Reading Time: 7 minutes
Kevin Corti is the Head of Game Design at RAW iGaming.
RAW iGaming has been a casino game provider since early 2022. Its goal is to act and think differently in a market that many consider to be hampered by risk aversion. RAW’s motto ‘Stand out or Stand down’ is no surprise. It has made a commitment to apply AI in all aspects of its business, and most importantly to product development.
What are the benefits of AI for casino game providers? And how can AI be used specifically?
Our teams at RAW, like many others in the industry, try to read as many AI articles and experiment with as many AI technologies and tools as we can. This is driven by our desire to provide a better and more successful gaming experience to players.
We feel experts in AI one evening, and then the next day we are novices again. Artificial Intelligence is advancing at a rapid pace.
Does this sound familiar to you? You’re not the only one who feels that AI software, companies and services are appearing in your LinkedIn feeds every hour or minute.
RAW has divided this into two distinct areas.
- The process of creating new casino games.
- Our vision for enhanced player experience.
1: The production pipeline.
Here’s how a gaming provider organizes and empowers its teams in order to design, develop and create new online games. Most organisations will find this to be the easiest ‘AI’ fruit. We would even argue that studios need to do the minimum to stay competitive. Adopting just a few AI tools and technologies can make a big difference. If there’s a hypothetical “average” artist, animator or mathematician (or developer, designer or product manager), AI will quickly elevate them to a higher level. On the other hand, if you don’t do this, they will soon become ‘below-average’. In an industry like ours, your business and yourself cannot afford that.
Where can AI be used in your studio?
First, coworkers should realize that AI is not meant to replace our team, but to enhance and supercharge it. In this early stage of AI adoption it’s only natural that some colleagues (artists for example) might see tools like Midjourney or DALL-E a threat to employment. RAW sees it as an opportunity to encourage our artists to be creative, experiment, explore different avenues of automating rote tasks and communicate their thoughts to other team members, stakeholders, and customers.
Why limit yourself to just two or three themes when choosing a theme for your game? Why not try a dozen options? Or a hundred? It’s even easier now that you don’t have to increase the amount of effort. When you have decided on a theme, visualize a variety of ways to implement it. It is certain that this will lead to a slew of attention-grabbing and fantastic looking games in the near future.
Many times, people who are in product roles but lack artistic training find it difficult to convey the vision that they have in mind. It’s amazing how much money and time has been spent on digital products, only to have the product owner apologetically say, “That’s really not what I was thinking.” Now they can create visuals and better communicate their vision, saving both time and resources (and reducing conflicts).
The procedural creation of art assets is a powerful tool. The symbols offer potential efficiencies, but are perhaps more suitable for F2P casual game developers who have to create vast libraries of collectible or purchaseable items. Casino game providers could use it for the creation of Royals, or UI elements. This approach is particularly useful if your house/product style can be incorporated into the tools that you use.
AI-driven code assistants are becoming more popular among developers. These tools change the way they work by accelerating code creation, improving precision and providing more space for creative problem solving. Amazon CodeWhisper is a great example. Developers can simply write down the code they want and it will recommend a code snippet. They can then modify this code as needed. The assistant will offer suggestions as they draft or modify the code. That’s only the beginning. These assistants act as proactive sentinels – identifying errors early and reducing the time spent debugging. AI code assistants also improve the quality of developer code by providing expert insight to create efficient, durable, and secure scripts. These tools are also useful for learning unfamiliar programming languages. These tools will optimize your entire development process regardless of the nature of your project. Many of the solutions are already being used by leading development teams.
With a little help, your staff can quickly gain productivity and empowerment by using tools like ChatGPT. It can be used for multiple purposes, such as drafting, crafting, or refining content.
Consider the possibility of AI-driven character animated, text translation and spoken dialogue, as well as the creation of audio effects, music, and audio effects. AI is likely to affect every aspect of game development.
There’s more to AI than just a computer.
Studio owners in a regulated market are bound to have some limitations in terms of how much AI they can use. The games industry as a whole is less regulated; they don’t certify games which cannot be altered (without expensive re-certification). However, we do and this means that we are at an advantage when it comes time to apply AI in areas such as dynamic difficulty adjustment, optimised game economy, or on the fly procedural content creation. Multivariate testing is not possible for art, logos or UI in games. Changes mean re-certification, which means cost.
We are B2B providers of games, so we have a limited understanding of our players. We can’t communicate with the players because they are just an ID number in a database. Personalisation in games and adaptive gameplay is therefore limited. To explore these options, we would need to work closely with our casino and aggregator partner on a technical and commercial level.
The AI industry will still benefit from key activities like the analysis of players’ behaviour, fraud detection and early detection problem gambling behaviors. The response time for customer support (and the likely quality of the experience as well) will improve rapidly. In other industries, AI-driven support is already better for the customer. AI has a clear potential to match players and interests in skill-based gaming, as well as for effective game recommendations. These activities, while somewhat detached from B2B, promise to improve player NGR and life value, which, of course, is to game providers and operators’ benefits.
2: The Product Offering
It is more difficult for an organization to apply AI directly to their product offerings – to create innovative new player experiences. However, this is where the business value will be generated. Business value will be derived. Remember that AI applications in product pipelines will soon cease to be differentiators, and become the minimum requirement for your organization to remain competitive.
The way each organization might use AI technology to achieve this will be up to them and their team – and no doubt kept under wraps till it hits the market. But the main driver should be: ‘How can AI lead to an engaging game that brings in new players and keeps them coming back?’
We have several projects underway at RAW, of which most we cannot yet reveal. However, we can talk about our new interactive character, VIBE, (which stands as ‘Virtual Intelligent Behaviour Engine.’) Slots games often have characters, but they are usually limited to being animated eye candy. They may be people, animals, or creatures who hover near the reels, and utter short dialogues whenever the player wins. This was an approach we felt hadn’t changed in decades, and it was time to move on to an AI-based solution.
In our Halloween 2023 video game Twisted Toy Stories(tm), ‘Juggy,’ an evil animatronic doll, is on a hunt for a group teenagers that are trying to discover his existence. Juggy’s AI is responsible for his psychopathic behavior, which is rather poetic, considering the subject of this article. RAW VIBE ™ allows us to create characters with complex personalities and compelling stories. Character interactions will be unlike anything else in the industry.
Two main challenges arise when using AI to improve your product: securing resources and adhering to regulatory requirements.
It is hard to identify the AI businesses, products, and services that could be of value. It will also be difficult to determine which of these businesses will still exist in a year. It will take time and effort for you to assess them. You should also consider whether these offerings are ready for your organization right now.
Consider, for instance, an intelligent chatbot offered by a SaaS provider that you may want to integrate in a product aimed at customers. Consider important topics such as network response time, message roundtrip completion rate, and service uptimes. It may be fine to have the occasional 10 second delay or lost message. How important is your service to the end-user experience? Does it just add a little icing to the cake or is it essential for generating revenue.
Second, regulatory issues remain the primary concern. Take the same chatbot as above. Imagine the advice it would give if unchecked and ignorant of the subtleties of responsible gambling.
After a period of experimenting with SaaS hosted externally, it is likely that organisations will want to bring the technology into-house. This will require recruitment, training, and R&D investment, but will also provide the level of control our clients and players will eventually demand. This will lead to the development of proprietary technologies and tools that can drive revenue growth, and inflate company valuations. At that point, the game studios would have received tremendous rewards.
Will it be simple and straightforward? Unlikely. We ask ourselves constantly at RAW: How long will the same old, same old be accepted as industry standard?
