The gaming world just keeps evolving, from arcades, to computers, to consoles, to apps and to streaming, but is winning just a matter of chance or is skill involved.
Royal Wins Corp. is a company where Lady Luck does not hold sway. The innovative digital games studio is pioneering skill game wagering and betting on mobile casual games.
Established in 2014, it designs, develops and operates real money-wagering skill games, to disrupt and dominate the online gaming space such that all players of legal age can play and win life-changing jackpots and prizes on their skill instead of only on chance and odds.
The company's primary innovation and intellectual property centres around solving big data problems around skill gaming mechanics, algorithms pertaining to balancing cash jackpots, game difficulty modules, and maintenance of Return-to-Player (RTP) percentages.
Proactive sat down with Royal Wins Sydney-based CEO, Peter Gan to find out more about the games firm’s plans.
Proactive: Can you explain how skill game wagering and betting on games can overcome chance and odds?
Peter Gan: Skill games, especially pure skill games, by their very definition, are games where outcomes are dependent on the skill of the player. They are not chance-dependent, such as spinning the wheel or rolling the dice, it's how good you are at playing a certain game. And you win or you lose, depending on how good you are. If you are good, or very good, then your chances of winning are high or very high, and if you are not so good, we make adjustments for that. But it's very much a case of betting on yourself and your skills to win a prize.
In Royal Wins case, it can either be cash as in when playing our games on our Kash Karnival app, or a non-cash prize when playing on Arcade Corner. The beauty of our games, and any skill games, is that instead of playing against Lady Luck, you are actually playing against a pool of players. We collect data from everyone who's played or are playing our games and we work out exactly what the skill segments and tranches are. Then our algorithms work out if you're playing at a certain level, and we adjust the level of difficulty appropriately.
We know that people have different levels of skill, and one size just doesn't fit all, so we tailor the level of difficulties to the games as you progress. No one likes to continually lose. So if you are not as skilled as the rest of the pack, it's very disheartening if you're continually losing and there's just no motivation or incentive to come back. So if you are not as skilled as the pack, we adjust your difficulty and you still get the opportunity to win. And if you are very good, you will continue winning. The trick is adjusting the prize to your level of skill.
We had our games audited by Dr Dan Sahl, who is the director of the Center of Gaming Innovation at the University of Nevada. He put it very succinctly when he said: “Royal Wins has solved the problem of static game difficulty by developing an adaptive system that continually assesses each individual player's performance in their game against the aggregate performance data of all players. This skill monitoring system ensures that players receive a skill challenge tailored to their individual ability.” I could not have put it better myself. That's why it’s often a misnomer when people say: “Oh, this is a gaming and wagering game, and you know whether you win or lose, depending on how the computer determines.”
That’s not it at all. Our games are best described as competitive rather than chance. When we started the company we latched on to several trends that were happening in the social gaming space. Time is a factor for Millennials, who are forming a larger and larger segment of the playing population, and more women were playing as well. These are players that have grown up with game consoles, such as the Xbox or PlayStation, where dexterity and hand/eye coordination is inherent, and they now form the backbone of the playing instinct. Also, social animals that we are, we like to play in groups against people. And that's why one of the most prolific gaming platforms is Skillz, which has tapped into exactly that, and it has worked. So, think more competition, less Lady Luck. It very much speaks to our moto: ”Winning Differently.” We offer the player the opportunity to win based on their skill, regardless of whether you're ahead in the middle or the tail of the pack.
Your current flagship product is the Kash Karnival hypercasual gaming app, can you tell us more about it and the markets it is sold in?
Kash Karnival is the first of our platforms, our pure skill prize money platform. It is not just playing a game to win money, it's tapping into your ability to know that the outcome is reliant on your skill, not luck, and most of all it must entertain. The games you'll find on the platform are typically hyper-casual games like Angry Birds or Candy Crush - easy to learn, hard to master.
As I mentioned, our target audience, the Millennials don't have hours and hours to sit at their PC or console and just shoot at random NPCs in a game that goes on for forever and a day. We provide a momentary escape, 15 to 20 minutes in the day, where you can be entertained, playing something that you're used to, that you have grown up with and that you are good at.
I mentioned Skills earlier on and I have a lot of time for that platform. But with Royal Wins you don't have to wait for a competitor to come on, you don't have to wonder whether you are going to be trashed in the first round and then having to look for another competition to play. You don't have to put down too much money, and you can you win money. And if not, just try again. Our approach is not so much trying to get the player to stay there for hours on end, it's just to pay us a few visits a day, three visits a day, four visits a day, and we're quite happy with that.
