One size fits all does not suggest a sharp focus on the player

Understanding players is a different challenge from measuring them. Helen Walton, co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of G.Games, came to gaming from consumer brands and marketing, including a stint at Unilever, bringing a perspective on customers shaped well beyond the traditional gambling industry.

She questions whether an industry increasingly focused on data, personalisation and faster product development is always asking the right questions about the people behind the metrics. Following her participation in Soft2Bet’s Player Experience Academy at SBC Summit in Lisbon, Walton discusses why meaningful innovation remains difficult, what gambling can learn from mainstream gaming, the potential of multiplayer experiences and why knowing your player requires more than optimising a funnel.

Q: You came into gaming from consumer brands rather than gambling, having worked at companies including Unilever before spending years in branding. What did that background teach you about understanding consumers that you think the gambling industry still gets wrong about understanding players?

Helen Walton: FMCG is laser-focused on customer experience - how customers become aware of, think about, purchase and use a product. Igaming is often a little too focused on what I might call the grind - shoving players in the top of a funnel and ignoring those who fall out as they force them through to the most valuable end point. The player - the person - gets lost in that process. 

I’ll never forget a market research exercise we did while I worked at Unilever. There was a woman keeping a diary that we were reading as part of holistic customer connection (ah the old glory days of marketing!). She was a really hard working cleaning lady, and day after day she mentioned having a shower after work. It was this moment of happiness and relaxation for her. Thinking about how to make the product she used in that moment really special became a mission for me. 

I try to bring that experience to gaming. What does a player really care about? What makes something part of their every day. Don’t get so caught up in features and metrics that you forget the experience and the whole person.

Q:  You have argued for years that real-money gaming should learn more from video games and social games. Yet the industry still relies heavily on relatively solitary, repetitive experiences. Why has meaningful innovation in player experience proved so difficult?

Helen Walton: It’s hard. The whole industry is bound up in a treadmill and breaking out of that is incredibly risky. Stuff fails all the time. Why would you try something that might not work when you have something that you know does work?

I think a lot of people have tried tinkering - small changes. And when those haven’t proved a huge success, they went back to safety. 

But we have seen big launches with daring innovations - look at the work that went into the first Evolution gameshows. And remember that they didn’t take off immediately! But Evolution had built real long-term support and the games grew their audience steadily. 

Q: You began in this industry with the ambition of making real-money gaming more like the games people already choose to play for entertainment. More than a decade later, has your definition of a genuinely good player experience changed?

Helen Walton: Our ambition hasn’t changed. Can we make games that add in some of the fun that is considered normal in other formats to real money. We started with gameshows. Now we are bringing battle royale to slots. At the heart of that, we are continually asking if formats can adapt and change in order to engage with human behaviours and drivers - pride, engagement, competition.

Q: You have spoken about the enormous audience that enjoys games but does not necessarily play traditional slots. Is the industry spending too much time optimising the experience for existing players rather than asking why millions of other gamers are not interested in its products at all?

Helen Walton: Yes. And we are getting worse at it. 

The evidence is there. An ageing player base and new cohorts of players spending less time and money on traditional casino games. And yet studios - and operators - are excitedly announcing that they can deliver AI slots in a day. Great. Did anyone ask for that?

It’s the classic innovator’s dilemma - you over create incremental innovation for an ever smaller, ever more valuable audience.

Q: You are now making a significant bet on multiplayer through a new game you have just launched, bringing competition and shared experience into what has traditionally been an individual activity. What changes psychologically when another human being becomes part of the gambling experience?

Helen Walton: Well if we’ve got it right (which is not certain!), then competition allows you to feel pride in your play and care more about the playing experience as well as the win. 

The measure is if - for the group of players to whom this appeals - they are retained longer and spend more time and money with 99 Royale games than they previously did with other slots.

Q. Personalisation has become one of the industry's favourite trends, but there is a difference between understanding a player and simply becoming better at stimulating a response. Where, in your view, does good personalisation end and manipulation begin?

Helen Walton: AI will allow total personalisation. Book of Helen. But beyond a gimmick - will that be something I care about?

Just like all forms of content when there is a flood, you need gatekeepers who help share things you might enjoy, who guarantee quality, and who surprise you with things you didn’t know you’d like but love once you try them. Is that personalisation? Or is it curation?

Q: You sit on the UK Gambling Commission’s Industry Forum and have spoken about wanting gambling to be a sustainable and socially acceptable form of entertainment. Can better player experience and stronger player protection genuinely reinforce one another, rather than existing in tension?

Helen Walton: From a product point of view, I think it’s essential that our products have a really broad base. If only a tiny proportion of people gamble, then the case for prohibition gets stronger. By contrast, the larger the number of people who enjoy playing real money games, the more obvious it is that they are an accepted part of society.

I also believe - of course - that as a game designer, our job is to make games people love. So the answer to responsibility is not creating boring games people don’t care about! It is instead about regulator, player, operator and studio all working together within society 

Q: Your career in branding was built around understanding why consumers form relationships with products. In gambling, what creates that relationship over the long term and familiarity, competition, community, recognition, reward, or something harder to quantify?

Helen Walton: All of those things. When you ask players why they choose a particular game it’s often about familiarity, nostalgia and remembered wins, as much as about new features, buzz or a review. But let’s be clear - one of the main drivers of familiarity is position - and that is as much about a studio’s overall power in distribution and relationships as it is about the games themselves. I would never ever underestimate the importance of the commercial relationship in a player’s attachment to a product. 

Q: How did you define and design the workshop at the Player Experience Academy for the SBC Summit?

Helen Walton: Every operator and platform claims their gamification model is unique. 

But they all look the same to me!

And one size fits all does not suggest a sharp focus on the player base and what they want. It sounds more like collecting a bunch of cool ideas and tools and throwing them all at the wall in the hope one will stick.

Instead I’d like operators and studios to think far harder about what players enjoy and why - and then how to truly integrate tools or features into experiences.  

‍Discover more insights, interviews and perspectives on the future of player experience.

‍Helen Walton is Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of G.Games, with more than a decade of experience in the iGaming industry. Before moving into gaming, she worked across consumer brands, media and marketing, including roles and projects involving Unilever, Boots, Channel 4 and the National Trust. Her work at G.Games has focused on developing new approaches to real-money gaming, drawing on ideas from gameshows, social and video gaming and, more recently, multiplayer formats. Walton is also a member of the UK Gambling Commission’s Industry Forum.

‍