SBC SlotCatalog Game Development Awards 2023
Special SlotCatalog nominations `Game Studio of the Year`, `Outperforming Game Studio of the Year`, `Rookie of the Year` in SBC Game Development Awards 2023
Introduction
Like in the previous year, the SlotCatalog team was happy to participate in the CasinoBeats summit and provide data for choosing winners in the three special nominations:
- Rookie of the Year
- Game Studio of the Year (Small, Medium, Large)
- Outperforming Game Studio of the Year (Small, Medium, Large)
What makes these nominations unique is the selection of the winners. We at SlotCatalog have developed a special empiric approach and the winners were mathematically calculated based on data that had been gathered among casino sites and received from our DataPartners. Our algorithm is similar to the daily calculated SlotRank/ProviderRank v3.0. Learn more about Slot|Provider Rank. The ranking method is utterly simple: we scan casino sites on a daily basis and check what games are placed in the casino lobbies and their position in a specific market. The higher position in the lobby, the more points (Slot Rank Values) the games receive. We are calculating the ProviderRank metric by summarizing Slot Rank Values (SRV) of all games from a certain provider. The bigger the sum of SRV, the higher the ProviderRank.
With a significantly improved Slot|Provider Rank v3.0, we now have an additional parameter for our ranking. In the previous version of the algorithm, the ranking was solely based on the games' positioning in the casino lobbies. Now, thanks to our Data Partners, we have enhanced our ranking system by using the number of spins made by players in specific games at certain casinos. The more spins, the higher SRV respectively.
We have been gathering data for the past 12 months, in 6 different key markets. In order to build an objective rank, we utilized geos from different continents and different jurisdictions, including such countries as the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Canada, and Brazil. The latter has become a highly promising market in South America lately, and it was a great surprise that the awards were handed out by Gilberto Silva, a famous Brazilian footballer, and a champion of the World Cup. Gilberto is a true superstar and an exemplary person who achieved great success and fame through hard work and daily training. It was a big honor for me to share a stage with Gilberto Silva and celebrate the achievements of casino game developers in 2022 together.
Game Studio of the Year 2022
The nomination “Game Studio of the Year 2022” was intended to declare absolute champions. Awards were granted to companies that earned the highest total PRV during the given year. The nomination has three subcategories, namely Small, Medium, and Large to celebrate the achievements of companies of any scale. We decided to use the companies' portfolio size as a formal parameter to split companies into three categories. Small Studio is a company with a total of less than 50 games in its portfolio. Medium and Large Studios are those that have 50+ and 100+ titles respectively. This year, we also made an important update in how we calculate game quantity. We now count only slot games and games from the `Others` category. I.e. SRV of Live dialers, cards, roulettes, scratch, and dice games make no longer make an impact on the Provider Rank Value. This helps us to build an even more accurate ranking of the studios.
Game Studio of the Year (Large)
As shown in the data visualization video, the confident winner in the nomination “Game Studio of the Year (Large subcategory)” is Play’n Go, which has a bigger SRV than both of the following nominees combined. That is not surprising though, as for the last 12 months, PnG games had a higher position in casino lobbies and had a bigger quantity of spins in the selected markets. In the past year, the company released a new game almost every week. During 2022, PnG released 52 new games and could boast a total of more than 310 slot games in its collection. Obviously, the most popular game was Book of Dead, which is still present in almost any casino lobby. According to our analysis, 25-30% of all spins of the entire PnG portfolio fall precisely on Book of Dead.
It is actually sad to admit that during last year the gap between NetEnt/RedTiger and Play’n Go and Pragmatic Play increased.
At the same time, we need to highlight that giants like Playtech and Games Global are iGaming industry leaders. The explanation of relatively low positions for these big companies is in fact simple. Unfortunately, at the current moment, we do not receive information about spins made in Playtech games. More than that, at some of the top casinos, Playtech games are placed in a separate section that we do not consider as a lobby or as a secondary lobby with a reduced weight coefficient. Another reason is that we are calculating Provider's Rank separately for each studio. Games Global has more than 30 studios under its wing that produce and distribute games exclusively via the Games Global platform. Playtech, in turn, has 5 such studios. Please, feel free to share your opinion regarding these approaches in the comments.
