iGaming Business magazine Futures Report 2019 | Page 7

FUTURES REPORT
TECHNOLOGY IS
(ALMOST) EVERYTHING
Overlooking technology when scaling a business can lead to significant problems
further down the line. Mark Smith has a simple solution
A
simple, obvious fact for you: most content
studios take too long building games and
as a result, spend too much money doing so.
Whether you’re a start-up looking to get your
first titles out there or an established business
with an ever growing headcount, technology is
key to being efficient and staying competitive.
Don’t get me wrong, since the industry first
started to adopt HTML5 around six years ago,
great strides have been made. First came the
initial rush just to get existing games playable,
which carried us through to what we see
today with innovative features and rich player
experiences... but a lot more can be done,
especially in the process of how games are built.
As a start-up, there’s a lot of tangible, visible
stuff to draw your focus, but it’s crucial to not
overlook the importance of a solid, scalable
framework, or underestimate the effort involved
in building it. Your framework is the beating heart
of your games and if it’s not working as well as
it should, you might be joining the well-trodden
path of increasingly slow game deliveries and the
solution of just throwing more resource at it.
From experience, it takes 18 months minimum
“From experience, it takes
18 months minimum to
build something decent –
assuming you get it right,
which is tough if you haven’t
done it before!”
MARK SMITH
is commercial director
at EPIC industries,
having previously
worked at Bede
Gaming as head of
play and Ganapati as
commercial director.
EPIC Industries is
an independent,
UK-based studio,
specialising in
building games for
other providers and
operators in the
gambling industry.
It provides full build
and prototyping
services along with
licensing options to its
proprietary Slotworks
and Assetworks
framework.
to build something decent – assuming you get it
right, which is tough if you haven’t done it before!
So, rather than wait a long time to hit the
market, or release early and risk weakening your
technical stack, why not look outside for help?
The same can be said for existing businesses
that might be experiencing some of the
symptoms above, where it’s perhaps even harder
to realise your mature product isn’t all it could be
and you can hardly take time out to address it.
Turning to an external partner for help can
have many benefits. As a start-up you could
find yourself building instant credibility in the
marketplace with solid releases, see revenue
coming in when you need it most and have
the freedom to focus on other aspects of
your business while your technical partner
handles your deliveries. You can even have an
accelerated route to a mature technical solution if
you work with someone who offers that.
As an existing business, at a minimum you can
have extra resource on tap. More importantly,
you can get a different perspective on things that
could result in a fresh or at least revised technical
approach that might see you pushing beyond
your current limits.
Time is of the essence in this industry, and the
sooner you get to market at any stage of your
business, the sooner you make money. With an
agile and flexible partner, you could get to market
within nine months, a year-and-a-half faster than
you might when doing it on your own.
The trick to all this, of course, is picking the
right partner in the first place.
COMPANY PROFILE
•NAME EPIC INDUSTRIES •FOUNDED 2017•SECTOR GAMING SOFTWARE
•WEBSITE EPICINDUSTRIES.CO.UK
JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2019 • ISSUE 114 • 35