Evgeny Derevyanko from Gamebeat on current challenges and opportunities
One of the partners in our network, Gamebeat, develops beautiful immersive video slots for online casinos worldwide. Today we asked Evgeny Derevyanko, the studio’s CEO, about the company’s most popular slots, current trends, and the process of game creation. Evgeny shared the company’s story and plans with us.
What’s the Gamebeat story? How did you get started? What were some of the hurdles you faced, and how did you jump them? What results have you achieved so far?
March 18, 2021 is a special date for Gamebeat: it’s the day of our studio’s first release. At that time, we followed the path of a small portfolio and a small team — we had only eight games and a couple of people who were passionate about gambling. Even back then, we were driven by our painstaking attention to detail — it motivated the team to endlessly improve games (and even remake them several times). Perfectionism has doubled our success — a year later, on June 6, 2022, we can boast of having 16 quality games in our portfolio. We were — and still are — very sensitive to employee recruitment, so we have to devote a huge amount of time to the selection of talented, like-minded people. This is far from an easy task, but we are doing it quite well; this approach allowed us to expand the team, and now it already consists of 30 people — responsible, creative, and motivated guys who are in love with gambling and ready to conquer world markets.
There are a lot of different types of games out there. Why did Gamebeat start with a focus on slots?
We focus on slots because this type of game allows us to implement a huge number of interesting ideas and creativity. We’re not interested in the typical and the cliché; in our search for inspiration, we pay attention to players’ preferences and current trends, and try to generate unusual solutions that will be appreciated by our audience. Our team, an association of creative people, is especially interested in creating slots — they allow us to express ourselves and provide players with an incredible experience. During the production of any game, we take into account the opinion of each team member, select the best options and further develop the plots of our games (in the format of joint discussion and cooperation). If you look at our roadmap, you can see the most diverse software there: in the future, we plan to develop card, board, and many other types of games.
Every studio has its own creative process. What’s yours like? Where does the initial inspiration come from, and what process does your creative team use to bring it to life?
Gamebeat is a community of creative people who do what they really love and what they sincerely burn for. Our corporate culture allows each member of the team not only to share professional experience and expertise, but also to bring their own creative ideas to the product creation process. We know that the best way to improve the overall team is to support the personal and professional growth of each team member. Each employee can both perform work tasks, improve his or her skills, and prove himself or herself at a different level — for instance, become a lead in a direction and assemble a team of studio employees for the tasks of a specific project. One thing that really gets our engine going is a live exchange of ideas between team members. Collaborative creativity allows us to come up with cool ideas, motivates us to develop new skills, and provides great creative freedom.
You have an impressive portfolio of games with a great variety of themes. Which ones are the most popular with players, and why do you think they prefer them?
Players appreciate the variety of games in our portfolio and play almost all of them, but we can highlight the recognized leaders — the top 3 are Fortune 5 Double, Buffalo Trail, and Lord Of The Seas. It is worth noting that the games are completely different in atmosphere and plot, but there is a link that unites them and captivates fans — this is a good balance of mathematics, mechanics, and themes. In general, our team always keeps abreast of current trends — the gambling market is full of worthy competitors, and this fact motivates us to look for new ideas, improve existing games and, hopefully, increase the number of favorite slots among our players from different parts of the world.
The iGaming industry is famously dynamic and constantly evolving. What are some of the current trends in the gambling market, and how are you keeping up?
We believe that primitive slots with simple mechanics are becoming a thing of the past and are being replaced by more innovative solutions. For example, one of the main trends (and one of the best features of online slots) is the bonus game, which rewards the player with free spins and multipliers, and increases the chances of winning big. A huge number of providers now rely on bonuses (often with interesting plots), developing new mechanics and adding the Buy Feature function to invite the player immediately to the “bonus level”. We strive to follow current gambling trends and also include a Buy Feature mode in our products. Another trend that appeared on the market relatively recently and quickly won the love of players around the world is modifiers. We try to implement expanding and sticky wilds, multipliers, retrigger bonuses, double symbols, and other incredible bonus features in each of our slots and delight players.
Now for a fun one. You’ve got so many fantastic slots to choose from — which one’s your favorite, and why?
We love all our games and can't single out our favorite one. Each member of the team likes different games from our portfolio: some love our Fortune Games for their simplicity and tradition, some like Asgardian God for its graphics, immersive theme and musical accompaniment, and some, when playing Buffalo Trail, mentally jump to the offline casino in the USA where he first got acquainted with the subject of the game. Our portfolio is filled with different games, which allows our gamers to choose a theme specifically for their needs and preferences.
