Interview With Kevin Reid, CMO For 1x2Gaming

Known as the pioneers of virtual football betting with football1x2, the English gaming company 1x2Gaming has now introduced a full suite of casino table games and slots, positioning itself as a full range software company.

Approximately one year ago we published our 1X2Gaming software review. Romeo, our Italian Editor, decided this would be a good time to catch up with Kevin Reid, the company's Chief Marketing Officer, and find out what their plans are moving forward.

Check out our VegasMaster review of 1x2Gaming

Kevin was kind enough to answer some of Romeo’s questions. VegasMaster readers should find reading this interview quite valuable, as Kevin goes into great detail about the industry from the game developer’s perspective.

As you will see Kevin’s answers are extremely interesting for game lovers. Kevin may also have shared some of their exciting plans moving forward. Unfortunately it is too early for us to share all of these with you, but when the time is right, we promise that VegasMaster readers will be the first to know. Read on:

VegasMaster: The product line of 1X2Gaming has experienced very consistent developments. Have you delivered on your promise to be the newest casino software available on the Internet? Are you satisfied with the results of the casino titles that you currently have?

Kevin Reid: We have been very happy with the initial response to our casino games and we have learnt a lot along the way. We are eager to take this new knowledge further and to produce even better games moving forward. At first it was a matter of having a good sized portfolio to offer, as this would be a lot easier for us to take to market. Now we have shifted our focus to making every new title unique, each with something of added value for the players and operators.

Watch out for some of the new 1x2Gaming slot machines we will be releasing such as “SuperFruit7”, “Thor: Stormlord” and “Chilli Fever”, all of which are innovative in their own way. We have high hopes for all of these slots.

VegasMaster: What was the reason behind the transition into casino products?

Kevin Reid: It was always going to be a challenge to move from our core product of Virtual Sports into the Casino arena, especially with so many large providers dominating the industry. This was however a transition that we felt was necessary for the development of our company and also the establishment of our position in the marketplace.

The company’s key aim is to assist the customers in the process of moving from the Sportsbook to the casino, ensuring the smoothest transition possible… I don’t know about you, but when I spend my weekend betting on my favourite teams, I get fed up being blasted by heavily promoted casino content. Virtual Sports helps make this experience more pleasant for the players. Savvy operators will promote Virtual Sports to their Sportsbook bettors, and will only offer casino content to players once they are in the casino environments, rather than just bombard them with irrelevant content.

The product line we offer, we believe is a journey into a range of products. Our table games, especially our unique games such as Blackjack Players Choice, offer customers something more to think about. Blackjack Bonus provides the best value of its kind in the market today.

We would like to think a typical player’s journey would look like this –

Sports Betting (Typical betting) > Virtual Sports (The bridge into the casino) > Blackjack Players Choice (Something good to think about) > Blackjack Bonus (Good value game) > Slots (Some fun & reasonable hit rates).

Throughout their journey customers will be entertained, and the operator can mould the process to the player by using a wider range of products.

VegasMaster: We all know that mobile gaming has become a major hit. It is not a secret that all software developers consider the quality of their mobile offering as a major key to their success across all markets. How does 1X2Gaming ensure that they use this to their advantage?

Kevin Reid: Our Virtual Sports games are the perfect fit for mobile and we believe that our games are the best available for mobile by far. I am extremely pleased with what my developers have created across the HTML5 portfolio, and I see it as a great pleasure to market these games.

For the Virtual Sports games we don’t focus on graphics, instead we focus on people’s passion for the sport as well as the team they follow. We live in a world where the results are the main focus. When people are betting they are not interested in seeing what happened, they just want to know what the score was… Taking this into account, our 1x2Gaming mobile slots and games are extremely quick and user friendly, players have access to a wide range of connection speeds as well as devices that are not typically available on other providers’ games.

Our 1x2Gaming casino games have also transitioned extremely well onto mobile. Being a small company we are very quick to respond to customer demand, be it from the operators requesting the games, or the sheer number of players playing our flash games. The slots look fun and rich, they are simple to play and offer high quality graphics. The result of this is that players can expect a consistent experience between online and mobile platforms.

