Are Celebrity IP Games the Next Big Thing? | Celebrity Games, Player Engagement & The Next Generation of iGaming | Simone Bacchin, Kerma Games

Hello and welcome back to another episode of iGaming Real Talk and today I have a very special guest with me here Simone from Kerma Games. When I first saw your brand name I thought it's very close to Karma so I thought it's just a mispronunciation or typo like you know it's a very cool name.

So as Kerma Games as I said we are like a premium casino studio and we do slots, instant win, crash games and we do also live casino. What set us apart from the rest in competition I'd say is not that we are not like a quantity studio we just don't like ship out 50 new titles per quarter but we are really really focusing on quality and especially the quality of the player experience and that is what set us apart.

I believe that like nowadays is crucial to see like a game studio as something more like an entertainment studio and understand the players and give them what actually they are looking for and that is what like our vision.

So for who doesn't know about Celebrity IP Games this is also something you do which caught my attention in our discussions earlier. So what are Celebrity IP Games and how are they different to other usual games?

Yeah so like that is like our key differentiator I'd say together with the quality and the infrastructure that is built to scale. Basically we have some agreement in place with real public figures and what we are doing is that we just don't slap a face on the game.

Okay that's what I thought.

Yeah it's not like that actually because in order for that to be efficient you have to do something different and mean that the real public figure has to live in the game not just sit on it.

So you create an all-around experience as such, how do you do that?

Exactly, the experience has to be all around and the player has to feel himself immersed in the game completely together with the characters, with the emotional rhythm that is in it. That gives to the players and to the operators a competitive advantage they cannot find elsewhere because they have a community and they can skip that trust gaining process that most of the operators have to do with normal games. Instead with us they already have this fidelity let's say.

So give me an example, is there a celebrity that we all know that's working already with you and how do you create this for that celebrity?

Yeah I take like Snoop Dogg as an example.

Of course yeah.

He's super well known, everyone knows him and especially people knows him for like his vibe, his character but he's very unique no? We just don't want to put like Snoop's face in our game but the game has to embody his personality. That's why when we develop the games we do it with some specific songs that are fitting really well the games, we do it with some specific behavior.

For example like when Snoop Dogg is dealing the cards in our blackjack games, Snoop Dogg Blackjack, he's smoking a cigar, he's chilling, you know he's like living the life like it's exactly like how Snoop Dogg fans imagine Snoop Dogg in everyday life. And that is like what a standard studio game cannot offer to a customer, to our players.

Because when a player starts to play this kind of games, any operator will receive a competitive advantage that you have like a player that from the first moment is emotionally invested in what he's doing in that game. And that is like our philosophy and how we see the things and how we see how the world is moving because if you think about it like the generation is switching and now all the players immediately walk away when they see that something is missing.

Very interesting and what other celebrities are you working with at the moment?

So at the moment for what I can say we have launched this week Lil Baby.

Yeah oh wow, Lil Baby he won a premiere award.

Is obviously like we have to be honest like in Europe and not everyone knows him, yeah Europe or outside America I'd say. Unlike for the US which is a huge market for us, is huge and he's a great personality too. We went out this week with Strict Dice which is a dice game developed with him and we are launching other two three games this month.

We already signed another American rapper and as we mentioned we have already in our roadmap two huge celebrities, one for LatAm and one for Europe.

Sounds really interesting and something new and it's also very innovative in that sense that you're banking on the community and the audience of these celebrities so I think that's a very new concept.

Yeah exactly like as we were saying before like nowadays having a competitive advantage and differentiation is the key in our industry. Yeah of course, bring something new to the table, something fresh because first of all we are in the middle of a generational switch. People are moving and like this and exactly the other generations which I don't even know how to call but yeah Gen Z and so on.

Yeah exactly and so like who will win in this phase is who is gonna get what's before the others and move and switch the focus of the company towards that. It will be like the next winner in the next decade for sure.

That's a very very good point, thank you for sharing that and also thank you for joining me and sharing what you do at Kerma Games it's really interesting and I look forward to checking these games out when they come out.

Yeah okay we'll speak soon, thanks a lot.

Thank you Simone and that's it for today for this interview. Thank you for watching, do share your thoughts in the comments below, let us know what you think about celebrity IP games, is it going to be the next big thing? Connect with Simone as well, I'll see you on the next episode.