Social casinos: a multi-billion dollar business (Part2)

How can companies in the social casino industry become visible and competitive on the gambling market?

The social casino industry isn’t for those with a weak heart. The sector, as gambling news report, is filled with high profile casino companies, and yet the effective size of the casino category pales in comparison to other strongly competitive categories. It goes without saying that it’s difficult for mobile casino developers to stand out from the crowd. The main question here is how to do that?

What sells in the social casino business?

The analgue of the product packing in the online sphere is certainly the app icon. Sometimes the icons only have the purpose ofattractivngthe attention and certainly that brings big advantages. However, as Justin Neustadter, representative of the casino game studio Product Madness, points out, “for mobile game browsers, all you have to sell them on your game is your icon and your name,” 

• The icon of a game key factor in selling gaming products

• The narration behind a game is of equal importance as the icon

• “Test your icons on the market!”: the best way to come to successful solution

Justin Cooper, chief creative officer at Rocket Games, claims that the whole process of launching a game icon must pass thruogh a period of testing. Cooper admits that he’s not always right when it comes to choosing icon imagery. To prove himself wrong, he tests icons often.

Product Madness, as online gambling sites in Germany report, takes testing to the extreme, cross referencing their results with other data. “We rely heavily on Google Play A/B testing measurement, but also combine that data with install rate, store visits and conversion data,” Neustadter says. Thus, if the install rateof a game’s decreases when the icon changes, or less people become paying users, the Product Madness team has serious reasons include some changes in the icon or to do more in depth testing.

For mobile casino games, the icons are often of slot machine reels and the names include words like “slots,” “spin” or “roll,” Neustadter says. However, while the icon is certainly a good starting place many experts claim that for a successful mobile or online casino games there has to be something else. Namely, there has to be a dynamics in the design or a story to tell.

Story to be learned from the best

While players definitely related to a game first by the icon the casino games don’t typically benefit only through the imagery but in order for games to distinguish another element must be included: the narration together with other features of the icons.

According to Cooper, when using faces within the composition of a casino icon, a mid-sized, more readable face looking directly at the viewers performs better than huge faces or smaller figures. Think of the small canvas as a story, he adds, where players can almost tell what’s going on outside the tiny window of the app icon.



These conclusions by Cooper, as online gambling sites in EU report, are derived from the test his team made on the Riches of Zeus Slots game. Rocket Games found that the app icon with the largest facial image didn’t test as well as the image of Zeus facing the viewer and holding a trident. “He’s just an old man if you can’t see his awesome body and staff,” says Cooper. By presenting large faces one looses the story that is told. The space is limited and everything must be presented in the right proportion so that the story comesin the front.