As EGR revealed this week, Entain Studios has a new content house under its umbrella. Retrigger Games joined CR Games and Vertical Games in the stable overseen by in-house content boss Benedict McDonagh.
The new studio will have a keen focus on North America, supplying content for Entain’s JV BetMGM, which it runs with MGM Resorts International. Here, McDonagh lays out his expectations for the new venture, why AI is changing the way the company works and how to crack the US player.
EGR: Benedict, you’ve been in the role coming up to 24 months. How would you characterise your time with the business?
Benedict McDonagh (BMD): It’s been a really interesting first couple of years. I wouldn’t say it’s been a baptism of fire, but there’s been a really good opportunity to get my hands dirty early on and try and bring my experience and knowledge to elevate what we’re doing really well already. There was already an awful lot we did well. It’s just making small changes to enhance and help us grow faster.
There’s certainly enough work to do. One of the key areas I was aware of coming into the business was an opportunity around technology; about getting our two mature studios from Europe and getting them distributed into North America with our joint venture partner MGM.
Every single time you look at a technology project, you believe you’ve got a really good idea of the scale and scope, and then reality hits, and it always takes a little bit longer, but you get to the right product at the end.
EGR: How many in-house games have the studios developed since launch? Are there internal targets in this regard?
BMD: We’ve built an excess of 400 historically, some of them stay alive, some of them you retire early if they don’t find their market. You can create a very cluttered casino if you have too many titles but, with better meta tagging and recommendations, then you want those games to be in the background because there might be that one customer who’s looking for just that type of game, even if it’s not mass market popularity. Keeping it fresh is important.
We’ve traditionally released around 20 to 30 games per year. We’re not looking to flood lobbies with new games. We’re trying to pick and choose good opportunities, identify player bases that might be underserved, or try and build on something we’ve done
successfully historically. We’re looking to get up to around 35 to 40 games per year; that’s what the market can enjoy without us cannibalising ourselves too much.
EGR: How long does it take from inception to launch for a new game?
BMD: We’re not steadfast necessarily on delivering a game once the game has started. We’ll allow every game to take the time it needs. It just happens to end up pretty much as averages. It takes about six months from final idea to first revenue. There are obviously some games we’re happy to take nine months. Obviously, the longer you take, the more expensive the game.
EGR: Is there a challenge with in-house content in that third-party games are hugely popular with the consumer already and so dominate mindshare?
BDM: Internally, we use the word “banger” for something that truly knocks it out of the park. You’re always looking for that banger. These third-party studios have had a lot of shots at goal, so they’ve got a much greater opportunity to find those one or two games that just massively resonate. Being in-house, we get guaranteed placement, so every game is going to get surfaced and get a lot of eyes. We’ve learned pretty quickly whether we’ve got something good or not and, thankfully, we’ve got a number of really good games out there.
While it’s difficult to unseat, it’s not difficult to get close. We’ve got to be a differentiator. You’ve also got to have the best games from your third parties. Customers aren’t one-game customers. They are session players. They’ll rotate through the portfolio every two or three months. We’ve got to offer the best content available, and we’ve got to ensure ours is tightly integrated.
EGR: Why have you decided to launch Retrigger Games?
BDM: We’ve hit the highest number of games I want our current studios to make per year and there’s still headroom. We’ve got a huge JV partner with BetMGM. BetMGM has access to our UK studios we’ve seen those games resonate.
It’s opportunity and scale. We’ve seen there’s a good appetite for our games that we’ve made historically. We want to make more of them. Retrigger is principally going to be focused on making content that works first for the US.
When we were deciding why we wanted to invest in and build a brand, the US was absolutely a key part of the motivation for that. We’re going to be creating new IP that we can serialise and we will invest, but the first consideration is going to be, ‘Does this style of game work for the US, both thematically and functionally?’
EGR: What are the key differences between a European player and a US player?
BDM: What we’re still seeing is a maturity in the US market. US players don’t necessarily have the same appetite for complexity. They prefer simple steps they are familiar with; paylines they can understand. They’re pretty much European, in my opinion, on volatility appetite. At some point, one of these games is going to cut through, where you can have that additional level of complexity.
What Europe doesn’t have a great focus on is working with IP, brands and celebrities. We wanted a studio that could have that focus on that and could do that deep immersion integration of IP from MGM to start off.
EGR: How are you using AI?
BDM: It’s something that I personally am interested in an awful lot. A lot of people might have negative impressions of it. For me, it’s the latest tool at our disposal to improve and do things faster and better. One of the mantras I share is ‘AI is not going to replace us, but we will be replaced by people who use AI better than us’. So, you know me as a leader in my business, I ensure that I’m trying to keep up with understanding these technologies, but not just academically. I try to use them as well.
We’re a business that is very pro-integration. Multiple products we already run have had AI integrations or AI agents where we’ve significantly saved time on and improved the quality on the development. We do an awful lot of prototyping artwork using AI. Developers are using two different AI agents to review. We have a central initiative as a business to coordinate all these efforts, too.
EGR: What can we expect to see from Entain Studios in the next 12-24 months?
BDM: The main focus for this year coming is scale and distribution. We’ve got the platform well established and we’re looking to integrate it into multiple markets. We underserved some of our core markets such as Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece while we’ve been focused on migrating the catalogue to the platform.
We’ve got a focus on distribution and scale, getting that content live globally and then getting the new games live. In terms of innovation, the main one is new to studio. So, it might not be new to industry, but we’re constantly trying to add more feathers to our cap.
We have very creative game designers with huge ambitions. We have still got a good opportunity to generate huge revenue without needing to massively differentiate just yet. It’s about getting a significant volume of games live in North America and then entering some key regulated markets with our UK studios as well.
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Benedict McDonagh explains the rationale behind the launch of the new Retrigger Games studio and the operator’s continued uptake of AI
The post Q&A: Entain director of in-house studios on cracking the US first appeared on EGR Intel.