This June it will be one-and-a-half years since Swintt first acquired Elysium Studios. Looking back on the deal, how successful has it been for both parties and what are the main areas that you’ve been able to support each other with your respective expertise?

It’s been a hugely successful collaboration for both parties, and I think the fact that we’ve been able to pool our collective knowledge and resources to fill in any gaps has undoubtedly been a big reason for that. The team behind Elysium Studios have significant experience from other successful companies, so they obviously had a great deal of experience on the game creation side of things, but on the other hand, Swintt was able to add our own expertise in terms of handling commercial operations, technical development and marketing while also providing access to a wide network of clients. In this respect, we’ve both been able to add the missing piece of the puzzle to each other’s respective business and that’s why it’s been such a major triumph for everyone involved.

In your opinion, what have been the main highlights from the Elysium Studios range? This could either be in terms of how they’ve performed for your company commercially or personal favourites that standout to you in terms of design or features.

There are definitely two games that immediately spring to mind. On the one hand, you have I Hate Fairytales, which launched back in October around nine months after our acquisition of Elysium Studios. We started promoting this with a custom-designed stand at SBC and from my own personal perspective, seeing the level of collaboration between Elysium and our commercial, marketing, tech and operations teams in ensuring that the game was well-positioned and seamlessly released was a huge highlight. On the other, from a commercial perspective our recent release, Pirate Pledge Hold & Win has outperformed all other Swintt games! We’ve had amazing feedback from operators and streamers – our recent engagements with the latter improving our position and recognition with players directly.

Even before the Elysium Studios acquisition Swintt was an ambitious software supplier committed to expanding into new regulated markets, but how has having them on board enabled you to further diversify your line-up and connect with players around the world?

Regulated markets have always been the main priority for Swintt, but obviously it’s super important to have a variety of games if you want to continue expanding successfully. Just because a game performs well in one market, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be the same story in another, so you have to constantly stay on your toes. The acquisition of Elysium Studios was particularly important for our growth ambitions in some of the more modern markets – especially ones like the UK and Ontario, where players generally view slots more as a form of entertainment than just a means of gambling. For this reason, they usually prefer modern-style games that have attractive graphics, interesting themes and innovative mechanics, all of which Elysium provides.

Of the markets that you’re currently live in, are there any where you feel Elysium Studios games have been absolutely crucial to your success? If so, what is it about Elysium Studios’ content that particularly appeals to players in those countries?

In addition to the UK and Ontario – both of which I touched on in my previous answer – I think Elysium Studios releases have also been particularly important for our continued progress in the Swedish market. While we’ve been active in Sweden for a few years now, we’d noticed that our SwinttPremium and SwinttSelect games, though still successful, perhaps weren’t resonating with players quite as well as we’d have liked. When we launched Elysium Studios titles in the country, we noticed an instant uplift in player engagement, which again I think can be attributed to the engaging graphics, quirky themes and exciting features of these releases. They’ve all performed really well over there and have played a key role in boosting our presence in the market.

Particularly in markets where the audience is mainly comprised of Millennial or Gen Z players, innovation is extremely important. In what ways have Elysium Studios titles continued to offer something new to customers without alienating the older generation?

One of the great things about the Elysium Studios line-up is that every game we’ve launched has been markedly different from the other titles in our portfolio. The way we’ve continued to innovate in this respect without “freezing out” traditional players is by taking something that’s popular or established and putting a new spin on it. For example, I Hate Fairytales did technically have a fairytale-theme, but we mixed things up by including punk rock princesses and dark landscapes to provide a different kind of adventure. Similarly, Pirate Pledge uses a popular Hold & Win bonus mechanic, but Elysium Studios tweaked it to make it their own.

One of the standout aspects of Elysium Studios games is that they’re built with mobile players in mind. With more and more online gaming being done via mobile device, how do features that use touch-screen functionality create a greater sense of engagement?

According to our own in-house research, mobile play accounts for around 70% of all user activity, so I think it’s really important that Elysium Studios games continue to optimise their games for mobile devices. Having touch-screen functionality built into features and gameplay really does make their games deeply immersive and provides a more “hands-on” experience for mobile users. The recent release Wild Wild North was a really good example of this, because it had a feature where players had to tap a bonus wheel to level up their multiplier before navigating through various stages. This made it a really interactive experience on mobile because players felt they had a more control over the bonus outcome – and that’s obviously great for engagement.

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