it is very hard to find the information about the Freeroll there. You …

Svenska Spel posted earlier this month their result for Jan - Jun 09. The result was 591 Million Swedish kronor in net profit. This is less than last year (648). Poker was down 16,4% and bingo was down 18,4%.
Playtech is another company in the gaming industry that have reported a result not as good as expected.
I am sure that Svenska Spel and Playtech are not the only companies in the gaming industry having a tough year.
Svenska Spel believes their result is because they have added the ability for players to set gaming …

Social gaming portals is the future, but how can you get people to visit you more often?
I believe in features giving players the opportunity to play with friends (even friends not already players on your portal) will be the key to have a successfull social gaming portal. Gaming operators will need to focus a lot on this along with being where the players are (for instance on Facebook, Twitter and so on…).
Players want to be able to play when ever they feel like it.
One social feature I’ve been thinking about the …

Ryanair consider offering in-air gambling on their flights. I flew home from Venice to Stockholm yesterday with Ryanair and it will be very interesting to see how they will do this. Will they offer it to people playing on their own laptops or will Ryanair hand out gaming devices for their customers to use?
The user experience of the in-air gambling will be the key to a success or failure!
Ryanair have a few challenges with in-air gambling, for instance:

The space for each customer (seat) is very limited, meaning it will be …

How can poker become a more social game?
One way would be to offer poker team tournaments!
A team could consist of friends in real life or friends you’ve met online. There are a number of different ways a poker team tournament could be played.
Here are a few suggestions:

A team have a fixed number of members. Each team member plays for a limited time on whatever kind of poker game he likes and you count the winning percentage for each player. You take a fee from every team member when the tournament …

Maria Bingo is one of the few bingo portal having community features. On their portal players have their own personal page including blog, photos, friends and more.
I think this is a step i the right direction. Especially since bingo really is a social game with alot of chat in it.
On Maria Bingo they also have a cool feature called Maria’s world. It is an interactive map showing all players who are online at the moment and where they are from. You can also zoom in and click on a player …

Image by Markus Angermeier
Web 2.0 has been a buzz word for a few years now. But yet we haven’t seen many gaming portals adapting web 2.0 technologies. Why is that?
But first, what is Web 2.0?
According to Wikipedia “Web 2.0” refers to what is perceived as a second generation of web development and web design. It is characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, User-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web.
In the image above you see many words associated with Web 2.0. Some of the most important for igaming are:

user centered design
sharing
collaboration
usability
joy of use
widgets
social software
trust
im

Web 2.0 focus on …