Beyond Engagement: Building Better Player Experiences

1. How do you balance creating games players genuinely care about with achieving strong commercial results?

Without strong commercial results, games can’t continue to exist, so the two have to work together. Enjoyment is how a player feels, but for it to count, a ‘feeling’ has to show up in the metrics operators care about: return, stickiness and lifetime value.

That’s easier said than done. Operators tend to work on averages and aren’t always set up to dig into cohorts. A game might show lower than average stakes overall, for example, while performing above average for a particular group of players. If you only look at the average, you miss that.

So game design is only one part of the mix. Strong commercial partnerships with operators who understand what you’re trying to achieve are just as essential.

Key Insight:

Player enjoyment and commercial performance have to work together. Understanding individual player groups, rather than relying only on overall averages, can reveal a game's real value.

2. What have you learned about player behaviour that has influenced the way G Games develops its products?

I sometimes joke that if we get anything right, it’s only because we’ve got everything wrong before.

The biggest lesson is that real money changes the context. When players are risking their own money, they need to understand what’s happening, so a steep learning curve just won’t work. That’s also why innovation and discovery are so hard in iGaming.

Your game also has to compete within an existing category, and the things operators judge you on often come down to speed of play. They may talk about fun and engagement, but if you can’t match a slot’s GGR per player, they will take away your position.

Key Insight:

Real-money gameplay requires clarity. Players need to understand what is happening, while games must also compete on commercial performance and speed of play.

3. What makes gamification genuinely valuable to players rather than just another feature?

All too often, gamification is just an add-on. Secretly, it’s often a way for operators to try to buy loyalty on the cheap. Building it into the product and the experience in an authentic way is hard, which is why it so often gets done badly.

The trick is to ask what the player wants, what you as an operator or supplier want, and whether there’s a way to bring those together. Or are you just trying to motivate the player to do something that’s in your interest rather than theirs?

A good example is letting players personalise the look and feel of the lobby in a way that deepens their engagement with the brand. That isn’t “let’s add an avatar”. It’s “let’s make this space personal”.

Key Insight:

Meaningful gamification starts with player needs. Personalisation should make the experience feel more relevant to the player, rather than simply adding another feature.

4. From your experience in the iGaming industry, what should companies prioritise to create more meaningful player experiences?

You have to put the player at the heart of it. What does a player really want, so that the extras you introduce don’t turn into friction?

Ask yourself what you’re actually rewarding. Is it behaviour that’s in the player’s long-term interest, like engaging with responsible play measures? Or is it a way to re-engage them after a cold streak? And if it’s the latter, is that because regulation stops you from giving them a promotion, or because you don’t want to spend the money?

So prioritise knowing your player, and then build around what they actually want. The prioritise by aligning to what you want most.

Key Insight:

Put the player first. Understand their needs, consider whether rewards genuinely benefit them and make sure additional features enhance the experience rather than create friction.

5. What changes do you expect to shape the future of player engagement in the iGaming industry?

I think external factors will really matter here. What happens in regulatory terms, and what competitors do, often in the unregulated market, will both shape where engagement goes.

Beyond that, I expect casinos with in-house or exclusive studios to work on bringing the game and lobby experiences together across the platform, so the player gets one joined-up experience rather than a set of separate parts. Where all of your interactions contribute to a meta experience.

Looking Ahead:

The future of player engagement could involve more connected casino platforms, where game and lobby interactions contribute to one unified experience.

6. What is your perspective on iGamity and its role in driving innovation and knowledge-sharing across iGaming?

It’s lovely to see iGamity asking more complex, nuanced questions and digging deeper into the difficult ones.

I really value shared experience, not just inside the industry but outside it too. We have to look at what other industries are doing, from social gaming and video gaming to short-form entertainment, and then build new experiences informed by those wider trends.

Key Takeaway:

Knowledge-sharing across industries can inspire new ideas. Looking beyond iGaming to social gaming, video games and short-form entertainment can help shape future player experiences.

Explore G Games and learn more about its approach to game development and player engagement.

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