GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 24 - April 2013

Q: Are you able to differentiate between tablet and phone use? KJELL: Yes, we are. Simply put, we have one binary that adapts to the type of device you have. If you download the poker app, for instance, it will recognize which device you have and adapt to that, so it scales nicely. Like we were talking about before, it adjusts a little bit to the device you’re using. Tablets are growing. Phones were dominating in the beginning, but tablets will definitely come out on top. You don’t have a laptop at home anymore on your couch. When you’re sitting on your couch, you will have a tablet and play. JAQUES: And you can do more on a tablet than you can do on a phone. When we first developed our mobile product, tablets hadn’t become mainstream. We didn’t even think about putting tournaments into the prod- uct, because who’s going to sit on their couch and play a tournament on their phone? But you’d absolutely do that on a tablet. It changes the game. Just as going from PC to mobile devices changes the game, mobile phones to tablets changes the game again. Q: How do you handle people getting disconnected from the game on a mo- bile device? You’re driving around, or you’re on a train, and all of a sudden, you dip into a tunnel. KJELL: First of all, we have seamless handover. Let’s say you start to play on your mobile device. You want to pick it up when you come home, for instance, and play on the computer. If you just log in on the computer, you will be in the same hand on the computer. The system will know where you are in your game. When you log in at another device, it will recre- ate that state. If it’s a cash game hand, the hand is most likely over, but you will sit at the same table. If it’s a tournament, you will continue to play the same tournament. We don’t pause the game. When it comes to the disconnect, we have allowed for a longer disconnect time on the mobile de- vices; we have enabled some more time for the player to be able to reconnect. And with Strobe, if you get disconnected it doesn’t hurt you so much. Everybody on a mobile phone knows that there is a risk that he or she will be disconnected. Maybe they don’t want to sit down at a regular table, play against the same oppo- nents, but instead they want to play a very fast game, and they just want to play for two minutes. What we see is that players play many more sessions during the day, and they play very short sessions. When you’re standing in line waiting for the bus, just pick up your phone, have a quick game, only play for two minutes. Q: The mobile data usage, or the mo- bile app usage, is different from your Web-based app usage. Are you seeing substantially more daytime usage – daytime business-hour usage – off the mobile devices? KJELL: Yes. Q: Then that declines in the evening, and you’re picking up more Web-based usage in the evening? KJELL: Yeah. And downloadable. Because we have a lot of casual players. We also have a lot more professional players as well, and they prefer to play on their regular setup. Their computers, they might have multiple screens, and all that. But we see that mobile sessions could be one, two minutes, because you’re waiting for something, or you’re in a boring meeting, so you start to play on your phone. JAQUES: Someone thinks you’re texting over there. “I’m not texting.” KJELL: It never happens at Ongame. Q: No, it never happens at Ongame. Have you seen similar use patterns in the mobile casino product, too? JAQUES: I don’t have the mobile casino stats right now, but my gut would tell me, with pretty strong confidence, that you’d see a very similar thing. I know how I use these devices, and it’s very different from 29