Kalamba Games: 'Online gaming, tailor-made content for the Italian market'

Kalamba Games, the new player of the Italian online gaming market, explains its strategies and strengths.

Italy and its peculiarities seen from a careful and "new" eye. Like that of the online games provider Kalamba Games, whose head of sales and account management, Tamas Kusztos, explains the potential he sees in this very mature gaming market, as a newcomer. Could it really be an advantage to enter now? Being a newcomer can certainly be an advantage when entering a mature market like Italy as we have been able to identify some player preferences and trends which will help us hit the ground running. Being an established market, we can also quickly get a handle on general market conditions and how regulation has progressed. Given our success in other European markets, we are sure that there will always be an appetite for fresh content such as ours and we are excited to introduce our content to the Italian players. "What first comes to mind is that the online market has a very strong land-based heritage and many online operators also run betting shops. This will give us a good insight into what this slightly different player demographic enjoys to play. We will be looking to develop new content for the Italian market that offers the mechanics, features, and themes that the local player base knows and loves. It is all about knowing your customer and making sure our content is tailored to attract them and we will learn as we go and improve our content along the way". What type of game content do you expect will be most popular in the Italian market? "We have a really broad portfolio of titles with our 50th game being launched later this year. We offer players a range of different themes and have been working hard to develop our signature features. Some of our best loved features are HyperBet and HyperBonus which allow players to adjust the volatility level of the game and to shortcut into bonus rounds. Coupled with exciting themes and a slick user interface this means we can really cater for all demographics. We have a packed roadmap for 2021 which will see us take our content to new heights". How does Kalamba work with local operators in terms of ensuring your content is optimised for the market? "As a supplier, you only have access to part of the performance data of your games with operators holding the other important piece of information. It is therefore crucial to work closely with operators to get a 360 view of how well our content is performing in the market and what kind of content players prefer. We have talked with some of our partners in detail about the market trends and we will certainly take it into consideration when creating games. We are however confident that our unique offering will carve out a decent market share with our fresh approach towards slots". You are currently developing a number of player engagement tools, could you tell us a bit more about them? "Our new player engagement offering is part of our Bullseye RGS which has been doing really well since its introduction last year. We have already released Big Win Replay, where players can go back and watch their big wins over and over again. We have seen this significantly increases the engagement levels compared with players who do not use this tool. Building on that, we will soon release jackpots, which will include our own unique take on the classic feature. Later this year we will also introduce challenges and achievements which are tools that have been proven to increase engagement and retention levels with players".