Author: May Thawdar Oo
Settling on your game catalog is one of the most crucial steps in creating an unforgettable online casino experience.
The games you select not only assist in forming your players’ gambling experience but will also characterize wagering levels and overall profitability.
In the internet-first era, the team at Translation Royale, together with sister agency WeGotGame, brings providers the know-how needed to create a kick-ass online casino game catalog.
Let’s go!
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Select Your Verticals
Before you begin testing out the latest release from Nolimit City, you first need to settle on which verticals your casino is going to have.
This will come before any software development takes place and when the casino is but a glint in your eye.
Common verticals include:
- Casino – for games such as roulette, blackjack, casino poker, slots, and baccarat
- Live Casino – includes outings like blackjack, roulette, baccarat, keno, and slots
- Lotto – comprises state, continental, country-wide, and global lotteries
- Bingo – variants include 90-ball, 80-ball, 75-ball, and 30-ball bingo
- Sportsbook
- Keno – variations cover Power, Bonus Spot, and Mini Keno
Once you’ve settled on the verticals and made a call on the most popular online gambling games to include in your catalog – you can start thinking about how to populate these verticals.
Always keep up to date with the latest software developments and what games are trending – this is a reliable indicator of what users are playing.
White Label and Turnkey Operations
As an off-the-shelf option, white-label, and turnkey casinos will come prepacked with a game catalog that takes some of the heat off developers.
This is fully customizable so doing research and characterizing your casino brand through careful game selection is crucial at this point.
Dream Themes
Choosing your online slot catalog is the most pressing concern when building a game collection, simply because there are so many titles available. The most popular slot themes include:
- Greek mythology
- Roman mythology
- Norse mythology
- Ancient Egypt
- Space
- Fruit
- Wild West
- Asian
It’s tempting to oversimplify your casino game catalog, depending on the demographic. The obvious money is on, for example, creating a catalog that has every dude-with-a-plaited-beard slot for the Nordic markets.
While these slots do great business in markets such as Norway and Sweden, they also demonstrate high levels of wagering across international markets.
Asian-themed slots perform slightly differently and appeal to players that have a cultural connection to Asia. The themes and language used, while appealing to a limited number of players outside of the racial demographic, is good for attracting and maintaining Asian players.
Slot catalogs for online casinos are also currently enjoying a resurgence of Wild West-themed slots and while the trend for cowboy outings seems to dip in and out of favor, it’s proving to be a bankable theme in the long run.
If you’ve got your eye on a Greek god-Roman mythology- or Egypt-themed slot, keep in mind that while these are commercially viable, there’s already a lot of competition within these thematic choices.
Fruities, again, are well represented among slot catalogs the world over.
If you’re still stuck as to which games to include in your catalog, do as much research on the best online casino games in 2022.
This will unearth a huge number of trending slots and can be a clear indicator that a certain theme is going to prove popular in the future.
Game Catalog UX
UX (user experience ) can be defined as how easy your site, including the game catalog, is to navigate, and it should be developed alongside your game catalog.
Many online casinos choose to divide games into ‘Most popular online gambling games’, ‘New releases’, or ‘Hot picks’.
How you decide to present your game catalog online is the difference between a player finding a slot that appeals to them and playing the slot and, as is in many situations, being overloaded with information and not choosing a game at all.
This, clearly, needs to be avoided!
Cognitive scientists have identified a trait whereby when people are presented with too many choices, they choose nothing at all. They call this ‘Decision Paralysis’.
The majority of casino lobbies (where games are presented) don’t take this into account. It’s common to witness thousands upon thousands of retina-burning slots all vying for attention and causing a cognitive malfunction of meltdown proportions.
Well, to the extent that the player bounces from your site at least.
The smart money is on innovative UX categorization. By putting slots into categories, players benefit by having a reduced pool of slots to choose from and are therefore more likely to make a choice (and wager) on the game.
Some common ways to group your game catalog are:
- Thematically
- Alphabetically
- By color
- RTP-based
- Volatility-focused
- Release date
More operators have started clearly labeling game tiles with the corresponding volatility which provides players with the information they need.
The next step in this revolution of UX design is to surely label each slot with the associated RTP, and incorporate a filter that can sort from highest to lowest RTP.
Attracting Players
Getting players onsite, depositing, and wagering on your game catalog is the name of the slot catalog game. Your game catalog defines what types of players you’re likely to see knocking about your lobby.
But first, you need to nail down player demographics.
By completing thorough audience research, you can use the data provided to complete a player profile. Once this profile is fleshed out, this will inform you of player behavior and the kind of games your target demographic will enjoy.
Here, an experienced casino product team is invaluable.
This casino team is responsible for every game that’s added to your catalog and can be viewed as expert-level curators.
These guys have their fingers on the pulse of every new release. This will include network promotions such as free spin giveaways.
Ongoing promotions are essential to driving player retention on slot games. These are often run by game providers and are known as ‘network promotions’.
Network promos are a sweet deal for operators as they cost your casino zilch. These are often free spin offers across a game collection.
Check the frequency of network promos for your potential game suppliers as this will indicate player engagement going forward.
Branded slots – those with a creative buy-in from movies, books, TV, and music – remain popular due to their ready-made audiences.
The Game of Thrones slot from premium slot provider Microgaming is a perfect example of a branded crossover from streaming to slots.
Be sensitive to entertainment trends and wherever possible incorporate these into your game catalog.
Eye Candy
As a predominantly visual medium, slots are only as good (or bad) as their graphics. Players are becoming increasingly discerning as to the quality of a slot’s visuals.
This doesn’t mean that you should populate your catalog with the most in-your-face releases, instead aim for something that has sophisticated front-end development and will appeal to the widest possible demographic.
NetEnt and Nolimit City are both Swedish game suppliers and are known for creating the best-looking slots in the industry.
Good slot design is only as good as the research undertaken prior to sketching out visual concepts!
Fruities are the meat and potatoes of a video slot catalog and still make up a large majority of the most popular online gambling games. Starburst – widely considered the most popular slot of all time – is a perfect example of slot game popularity for the masses.
While these may not be the high-octane outing younger players will be attracted to, the benefit of appealing to a more old-school demographic is undeniable.
Game Catalog – Sorted
Providers need to make a decision between what is right and what is easy in regard to game catalogs.
The usual suspects of the RNG table game world need to be included in your catalog along with titles that inspire and motivate.
It’s common to see over 10 roulette variants on a casino vertical and while providing variety, this usually reduces to simply having too much noise onsite, which could negatively influence the player decision.
Nail down the best roulette game, for example, and then provide another variant of this game. That’s more than enough choice for players.
Tempting is the approach for casinos to provide every single title available but this is to the player’s detriment. If you do decide to follow what’s known as ‘the wheelbarrow approach’ to curating a game collection, make sure that you’ve got thoughtful UX theory informing your filtering of games.
Once you’ve decided upon starting an online casino, your next move is to determine exactly which games to include. Here, classy UX and careful curation is how to give players the best possible experience while taking wagering levels to stratospheric heights.
Destiny is no matter of chance – it’s a choice.
Header Image Source: kjpargeter on freepik
How did you like May Thawdar Oo’s blog post “Be Choosy: Curating Your Online Casino Game Catalog”? Let us know in the comments if you have anything to add, have another content idea for iGaming blog posts, or just want to say “hello.” 🙂
Thanks for sharing this helpful information! It’s quite an interesting topic. Waiting for your next excellent update.
Online games are thrilling; all you need is selfcontrol to keep yourself from becoming addicted to them. By the way, great article!