As they prepare to release their summer game, Sizzling Spins, Play’n GO CEO Johan Tornqvist speaks about the importance of relevance when it comes to creating games in today’s market.
Everyone knows that innovation is the cornerstone of a strong business. If you want to thrive in any endeavour you have to lead the way and keep coming up with new methods and ideas. But, as innovative as you may be, you must always speak to your audience in a way that they understand, you must make it relevant to them otherwise you risk losing their interest.
Here at Play’n GO we strongly believe in speaking to players by making games that are relevant to them, be it through cultural trends, social trends or even world events. When the public eye is turned in a certain direction you need to position yourself within that gaze, and that can only come from planning, position and being aware of what’s happening, and what’s to come.
For instance, a few years ago people became obsessed with mobile phone apps and playing games where you need to match the symbols, very similar to slots but using clusters rather than paylines so we released Gemix, a game which gave players a chance to win by matching symbols in clusters, and it was hugely popular. It fed into what people were, and still are, interested in today.
One truly worldwide event is the World Cup. After the Olympics, the World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world, it brings people together and holds the world’s focus for four full weeks. So, this month we released Hugo Goal, in partnership with Hugo Games A/S, our third Hugo release. Although the character of Hugo is a draw in its own right, benefitting from the allure of the World Cup only serves to pique the interest of, and create relevance for, a much larger audience.
While there is worldwide phenomenon, you can also look at more culturally specific ideas, which may resonate more with certain markets. There are only a few things that happen which hold the interest of the world over and you need to be sensitive to the varying interests of different cultures around the world. One of Play’n GO’s strengths is the diversity of our workforce, meaning we have experiences and ideas from a large degree of different sets of people which leads to more diverse ways of thinking and a wider scope of ideas and that can only be a good thing for any business.
It is this kind of thinking that led us to our big game for this summer Sizzling Spins. Sizzling Spins is a 5-reel slot based on the concept of the great British Barbecue! Now, of course, Britain isn’t the only place in the world that barbecues, almost everybody does! But, it is a very big thing culturally for Britain so, while it will resonate especially well with British audiences, it is still relevant enough to spark interest in other mar- kets of the world…and that is the key.
Play’n GO will be debuting their summer release Sizzling Spins at this year’s iGB Live, Amsterdam from the 17-20 July as both an exhibitor and a main sponsor of the event.
