Playstudios games are some of the most popular online and mobile casino-style games, offering players diverse experiences. With titles such as myVEGAS Slots, Bingo, Blackjack, Pop! Slots, myKONAMI and MGM Slots Live the games provide an incredible gaming digital experience. The combination of real-life rewards, digital games and the Las Vegas casino experience is an unbeatable match. To top off the gaming experience, members can cash in rewards points for real-life Vegas experiences and other travel rewards around the world. We caught up with Playstudios CEO Andrew Pascal about bringing Las Vegas to homes around the world via the digital experience.
A Taste of Las Vegas With Playstudios
The myVEGAS empire was first introduced to app stores in 2015. I personally started playing the games in 2015, the summer they were introduced. The games had run ads on Facebook, and the concept of real-world rewards in my hometown via an app I could play from anywhere was intriguing. Players all over the world have also found entertainment in the games, as is evident by the number of players online at any time. “On a given day, we’ll have close to three and a half million players across our portfolio of games,” Pascal told us. “That is every day. Every day they show up and enjoy the games we offer, which is pretty nice. We don’t take that for granted. We’re constantly creating new content, games and features, and all kinds of really cool events and quests and things that keep the experience really dynamic. There are always loyalty rewards.”
The portfolio of myVEGAS games has fostered a community of players from around the world. “We are all about connecting digital entertainment and destination entertainment. We come out of the resort industry, and we are deeply passionate about really great games, so combining the two has always been our focus,” Pascal said of the community myVEGAS has created. “It’s cool to cultivate this massive community of engaged players that have demonstrated that they love our games and the real-world experiences so much that we’re able to go and organize events, like myVEGAS at Sea, and we’ve got hundreds of players traveling together. We host them, and they get to enjoy the experience together. It’s about creating memories. It’s not just about games that people play for eight or ten minutes at a time, five or six times, over the day. Those are wonderful little moments of escape, but they all stack up and translate to an experience, then, you know, why these people may not have been able to enjoy otherwise.”
The team at Playstudios is constantly invested in improving and progressing the games and the gaming experience. “The great thing is that crafting game content is multidisciplinary, which is fascinating, in and of itself, to get people in a room that are classically trained artists expressing themselves through this digital art,” Pascal explained. “Amazing engineers, data scientists and analysts all come together in order to craft the game experience. The engineers we have are inherently curious, and they’re as creative as the artists; they express themselves through their craft and ultimately engineer and deliver the experience. They’re constantly working on ensuring we’re delivering it efficiently and ensuring game performance. They’re making sure the games don’t consume too much memory or space on devices and making sure they don’t consume too much battery power. There are all these considerations to ensure people want to play and engage in the game and don’t get overly hung up with its performance.”
Playstudios has plenty of updates to come for its players. “We’re constantly advancing and qualifying in partners; I think people recognize that it’s a pretty interesting model, and they want to be a part of it,” Pascal told us. “We’re open to trying lots of different types of partners, but we want to curate the rewards that they offer and make sure they’re all leisure-oriented or experiences that people can enjoy.”
In addition to the casino-themed games the myVEGAS portfolio currently has (slot games, blackjack, bingo), Playstudios is adding classic games to its collection. “We acquired the rights to Tetris last year, which is pretty exciting,” Pascal said of the new acquisitions. “We’re all big fans of it, and the people that own the brand are amazing. We believe there’s a flavor of Tetris that’s not yet been executed and delivered to mobile devices. The market currently has Prime’s existing Tetris app, which is more like the classic Tetris game. We’ve added some really cool features, some progression mechanics and things that will make it challenging and interesting and drive long-term engagement. We think there’s a way to deliver a complementary product that’s far more casual in its execution that will open up an entirely new market of Tetris players. If you think about the evolution of traditional Solitaire versus the more popular solitaire products today, Solitaire products have achieved a super scale, and they’ve introduced stories and characters and meta-features. Just like the game Jewel Blitz predates Candy Crush, we believe there’s a playbook that’s been employed time and again to these established game formats that have made them more interesting and accessible to a larger audience.”
*Interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
