Join Darryl Manning, the visionary CEO of Wicked Games, on an adventure through innovative game development. He shares with Matthew Calleja his team’s pursuit of creative freedom within the often tradition-bound industry of iGaming.

You’ve mentioned that the gaming industry often leans on familiar concepts and designs. What motivated the company to focus on innovation rather than sticking to traditional game ideas?

Let’s face it, game development is costly. Land-based companies can publish 30 games in a year, and crack the champagne if one of those games perform. So their currency is proven maths models, since they are a cheaper and safer bet. It is much more cost effective to take an evolutionary approach, take a proven winner, and add a twist.

The problem with that is a saturated market. How do you stand out? But it’s not just the number of variations. The providers are also at an all-time high.

 Yeah, saturated market. That would be our driving force.

Could you elaborate on how Wicked Games aims to address these issues through its innovative methods and products?

When selling games B2B, you can get one of two responses: “I want proven winners. Next!” or “I’ve seen that before. Next.”

We effectively have two clients: the casino and the player, and we need to satisfy both.

When designing games, we would typically take inspiration from a proven winner as our starting point. We then debate and argue the merits of what makes it work, and continue to evolve the game to the point that it is unrecognisable. That may represent five levels of evolution. It’s not innovative, and it’s not revolutionary. But it should get our foot in the door.

However, there are a few games in the pipeline that are truly revolutionary. They look familiar, thanks to our previous branding and the chosen themes, but their gameplay is very different. Still, is that enough? Probably not. We need to make some noise. Some good old fashioned organic marketing should do the trick, and the innovation should make it stick.

What distinguishes Wicked Games from other companies in the industry when it comes to pushing the boundaries of innovation in gaming? How do you ensure that your products surprise and captivate players?

If there was a proven formula that guaranteed a game would be a winner, then everyone would use it, the market would be saturated with it and the formula would no longer work.

There is more of a broad stroke that we apply. software, branding and math: the three pillars of successful games, where software breeds trust, branding breeds familiarity and maths breeds engagement.

How does Wicked Games balance the concepts of ‘evolution’ and ‘revolution’ when creating new gaming products? How do you convince clients and players to embrace innovative game concepts?

We are essentially torn between having content and having success. The casinos want both. Do you make 10 evolutionary products or one revolutionary product? It looks like a 10:1 proposition, but it is 50:50 because the risk/reward ratio of innovative content is so high. I think this is the real killer for innovation.

Balance that against a saturated market, and you should realise that the risk/reward ratio of not innovating is much higher.

We are truly on the cusp of the next generation of gaming

There are three types of slot players. Mature, returning players are in one group. New and casual players are in another. Then there are those that don’t know they are slot players… yet. It is this third group, the largest, that is the true audience for our innovative products.

The innovative game concepts that we are currently working on should grow the market, not just juggle it.

Wicked Games has a history of designing video games for various companies. Could you discuss how this experience has influenced your approach to game development and innovation?

I guess we have had seven years of dining on someone else’s coin. We have had many opportunities to see what worked and what hasn’t worked, and we have built up a serious array of the most gifted artists and game producers.

Now that we are beginning our own game development, everyone wants to experience the success that we have afforded other companies, of finally getting to taste the fruits of our labour. I mean, seven years of designing games in anonymity can be exhausting, and you have to dig deep to find those gems. That is where real innovation comes from.

And how has this experience contributed to your ability to innovate and design unique gaming products in-house?

Our intent to create innovative products has never wavered, even when they were shot down, dismissed, laughed at, ridiculed. “Okay, I’ll just put that one away for later, thank you very much.” Now we feel liberated, free to explore. Yes, it comes with its own sense of responsibility, like keeping the lights on, but we are hungry and driven.

We don’t design in isolation either. It is a very dynamic team. We feed off each other, we talk, discuss ideas, hold innovation sessions. Many of our ideas have come from misunderstanding what was said, which then compounds into other ideas. It’s exhilarating to see a concept unfold.

When designing for other people, we never held back. The only thing that will change is that we will have fewer ideas rejected. This alone will foster greater innovation since the problems and challenges that other people anticipated will be allowed to blossom in our development process.

Looking ahead, what exciting developments can we expect from Wicked Games in terms of self-designed gaming products?

There is a lot of talk about crypto casinos and the non-traditional gaming mechanics they are using, not to mention provably fair algorithms and the blockchain. Specifically, everyone is looking at how and when these non-traditional games will cross over into traditional online casinos.”

Just considering these questions provokes our more traditional thinking on slots and how we can do things differently. Yes, we are looking at non-traditional games, but we are also looking at how those mechanics can play into our slots for totally novel functionality.

We are truly on the cusp of the next generation of gaming.

With the prospect of designing games for yourselves, how will you ensure that your self-designed games resonate with players while pushing the boundaries of creativity?

It is hard to imagine that you can design slots for 10, 15, 20 years and still have fresh ideas pouring out. However, technology is continually evolving and, with eight billion humans leapfrogging ideas over each other, the challenges and the possibilities this brings propagate new ideas, new ways of thinking.

But the real secret lies in the company that you keep. And I like the company that I keep.