Public Gaming Magazine Sept/Oct 2021

PJ: What has been the feedback so far from the lotteries? RF: The response from our lottery customers has been extremely positive. Of course, they fully understand how the prospect of winning a progressive jackpot prize drives playership. And, they appreciate that the modularity of IWG’s InstantRGS architecture facilitates rapid innovation. "Launching brand new game technologies, like progressive jackpots, without needing to orchestrate the work across multiple technology partners is critical to lotteries competing in the fast- paced digital world." PJ: What have you learned from your rollout of progressive jackpot games? RF: It is clear that for players, games with rolling jackpot prizes stand apart. But it is an evolutionary process. Based on current data, lotteries need to think of progressive e-Instants as a distinct category. To retain players, they need to think about adding a new progressive game about once per quarter. This pace keeps the category fresh with new content. PJ: Is there concern that you will start to see jackpot fatigue from players? Typically, purchase choices for an individual game might range from $0.50 to $20. We structure all games so that players have the opportunity to win all jackpot prizes from any purchase amount of their choosing. To us, this is the responsible way to offer progressive jackpots to lottery players. PJ: How has the category evolved since December? RF: In December, we launched our first game with a standalone jackpot. In July, the Virginia Lottery launched our first linked game where multiple e-Instant games compete for the same linked progressive jackpot prizes. The linked jackpot is branded Big Money Jackpots. All games linked to the Big Money Jackpots bramd share the same bonus mechanic. This creates a consistent look and feel to the linked jackpots feature across multiple e-Instants, independent of each individual game’s theme and play style. "Sometimes individual jackpots will link to a single game. Other times individual jackpots will link to multiple games." To us, a mix of both scenarios works best. This ensures the widest mix of play mechanics and prize structures. PJ: From an operations perspective, how do you deliver progressive jackpot functionality to your lottery customers? How does the integration process work? RF: The entirety of the progressive jackpot module is contained fully within our InstantRGS™ (remote game server). This was really important to us when we were developing the product, and has been hugely beneficial to our lottery partners. "The process of adding progressive jackpot games is no different to that of any other game we supply, which means there’s no technical support of any kind required at the iLottery platform level." Our solution’s API also provides lotteries with the capability to show real-time jackpot values on their websites, mobile apps and email campaigns. For us, this is the true brilliance of our innovative jackpot module. We’ve created an exciting new game genre that can be seamlessly added to a lottery’s online offering and instantly made available to a wide range of players. Going forward, we will spec all of our game innovations to be fully supported by our InstantRGS. This ensures that we can provide new game concepts at a pace expected by internet- minded players. RF: Not at all. Initially, we have no game where the top jackpot is more than $200,000. So, the appeal is not about the size of the jackpot. Instead, it is all about the fun that comes along with dynamically changing prizes. Over time, we plan to offer some games with low 7-figure top prizes, but for now we don’t see a need to go much higher than that. And, even in that case, we expect to continue to include low and mid-tier jackpots that can be won more frequently. PJ: So, what’s next for IWG? RF: 2020-2021 has been about building out progressive jackpot games as a distinct category. We now have a full complement of these games on our roadmap. "Further, other game suppliers are following our lead and doing the same. All of us pulling in the same direction leads to the best results for the marketplace overall." In general, we believe that e-Instant games benefit from the addition of proven social game features including progressive prizing, virtual awards, multi- player mechanics, syndicate and group play, and more. Going forward, we plan to continue to innovate games that create social connections between players. These games leverage social mechanics that are proven, but are often just not practical with traditional retail products.