‘Today We Are Laying the First Stone in the Foundation of the Future Large Instant Win Segment’ – Co-Owner at Onlyplay Artem Klymenko

Meet the new episode of UGW Insider podcast with a developer of Instant Win games and co-owner at Onlyplay Artem Klymenko. The interview was traditionally conducted by Lavrentiy Gubin – Brand Ambassador of Ukrainian Gaming Week 2021.
The guest of the podcast talked about the features of Instant Win games the audience interested in them. Artem spoke about Crash games that Onlyplay is currently developing and announced his company’s plans for obtaining a license in Ukraine to provide services in the gambling sector.
Read more about the prospects of Instant Win games in the interview below.
The interviewer: Lavrentiy Gubin (L.G.)
The respondent: Artem Kyimenko (A.K.)
L.G.: Artem, first of all, I would like to learn what are the "Instant Win" games in a nutshell?
A.K.: At one time, I was related to one of the operators in Ukraine, and we began to study very closely the direction that would allow us to enter the segment of drawn lotteries. Because in classic lotteries there is a division: scratch lotteries (those are printed ones) and draw-based games.
For marketing, the ratio often goes 70 to 30, with draw lotteries being more popular. But almost in all jurisdictions, there are certain restrictions when the draw takes place within a certain period of time. Either once a week or once a month.
Ukraine has set a limit – the interval between drawings should be higher than 5 minutes for each game. At that moment, the lottery operator had a license exclusively for scratch lotteries, but I really wanted to enter the segment of drawn lotteries.
Thus, there was an idea of how to make an alternative visualization based on scratch lotteries, which would allow using this segment, which is already included in the name – instant win.
That made it possible to distribute winnings to people very quickly with the visualization of drawing lotteries and lottery drum.
Therefore, we believe that we were those guys who started the “Instant Win” movement, in Ukraine at least. At one time, this name even caused a certain surprise among the existing operators.
At the moment, many b2b and b2c companies have separate tabs in their casinos that are called either "Instant Win" or "Fast Games". Actually, I told you the background, where the name came from.
At the moment, the "Instant Win" segment itself includes a large number of subcategories of these games. Because this is a fairly wide range of games, with very different mechanics, math models and, of course, design.
L.G.: And who is the main client of your games today?
A.K.: 18+, in some countries, respectively, 21+ and probably up to 45 is the target audience. And unlike the classic slot audience, it is wider, several times even.
So, answering your question briefly, in the end we have younger players who at the moment are using public transport, play games from the App Store, Play, those who play social games and so on.
Today we are laying the first stone in the foundation of the future large "Instant Win" segment.
L.G.: What licenses are you currently working under, and are you planning to obtain a b2b license in Ukraine?
A.K.: Today we basically work with b2c and b2b operators that are aimed at the Curacao market. As I mentioned earlier, we are now in the process of obtaining the MGA license.
There are a number of geos for which we receive, there are very good, let's call them contracts, with the guys from Kiron Interactive for example.
By the way, back in the days when we were making “Instant Win” in Ukraine, they gave us a very high assessment, and today the results of this assessment are demonstrated in already signed contracts with them.
As for obtaining a b2b license in Ukraine, frankly speaking, we are looking closely. Because I was a gambling participant until 2008, and was even a co-organizer of a protest action.
When the state deprived the entire industry of the rights, in an illegal way, I believe, in 2 weeks it closed absolutely all gambling establishments that paid for licenses and for each slot machine, and so on.
Therefore, knowing this market, we are very glad that finally it has become white and legal on the one hand. But, on the other hand, we want to take a closer look, see what will happen next.
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A.K.: Undoubtedly, on the one hand, we partially cannibalize internal traffic because there is an overlap in the target audience. But we made the games ourselves so that the cost of buying one player was cheaper.
We tried this, as I mentioned, when we have been dealing with these games under the lottery brand. Because these games allow you to attract a completely new target audience that has never entered the casino before.
Moreover, as I also said earlier, if you take absolutely any b2c project today, there is a tab, let's call it "Betting", there is a separate tab with new niches "Fantasy", "Esports", and so on. There is a casino with a classic slot.
We are now positioning and developing. That’s why we want to make, on the one hand, a very large array of our own "Instant Win" games.
On the other hand, we already have an aggregator, we involve the same companies as ours so that this segment becomes just a separate category in gambling. And we are one of the policymakers of this movement.
L.G.: In which direction are you moving now basically? Is there any major know-how or an area you are focusing on?
A.K.: Yes, given the fact that today Onlyplay is still developing to its optimal state, probably. We are now trying to concentrate on some trendy things.
One of them is the games of the "Crash" category. These games, in fact, have grown more from the crypto direction. At the time when there was the first hype with cryptocurrency, new games appeared. They were Dice, HiLo and, in particular, Crash.
Initially, our company went sideways, we have the game "Lucky Clover". By the way, it was successfully integrated on one of the crypto-exchanges, therefore, the advantage of the company is that we can use absolutely all types of cryptocurrencies today.
So the “Crash” segment, which then emerged, today there are a number of Ukrainian companies, and there are very cool guys from Georgia who started using this mechanic ... But Onlyplay decided to go a little further for now.
We even now position these games that they are games of the "Crash 2.0" segment. In particular, the background if we see it is one of our Fighter games.
We have now begun to divide this segment into subcategories by target audiences and add features to each of these games that were not on the market, which allow, first of all, keeping the player.
Secondly, they allow to return this player. This also applies to the previous question. Now there are updates for this game, certain collections that will allow players to participate in various kinds of internal tournaments.
Therefore, this game can be a separate element in gambling that may be present simply on a separate landing page, because its own community of players is formed around it. In particular, we have two games – Limbo Cat and Fighter.
In total, we want to make about 10 games at the start. All games will be different, except for the design, because we focus on different markets with various internal features that other operators do not have in these mechanics.
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