In addition to Kash Karnival, we've recently launched Arcade Corner, our non-cash prize platform, where you can play skill games. And then we'll be launching Kash Royale, our player versus player platform by the end of the year. We'll be launching all three pretty much anywhere in the world where we're not contravening any local jurisdiction, as well as in those areas like the UK or the US where they require local licenses. That's part and parcel of our strategy of geographical expansion.
So talking of geographical expansion … having listed in Toronto in July, a month later you unveiled the acquisition of Antics Gaming, a Las Vegas-based developer of skillbased games for Android and iOS platforms. What does this move into the US market bring to Royal Wins?
We have been chomping at the bit to expand not only our product portfolio, but our geographical footprint. The acquisition of Antics really ticks both our product and geographic goals strategy. Our games such as Kash Karnival have been developed in-house. We own all the IP and we own the black box, the algorithms behind the artwork that you see. But what we are doing is we're aiming to expand our portfolio of games exponentially. So this involves acquiring innovative and adventurous studios like Antics who are at the cutting edge. They've got a close affiliation with the Center for Gaming Innovation in Nevada through Dan Sahl, and we're very pleased to have that relationship. In addition to acquisitions, we're looking to looking to partner with other studios to put their games on our platform. Our platform is licensed to take and pay out real money, so it's an opportunity for studios to monetize some of the games that they have.
So, Antics is very much part and parcel of our product strategy. It is a Nevada LLC company, and Becky Harris, the ex-chair of the Nevada Gaming Commission and Dan Sahl were the creative force behind Antics, so it's very comforting to know that we've got that sort of enthusiasm and skill in the US. Antics will be our home base in the US and it allows us an operating base in what is undoubtedly the most lucrative gaming market in the world. But having both Dan and Becky on board just gives us that guidance into the regulatory landscape that's there, which they are familiar with and already have established relationships there.
The game that comes with Antics, the first one, is Winning with Words, which, as the name might imply, is a word game and it starts to form the foundation of the diversification and the expansion of our products. Right now we have hyper-casual games based on hand/eye coordination, then we move into board games, word games, and then we'll expand into card games, with Royal Rummy coming out in the Fall. That pretty much paints a picture of both our product expansion strategy and diversification and our geographical expansion and diversification.
Antics is very much a cornerstone, and the first in a series of acquisitions and partnerships that we will look to embark on over the next 12 to 18 months. Scale is important, you need to attain a certain critical mass to action a lot of these initiatives and we're off to a running start. You personally have a varied background, much of it involved with energy technology.
What bought you to the world of games and what do you think you bring to the company?
I’ve always been involved in technology, I have an engineering degree, and my career started with Accenture (NYSE:ACN) and IBM, so it's very much in the blood. I'm not a hardcore gamer, though I play a mean game of Tetris so I understand it. But a few years ago I met the two creative forces behind Royal Wins, Rob and Lukie. They are the most creative guys I've met, but like most creatives, they are not particularly interested, nor biased towards corporate and organizational structures.
So I saw the company and I thought this is a diamond in the rough. They were keen to get capitalized. They had a few very strong believers in them when they started, and they started off well, but it was time to grow beyond the garage and expand their wings. I've been running companies for the last 20 years, both listed and non-listed, so I can navigate that world fairly well. And I think it’s a very symbiotic relationship - I can understand where the markets are coming from, I can understand what people are looking for, and I can appreciate the trends on a macro basis.
While Rob and Lukey they are extremely happy to say just leave us alone to create games that will change the world. And I say that's exactly what you should do, boys. So, hopefully, I can really bring a bit of structure and direction to the company, perhaps say no to a few things, and push things in the right direction. But I am very honored and very proud to be on board.
What can Royal Wins shareholders expect in the short to medium term?
We’re already well on the way of building our core skill games vertical, so they can expect more product diversification and expansion; they can expect more geographical expansion; they can expect greater incentives, prizes, competitions, etc. on our pure skill platform. And as we grow and as we achieve and surpass critical mass, we can start looking at other gaming verticals such as blockchain games.
Blockchain games are the flavour of the month, and have tapped into another very key psyche of the gaming population, which is ownership. We come from a very good ecosystem where we have digital assets and characters within games, which lend themselves very much into the NFT (non-fungible tokens) space and blockchain games.
We're also looking to eSports and have got an ongoing relationship with Amuka Esports, Canada's biggest eSports tournament organizer. Our license also allows for games of chance and the like, so who knows what the future holds. However, at the moment, we’re focused on building our core capability, expanding the customer base, expanding the product base, expanding the geographical base, and hitting that critical mass.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com