The folks at Dice London don’t believe people like to read anymore. Let’s hope they aren’t totally right. Otherwise, I am out of a job. But until that happens I have a few minutes to spare to write about their fantastic new initiative Dice Studio.
Dice Studio is a unique casino game review site. I caught up with Dice London, CEO, Gwen Andrieux to talk to him about the origins of the idea and much more.
What is Dice Studio?
DiceStudio.com provides a vehicle for gaming companies to efficiently and cost-effectively expand their marketing reach to a wider audience. DiceStudio.com is more than the usual gaming portal; we are the only independent site with video reviews of the best real money casino games.
Where did the idea come from to create a video review site for casino games?
People no longer read online, they watch. Dice Studio has been created to bridge the gap between the online casino industry, and the highly engaged online community. We want to be the destination for anyone interested in real money gaming. We believe that finding information about casino games and slots should be quick, fun and entertaining. The online video game community have been sharing videos for years – we thought it was about time that RMG entered the same arena. With less and less differentiation between operators, we believe that attracting new players will increasingly be decided by the experience of playing the games themselves and video is a great way of showing how much fun they can be.
With the eSports industry booming and video game content becoming ever more expansive, how are the casino industry games going to keep up with the pace and level of demand for more story based interactive games?
That’s a good question. I think there is an increasingly discerning audience out there who have grown up playing video games, and much of the content provided by the casino industry doesn’t really compete as far as player experience, immersion, and peer to peer competitiveness is concerned. The Industry needs to up its game, and that means operators being brave, taking some risks and promoting their content more effectively.
Odobo burst onto the scene with a platform that allowed non-industry makers of games to develop for RMG, and the hope was that out of that pool would come some non-traditional approaches to gameplay. But it’s a two-way street, and operators need to be prepared to educate and promote new games that can appeal to a non-traditional casino customer that contain the kinds of quality graphics, stories and immersive game-playing experience that these players are looking for.
People don’t know what they want. How does the team at Dice London manage to overcome this hurdle and create compelling content?
We are not in the business of telling people what they should like. Instead, we are offering a glimpse of what is out there, encouraging people to try the games and demystifying some of the barriers that still exist with gambling games. We believe that with more and better information that hopefully is presented in an entertaining and easily digestible form, people will want to try them out for themselves.
The recent players strike at PokerStars shows a discord between customers and game providers. It seems as though the game providers are creating a game construct that their customers don’t want…how do you ensure your customers don’t fall into the same trap?
Again, we are not an operator; we are an information portal. I think that we could play a role in helping operators reach a new generation of customers, but we are content providers, we are profiling those games that we think are worthy of attention, and we hope our customers will be interested in. We come from a background of making content; we tell stories, and I think do it pretty well. The industry as a whole has not been great at promoting their content – this is a first step in presenting games to customers in a different, and we hope more compelling way.
How are humans soaking in content these days? How are you learning from this?
Content is a big word, but human beings are hungry for it, but more and more it’s going to be important to control how that content is presented. We thought it was crazy that in the majority of cases the only video exposure of casino games were uploads by customers. People want content, but they also want that content to be of sufficient quality to spend the time watching. Hopefully, our unique skill set here at Dice London allows us to produce quality content that people want to watch but with our industry background, also be sensitive to the needs of operators and game developers. There is a great story to tell here – it’s just not being told.
Your recent ‘Make Some Noise‘ campaign was very PaddyPoweresque. Where do you get your inspiration from?
Well, we take that as a huge compliment we are a very small but very creative agency with, I think, an unusually prescient understanding of the RMG industry. We originate all our creativity in-house and also have production capacity here too. From copywriting to production to final delivery, we do everything, which allows us to be extremely cost effective. We work with clients during the process to help them formulate a strategic approach then make their marketing budget go further than it might otherwise. Being nominated for Best Marketing Campaign at the BOF awards was a great vindication of how much we have achieved in our first year. 2016 is already looking very exciting with more great campaigns being developed. Inspiration is only part of the story, of course, understanding the objectives of the client and the peculiarities of the gaming industry help too. We only really do gambling, and we feel our experience in this area means that we can offer something a bit different from a big agency that takes the same approach as selling beer or washing powder.