Anyway, Play`n Go is definitely the leader among casino game production companies in 2022-2023, and this is a truly awesome achievement! Big congrats to the Play`n Go team!
Game Studio of the Year (Medium)
The casino games production market is highly competitive. In the visualization above, you can see that in 2022 Relax Gaming and NoLimitCity achieved almost the same score. Without data, it would be hard to decide who should be the winner in this subcategory. The Money Train and the Temple Tumble series by Relax and the brutal, punk stylish games of NoLimitCity are both very successful. According to our data, NoLimitCity has a slightly higher quantity of rounds but Relax got a slightly higher position in the casino lobbies. I assume it will be fair to say that players around the globe like games from both companies equally. But this year, it’s Relax Gaming that got a higher Provider Rank Value and won this prestige trophy! We wish better luck to NoLimitCity next year!
It was such a pleasure for me to shake hands with industry legends who represent Relax Gaming Nadiya Attard and Callum Sultana and grant them the SBC Game Developers Award. Bravo to you, Relax Gaming team!
Game Studio of the Year (Small)
Game Studio of the Year (Small) is also another extremely competitive subcategory. As you can see above, three different game studios earned almost the same total Provider Rank Value in 2022. Reel Kingdom had its mega-successful `Big Bass..` series, and Reel Time Gaming had immensely popular `Fishin’ Frenzy...` and `Eye of Horus ...`. It’s actually an open-ended question for us: Should we consider Reel Kingdom as a part of Pragmatic Play and Reel Time Gaming as a part of Blueprint holdings? Or instead, does it make sense to calculate their provider Provider Rank separately from their maternity companies? Do not hesitate to share your opinion in the comments.
This year, we defined the category Small Studio as the companies that have less than 50 titles in their portfolios. By the end of 2022, Push Gaming had launched 48 games, among which are remarkably successful sequels of Jamming Jars, Fat Rabbit (Drac, Bankir, Santa), Razor Shark|Big Bamboo, etc.
So this year, the winner is… Push Gaming! Our heartiest congratulations to the team!
"By leveraging SlotCatalog's data-driven approach, we were able to carefully select and honor the most deserving studios in the industry. These awards are a testament to their exceptional work, supported by up-to-date trends, player preferences, and comprehensive data analysis. Plus, they are more than just the decision of a jury; they represent a vote of confidence from the players themselves, so we are thrilled to incorporate this player-centric element that reflects the pulse of the gaming community."
Rasmus Sojmark
CEO & Founder, SBC
Outperforming Game Studio of the Year 2022
The concept of the Outperforming Game Studio award is simple. We believe that it is important to celebrate not only companies with the highest Provider Rank Value in 2022 but also those that demonstrate suspendable growth and achieved the highest jump in PRV. To define the winner, we calculated the difference between the sum of the Provider Rank Value of the last and the first six months of 2022. The winner is the studio that showed the bigger change.
The nomination has three subcategories as well, which are Small, Medium, and Large. We decided to use portfolio size as a formal approach to segregate studios by subcategories: Small Studios are those that released less than 12 games in 2022, Medium are those that released from 12 to 30 games, and the companies that delivered more than 30 titles are considered Large. Brief remark: NetEnt released 8 games in 2022, and Games Global did 10. Meanwhile, KA Gaming had 135 releases, Spinomenal - 121, and 7777 Gaming - 65. Does it mean that we should consider NetEnt, and Games Global in the Small subcategory, and KA Gaming, Spinomenal, and 7777 Gaming in the Large? Do not hesitate to share your opinion in the comments regarding studios' segregation by the number of released games.
