Special Q&A with Renata Banyar of BetSoft Gaming – Over a decade of innovation
User Review
( vote)Betsoft is a company with a great reputation in the world of online gaming. It is known internationally for the quality of its content but also for its innovative and always avant-garde mechanics.
BetSoft Gaming catalog contains hundreds of games to satisfy the taste of each player! The creative team of BetSoft in fact focuses on the public, data and feedback from the players to produce games with increasingly engaging themes and features.
Today we introduce to you Renata Banyar, CMO of BetSoft, who presents more closely this software house, retracing the history, the milestones of their development up to reveal some anticipation on the next releases.
Hi Renata and welcome on Slots-777. Betsoft is an established company, operating in the iGaming business for more than 10 years. What do you think are the reasons for your success?
As a forward thinking business, Betsoft has always been innovative and ahead of the curve. Our name was built and continues to be built on our releases, as they offer a fantastic mix of themes, graphics, features and win potential. From our first release to our last, the anime themed Kensei Blades™, we have always been original and humorous in equal measures. Betsoft is an entertainment business. Our clients and players come to us for great gameplay.
In short, Betsoft is successful due to originality; brand integrity; quality content; immersive play; excellent RTP; speed to market without lowering standards; certification and regulation; 100% Roadmap delivery and a full back up team of experts who love what they do.
As Betsoft has heritage in the iGaming sector, how have you seen it evolve over time? The shift from Flash to HTML5 development was a huge revolution for gamers – what were the other “turning points” in the industry? What were milestones and achievements that made you realise you were on the right track?
Betsoft was one of the first gaming companies fully to understand and appreciate the consequences of changing from Flash to HTML5. This enabled us to create a completely successful and user friendly switchover, subsequently retaining our existing clients and players and developing a whole new customer base through our Slots 3™ products.
Another milestone was the arrival of increasingly sophisticated mobile devices and phones built with gaming as the main driver of their design and technology.
Add in the ubiquity and quality of G5 internet coverage and this created another revolution for content producers as well as for players. Through our focus groups, feedback and research, we developed elements within our games – loading times, lightweight deployment size and screen orientation – to ensure the ultimate in experiential gaming.
Regulation and certification have also had significant impacts on both how the industry works and, as importantly, how it is perceived. Milestones are more visible with hindsight but Betsoft definitely scored significantly with undertaking and passing two ISMS audits in 2020. This allowed us to operate in both Spain and Colombia, consolidating our brand recognition in Spain and building a new client base in Colombia.
Our success from such efforts is visible in the number of new client partnerships we sign each year as well as the extension and renewal of existing partnerships.
How do you imagine the future of the iGaming industry? Do you think that from your current position you can in some way contribute to shaping it or direct the next trends?
The gaming industry is such an exciting and innovative one that nothing can really be dismissed when imagining the future.
In terms of shaping the future, Betsoft has always been mobile led, but social gaming and in-game promotions as a way of making social connections will be the next big thing. It is most likely we will see increased gamification for ever more experiential play. We have launched Take the Prize™, our first in-game promo tool with real time notifications, and this will be developed further to enhance player engagement. Tournaments with real time updated leader boards and notifications will be next. However, we have even more in the pipeline: the 2022 promo roadmap will bring considerably more excitement to players.
The blockchain will bring more transparency to gaming and increase both the visibility and the perception of fair play which will be beneficial to the industry. However, the opportunity for in-game assets to become valuable in the real world is intriguing. Imagine you purchase an in-game product for a character, the current value is only in the game, but blockchain shows your ownership of the product and thus it could have real world value. Even if the game were to be withdrawn, the record of the transactions and purchases would still available and valid.
Many of our casino clients – both longstanding and new – are moving to crypto offerings and this is something we only expect to increase. As people become more comfortable with the concept and the security of the blockchain, more players will use this currency – as well as all the fiat currencies being used already. Crypto will be ‘ as well as’ and not ‘instead of’ for the foreseeable future.
In terms of trends, quality never goes out of fashion!
Let’s talk about the creative process. It is very important for a software company like yours to have a consistent production with always new themes and concepts in order not to bore the public. What are you inspired by? How do you collect feedback from your players to keep improving your offer?
Betsoft’s original founding ethos was to be the best cinematic gaming content supplier and that has not changed. From players who know our earliest releases to those who are finding Betsoft content today, they all recognise the core quality and humour that mark out our slots.
Betsoft is an entertainment business first. Our clients and players come to us for great gameplay. We appeal across demographics: if you were to pick any theme or storyline – magic; adventure’ dragons; prehistory; aliens; treasure hunters; mad scientists; cops & robbers – Betsoft will have a great game that appeals to new players and high rollers alike.
Furthermore, all our releases have ‘legs’; the more you play them, the more fun you find in them. Return to Paris™ for example, is a fantastically detailed slot and more like a film than a game. We developed a ‘Movie Night’ campaign which gave us great co-branding and merchandising opportunities. Return to Paris™ is currently nominated in several award categories so we are delighted it is getting the recognition it deserves.
Creativity is essential across the whole business though: our Design and Product teams are second to none and we have also invested heavily in the back end technology to make the games run smoothly. We run focus groups and test our games rigorously with a pool of players who possess a range of different play styles. We then use the data collected to fine-tune the final products for the perfect balance. Client feedback is also actively sought and key takeaways are implemented.
What are the most successful games you have in your portfolio so far?
There are so many ways of assessing a game’s popularity long-term and short-term such as by bets wagered, awards won and so on. Some of our older releases are still massively popular with certain demographics and regions.
Some countries or regions have an affiliation with characters or themes; but generally, it is the mix of gameplay, RTP and features that keep players coming back. Our A/V is outstanding on every release – we are a benchmark in the industry for this. Our narratives/themes are hugely entertaining and always in sync with the features to create engagement and to give all round experiential gaming.
Most Betsoft releases have base games that switch into second screens once a feature is triggered. That ‘constantly getting a new experience’ feeling appeals across all player demographics. Mr Macau™ and Stacked ™ have some of the best examples of this. It is these details and their constant entertainment value that keep players coming back to Betsoft. Our games have mix of volatilities so there are some releases offering frequent wins and some offering very big wins!
Top Five releases:
Alkemor’s Element’s
Thai Blossoms™
When you play them, you will see why!
What are your next releases? Do you have any surprises planned for your fans that you can give us a preview of?
We have a number of new releases in production. Gemini Joker™ is due out 26th May 2022, followed by Book of Helios™ in June, with plenty more sequels and new themes coming. We are developing more enhancement and gamification tools following the launch of Take the Prize™. We also work ahead: our Q3 Games Roadmap will be with our clients by the end of this month.
We relaunched our Client Area to make it super simple for clients to access the assets and we are mid re-design of our website. We are also planning a very full social calendar so plenty of surprises to come this summer.
Betsoft Gaming – Beyond Innovation
