Todd Haushalter, Chief Product Officer, Evolution Gaming.

Evolution Gaming first entered the iGaming market in 2006. Since then you have become market leader in the live casino space. How do you intend to remain as the market leader?

Innovation is at the core of everything we do, we are never content to sit back, and we are constantly looking to push the boundaries and provide players with the absolute best gaming experience possible. 

In 2019, we are now competing in the broader entertainment sphere and we need to be on people’s phones and tablets — that’s where they are living their lives. Our new titles such as Deal Or No Deal Live and MONOPOLY Live achieve this with innovative content that is entertaining and compelling enough to ensure that people play our games, instead of, or alongside, watching a movie or a box set or using social media. We are moving into a new era of ultra-entertaining and interactive Live Casino products with the creation of a whole new category of live game shows. It’s incredibly exciting for players and just as exciting for operators.

What innovations has Evolution Gaming displayed to enhance its customer offering. 

2019 has been a record year so far for us with a wide variety of new games being released. As mentioned above, our recently launched new titles in our growing range of game show style games such as Deal Or No Deal Live, MONOPOLY Live, Lightning Dice and Side Bet City have significantly enhanced our offering. Unlike traditional Live Casino games, our game show range involves many different levels for players to enjoy. Deal or No Deal Live, for example, is a multi-layered game that combines the suspense of the main game show with RNG-based qualifying and prize top-up rounds featuring slots-style random multipliers. As one of our most complex studio builds, the universally recognisable studio set, theme music and rich sound effects for UI actions perfectly recreates the atmosphere of the hit TV show providing an extremely fun game for players. In addition to this, our MONOPOLY Live blends Live Casino with the world’s most popular board game, complete with a live TV-style host, augmented reality and 3D Bonus rounds built around the adventures of MR. MONOPOLY.

Many of our games include enhancements revolving around slots-style multipliers, which add the chance of huge payouts. The results from our first two innovations in this area, Dream Catcher and Lightning Roulette, were astounding: players loved the games and both games broke all new game launch records at Evolution. Dream Catcher was the first to expose Live Casino to those who had never played before with exciting multipliers and Lightning Roulette used the innovation of RNG multipliers to become one of our most record-breaking games. We then saw this record broken once more with the immensely successful release of MONOPOLY Live.

Evolution recently added Lightning Dice to its award-winning Lightning range, please tell us more. 

Lightning Dice launched just over one month ago and is the younger sister of Lightning Roulette, building on our Lightning range of games. It’s a unique, first-of-its kind dice game, that includes random multipliers of up to 1000x and a custom-built Lightning Tower in an Art Deco styled environment. We felt that everyone loves dice, played with dice growing up, and understands how they work, yet there were no fun dice games in the online gaming world. We decided to change that by launching two new dice games at Evolution this year. With Lightning Dice, we went out of our way to keep the game simple but highly visual with the giant Lightning Tower where dice come tumbling down to make it possible to win big money. Our other new dice release this year was Super Sic Bo, where we took an ancient dice game and added our own touch with the random high payout RNG elements to make the game super-engaging. The reception to Super Sic Bo has been truly fantastic and is seeing huge player counts across the board!

Although mobile technology continues to be a key driver in the ever-changing iGaming industry, what other innovations does Evolution have to include in future games?

A great game needs to have so many different elements and those all need to be in perfect harmony with each other. Our games include many elements that are highly appealing to slot players. By incorporating elements such as RNG multipliers and augmented reality, we are providing players with super entertaining games and more chances to win big payouts. We are inventing entirely new ways to gamble online that are akin to becoming immersed in a favourite TV game show. A look at the comments in the player chat channel shows just how much players are loving this new style of gaming, the interaction and taking enjoyment from shared victories.

We will carry on with our perpetual mission to continue to innovate and provide our operators and their players with the very best games and we are focusing heavily on our expanding games show offering, so watch this space.