An exclusive interview with Marcus Honney, MD of AvatarUX

Welcome Marcus! We’re glad you’ve made time in your schedule to chat with us. Please give our readers a short brief about who you are and tell us about your history within iGaming.

I’m Marcus Honney the MD of AvatarUX. I’ve personally been involved in the gambling industry for more than 25 years now, moving over to online 10 years ago. My only regret is that I did not move sooner but moving from offline to online was a big jump then and one I will never regret doing!

AvatarUX is a premium game studio based out of Malta and is part of Yggdrasil’s YGS Master’s Programme Partner. We are the studio behind Lilith’s Inferno, and the PopWins™ series which includes: PopRocks™, WildPops™, Cherrypop™ and soon to be released BountyPop™.

AvatarUX started out in 2018. How did the seed start to grow and what was the vision you set out with?

Our vision was simple! Create exciting and customer centric slots, with suburb mathematical models, engaging visuals and strong UX. Taking all those elements together we can create games people want to play as our game releases are showing. We decided to build a team with global experience, this started with our investors who are actively involved in each game, starting from the first Maths prototype. We now have grown into a small, yet top quality, highly agile team of artists and developers. This allows us to quickly react to feedback from the players, streamers and operators and include some of that feedback in the future releases if appropriate.

We are realising our vision that we started out with by being extremely agile and adapting quickly using the feedback we receive from all sources.

According to our data, your first game: Lilith’s Inferno was received very well by the players (reaching top50 SlotRank positions for several markets). What was this first game development journey like?

Launching Lilith’s Inferno was a phenomenal experience. Firstly, seeing months of work across several teams come to life for players but then the reception amplified feelings of success and joy.

For us it was a humbling and encouraging experience seeing our game hit the top SlotRank list. This certainly instilled energy and enthusiasm in our team.

I think it’s also important to say that feedback from the game has certainly helped us shape and define games that followed it.

In 2020 you released your other three games: PopRocks™, WildPops™ and the Cherrypop™ slot. All of them have done well after their release dates and all of them are utilizing your PopWins™ mechanic.

How would you sell the PopWins™ feature to players who haven’t yet tried your games?

The PopWins™ mechanic is something unique to AvatarUX.

PopWins™ amplifies the gaming experience and elongates the time of game play.

If you spin a win, the symbols POP and add an additional symbol to the reel, essentially adding more and more opportunities for winning lines and symbol matches.

The excitement is in the anticipation of the outcome of the next Pop!

Say you could recommend each game to a certain player segment. Which game would you sell to which segment?

Our games are aimed at a global demographic. We keep things simple and based on traditional casino slots, tapping into familiarity so that players can feel relaxed and at ease when using a slot as a form of entertainment.

Whilst our games are not story or journey based, I believe our games can transport players into different experiences, PopRocks™ features precious stones, WildPops™ is certainly the more oriental themed slot, and Cherrypop™ is that classic 90s retro theme.

Across our games, volatility is typically around 96%, with minimum bet being at €0.20 appealing to casual players. Cherrypop™ includes a few new features, one of them being the buy-bonus which encourages a more advanced kind of player and bonus hunters.

How important would you say the collaboration with Yggdrasil has been in reaching those player segments?

Highly essential. Being part of the Yggdrasil Masters program has allowed us to distribute our games in a way we would have never managed on our own. Yggdrasil Master Program also allows us to tap into features like Boost and GATI which is exciting for us as a game developer. Essentially this relation is key to us focusing on what we are good at and leaning on Yggdrasil to help us with the rest.

Let’s look to the future. What are your upcoming games that we can look forward to?

You can expect BountyPop™, the fourth slot in the PopWins™ series, in casino lobbies around the globe from the 30th of November.

This slot has a spirit-pirate theme, with energetic electric blue and bright graphics. The game play features all the PopWins™ features along with free spins, mystery wheels and buy bonus.

Excluding regulation, what are your predictions regarding the future of slot games?

The future of slots is certainly bright. We are part and parcel of the growing online digital entertainment sector. Operators will always need more and more content and consumers are becoming ever more demanding for variation. I expect growth for sure.

On the games side, I believe we will see more studios like us being enabled by programs like Yggdrasil Master. Such setups allow studios to focus on new features and the creative elements of game design and mechanics.

As a result, I envision a variety of games to become available in the market and some studios becoming known for their own features, styles of game and no doubt a range of unique mechanics. Like ourselves and PopWins™ for example.

Essentially, more studios mean competition for us, but we see this also has inspiration and a good thing that keeps us on our toes to keep on pushing ourselves forward.

This interview is coming to an end. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us at SlotCatalog. Would you like to say anything to our readers before we say goodbye?

AvatarUX is seriously dedicated to producing awesome slots. We do listen, so for fans, streamers, operators out there we are always receptive of feedback.