Outperforming Game Studio of the Year (Small)
The winner of the Small Outperforming Game Studio subcategory of 2022 is Snowborn. The closest competitors of Snowborn are Games Global exclusive studios SpinPlay Games and Just For The Win. Unfortunately, we did not have any information about the number of game rounds of these companies. Thus, Provider Rank Values were calculated based solely on the lobby exposure. SpinPlay Games got a good presence in the casino lobbies thanks to the `Amazing Link …` games series. But `Pile 'Em Up`and `Cats Clans …` sequels, as well as the Peaky Pigs slot from Snowborn gained a little bit better PRV in the second half of 2022. The fact they were exclusive at certain top casinos provided additional points for these games.
Congratulations to the Snowborn Studios team! Well done!
Outperforming Game Studio of the Year (Medium)
For the second year in a row, Hacksaw Gaming demonstrated sustainable brand growth and became the winner of Outperforming Studio nomination. As you can see in the visualization, Hacksaw outperformed its competitors significantly in this subcategory, and we can confirm significant growth in the spins quantity and better positioning in the casino lobbies of Hacksaw games. It’’s quite interesting that their growth was determined not only by new releases. According to our data, older games including Wanted Dead or a Wild (released 2021-09-29), Canny the Can Stack 'Em (released 2021-05-14), and Chaos Crew (2020-09-19) still remain at the top of players’ favorites. Among new releases of 2022 that also gained a massive number of spins and gained high positions in the casino lobbies are Dork Unit, Hand of Anubis, and Dare2Win series.
Warm congratulations to the Hacksaw Gaming team! It was a pleasure for me to present the award to Gabi Star and Luke Hammett.
Outperforming Game Studio of the Year (Large)
The nomination “Outperforming Game Studio of the Year (Large)” is a very challenging subcategory since it is quite hard to demonstrate significant growth for big companies with vast game portfolios, especially when your games already dominate in casino lobbies. In accordance with the data, Pragmatic Play is the clear winner in this nomination.
Last year, Pragmatic Play released more than 85 new games. The overall portfolio now counts more than a staggering 320 slot games, including legendary titles like Gates of Olympus, Sweet Bonanza, Sugar Rush, and The Dog House to name a few, which don’t seem to stop capturing the hearts and minds of many punters all over the globe.
Kudos on your success! It gives us great pleasure to congratulate the Pragmatic Play team!
Rookie of the Year
Rookie of the Year is a special nomination to celebrate the achievements of rising iGaming stars - the companies that were launched recently but already demonstrated remarkable results.
We need to admit that this is a very tough category indeed. All game developers know how hard it is to achieve significant success with their debut games. This year, we slightly extended the time boundaries to select the winners in this nomination. In this year’s nomination, we include game development studios that launched their first title between 2021 and 2022. And, as you can see in the visualization, the confident winner in this category is Print Studios. Their titles Royal Potato, Reapers, and Out of the Ice really made waves among the players. At the same time, a significant impact on Provider Rank Value was made by the Book of Destiny slot, which was released exclusively for LeoVegas.
Сonclusions
To sum things up, the casino games industry is a highly competitive market. Nevertheless, many talented teams and companies do accept these challenges, and their efforts drive the entire iGaming world forward. We are grateful to CasinoBeats Summit for providing such a great opportunity and platform to determine and reward the efforts and celebrate the success of game development studios of all kinds.
The SBC Game Development Award undoubtedly stands out from other award ceremonies. Incredible organization, remarkable guests, and special SlotCatalog nominations with winners determined by the actual data make the event very unique.
Yet, we still face some challenges even when using the data-based approach to choosing the winners. Therefore, we look forward to your feedback. Do not hesitate to leave your comments or contact me directly in case of any questions or suggestions.
You can learn more about SlotRank and ProviderRank version 3.0 in special press releases. In the meanwhile, I want to take this opportunity to invite all game developers and operators to become our DataPartners. This will help you to get significant promotions for your brands, and together we can build an even more accurate ranking system.
Sincerely Yours
Fed & SlotCatalog Team :)
