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CryptoLogic
Justin Thouin, Vice President of Business Development and Product Management at CryptoLogic, spoke to Casino International about recent developments at this exciting online casino and gaming content provider
The online gaming market is crowded right now, but one content provider has stood out consistently over the past few years – CryptoLogic. The main reason for this is their licensed products, with a range of games based on Marvel Comics characters, and now a deal's in place with the likes of DC Comics, Warner Bros, Paramount, Street Fighter, and gaming phenomenon Call of Duty now gracing their platform. Justin Thouin talked us through recent developments.
Casino International: Call of Duty is one of the biggest games in the world on its various console and PC platforms – you must be delighted to be offering that to your customers.
Justin Thouin: We are hugely excited by Call of Duty. One of theOur major goal strategies that we have aat CryptoLogic is to be the top online casino software provider in the world. One of the major lynchpins behind that strategy is to be the unquestioned leader in providing branded content to the online gaming and casino world.
Call of Duty is the most recent branded game that we have launched. Call of Duty is the most popular first-person shooter video game in the history of video gaming. It has a fantastic cross-over appeal to many of the people who enjoy online gambling.
We have been able to capture the essence of the video game into our slot game in the icons, in the animations, and specifically in the bonus round where you enter into the first-person shooter arena and the better you do, the more money you make.
CI: You recently announced a deal with DC Comics/Warner Bros, if I remember right…
JT: As I mentioned, Oone of our goals is to be the unquestioned leader in branded content. Apart from Call of Duty, we have also announced two other, very different, deals – a deal with DC Comics/Warner Brothers and DC ComicsParamount Studios. We have gained exclusive rights for Batman, Superman, Wonderw Woman, The Green Lantern and The Flash online. Batman and Superman are, arguably, two of the largest consumer brands that exist today if you look at the success of The Dark Knight, if you look at the success of the Batman and Superman franchises over the years. These are huge, international brands.
You’ll see Warner Brothers and DC Comics games launched in the fourth quarter of this year.
We also signed a 20-title deal with Paramount for the exclusive rights for titles such as Forrest Gump, Braveheart, Beverley Hills Cop, Ghost, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Beowulf...the list goes on. In addition to that we have the ability to create for them a branded casino based on the Paramount games. We are very excited about that – needless to say we have been busy in the branded content space.
CI: How has your strategy changed since the US market effectively closed with the UIEGA? How much success have you had in expanding your customer base with that market gone?
JT: We are being much more aggressive going out therein licensing our software. Our goal is to have as many of our games available at as many top operators as possible, and we have been very successful thus far in creating interest and demand for the games. Operators have been very receptive in terms of how flexible we are in the ways that we can get the games live to them.
There has been a complete revitalisation of CryptoLogic. Pre UIEGA, we had a small set of customers that were growing very, very rapidly. Post-UIEGA, with increased competition, those customers couldn’t grow as aggressively or as quickly because there was so much more competition in Europe. That has forced CryptoLogic to change the way that we operate. It has forced us to take on far more customers than we had in the past. We have had to increase our sales force, we have had to revitalise our presence at trade shows, we have had to create new sales collateral, we have had to really go out there and tell the market ‘look, CryptoLogic is open for business. We have some fantastic content and we want to make sure that we can work with you to make sure we can provide that content to you in as simple and bespoke a way as possible.’ That wasn’t the message we were communicating pre-UIEGA. Also, we have decided to focus solely on casino – formerly, we were a provider of poker as well. We have merged our poker network with Boss Media, the iInternational pPoker nNetwork, so that Boss Media provides the poker software to our customers and we focus solely on casino so that we can be the best in the world at casino.
It’s really been a revitalisation for CryptoLogic and we are now very well positioned for growth moving forward.
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