We have recently launched our mobile games for one of our key clients, which have been met with great enthusiasm from our players. We are very happy with their performance to date, and we only hope that this will develop further as we add even more mobile games to our HTML5 library.

VegasMaster: A nasty question now: how can a British gaming provider use the following game titles "Soccer Slots", "Soccer Scratch" and "Virtual Soccer"? I ask that because we Italians would be far too proud to brand and market our spaghetti using the name "noodles"! Surely there was a more British name that could have been used for those games?

Kevin Reid: Ha ha… When I Google translate “Football” and “Soccer”, both times I get “Calcio”?

To be honest, I don’t think we ever really thought about it in that way. We have an American Football game called “Touchdown”, and I guess we used Soccer at the time to make a difference between the two products. The shorter name also transfers well into designs and it makes it easy to sell our products internationally, meaning there is no confusion anywhere.

That being said, our biggest release next year will be the pro-version of our leagues game (Virtual Soccer), especially for you I will have our product team name it ‘Virtual Football Pro’. This game will offer players a much greater betting experience, with the chance to bet on several options such as: both teams to score, draw no bet, double chance, total points to be accumulated, and winner without the big 5 as well as many other options.

These new betting options will help in creating a more authentic betting experience. We are also looking at developing the game further in order to more accurately represent each league, new versions will include leagues 18, 16, 12 and many others moving forward. This will offer a localised experience for our Virtual Sports fans, with optimal performance for leagues such as the Turkish and Dutch competitions.

VegasMaster: What is currently happening in your company and what are your plans for the next year? Can our readers expect any pleasant surprises?

Kevin Reid: I don’t think I could give you one answer here as there are so many things in the pipeline…

Due to the large portfolio that we now offer, our sister company EasiGames, which is our B2C brand, is launching a new casino ‘www.redqueencasino.com’. Initially this casino will only be available in English. We will test our games and offer new releases and features to players who want to get in on the action. Due to the fact that we own the games ourselves we will also be able to offer customers better bonuses to play. We are looking to adopt a policy where we closely monitor every detail of the players’ movements between games, thus allowing us to provide tips and insights into what other games customers may enjoy within our portfolio.

With regards to 1X2Gaming, we are looking to grow our portfolio. We currently have 18 new slot titles in the making, which we also intend on converting to HTML5.

We also are working on our B2B partnership deals. Shortly, our games are going to be available through Microgaming’s Quickfire and Betradars RGS, to coincide with already being available on NYX OGS, Everymatrix, and Bit8’s platform. This will mean that our games will be available to a large number of operators, in turn allowing more customers to access our games.

We also have a number of other projects that we are very excited about, which we begin launching over the next few months. Soon clients will have the ability to offer players tournaments on our games, with cash prizes for the winners. This will certainly help make our games even more enjoyable.

Over and above this, clients will have the ability to award player’s free rounds in our slot machines. The intention is to generate greater interest from players who may not have been aware of our games. It will also mean rewarding players who remain loyal to certain slot machines. By offering free rounds, even more people will play our games, and we expect to see their lifecycle extend quite significantly.

In addition to this, we have started offering our new and existing clients Playson games via our 3^rd party platform service. We are very excited about the future of this partnership, and we are looking to expand our portfolio & grow as a company by offering even more quality content for players.

VegasMaster: On a more personal note, if that’s ok.. It is quite peculiar to see that the gaming industry seems to be attracting many executives from the banking and finance industries. Did you notice that too? If so, do you maybe have an explanation for this?

Kevin Reid: Obviously you are aware that I was formerly working in the finance industry, hence your question. I think there are similarities between both industries, and perhaps this is why we see this overlap.

Essentially both are out to make money and both offer high rewards. I do believe however, that the gaming world potentially faces tighter regulations… essentially this industry openly admits that it falls within the sphere of gambling and entertainment, this therefore means that it is closely monitored and it is clear to customers what they can receive.

The finance industry however hides behind the fact that it is “investment” and therefore it is potentially not as tightly regulated. This also means that customers are more exposed to malpractice. In other words, they may believe they are investing in the right way, when in fact this might not necessarily be the case.