Hyperion Gaming | Blog

UK Casinos – Industry Shake Up

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:43:28 +0000

So we seem to be on the verge of a major shake-up in UK Casinos.
With Rank confirming they are in talks to take over Gala Coral’s Casino business.

This takeover if it goes ahead would make Rank the largest Casino operator in the UK, adding Gala’s 24 Casinos to their existing 35 UK Casino Estate.

Thus the make-up of the UK industry would be a top three in terms of size of…

1: Rank - 59 Casinos
2: Genting - 46 Casinos
3: LCI - 10 Casinos

Quite clearly a 2 horse race.

With Malaysian company GuocoLeisure owning Clermont Leisure (a company consisting of The Clermont Club and 5 dormant licences) along with a 40.8% share in Rank means the soon to be largest Casino company in the UK is certainly Malaysian influenced if not controlled.

Genting also a Malaysian Company would then be the second largest casino group. Thus the majority of Casinos in the UK I think it is fair to say are Malaysian owned.

Not that I think this is a bad thing at all, with them they bring investment and expertise that seems to be driving forward the industry to new, exciting and more profitable times.

I for one welcome our new Malaysian overlords.

Steven

The Problem with Google Wallet

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:19:26 +0000

This year was set out as the year of the digital wallet, Google was marked as the leader in the field but its Google Wallet app has gotten off to a tricky start with problems cropping up throughout the product.

It has been six months since Google introduced Google Wallet. The app worked through near-field communication (NFC) but it has struggled to find networks and device partners that will use the technology. Google has also had problems getting the retailers to facilitate the payment technology in their shops and outlets. The troubles hit a peak last week as Google had to take the app down as a security issue became too much of a problem.

Google Wallet works by storing account holders’ credit card details and information for Google’s prepaid payment card within a digital app on a smartphone. This is then used at a NFC payment terminal at stores with this capability. The large share that Apple’s iPhone holds in the smartphone market immediately alienates a large number of potential customers. Obviously the smartphones using Android OS constitute the largest part of Google Wallet’s users, but still even then they are facing problems at the tills with only a handful of retailers giving the NFC option. We will have to wait and see if the product will take off or continue to flounder as it has done since its launch.

Matthew

Valentines Day

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:15:09 +0000

“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered”

Love him or hate him, there is no denying that George Best was a wise man, and it’s his mentality that most of us share in the gaming world - whether we are Affiliate managers, Java Developers, Designers or traders. Obviously, now the whole world monitors social media, I have a social responsibility to be PC here and not come across as a 1960’s husband, but I am sure that the great women in our wonderful industry also enjoy the finer things in life. Before I begin I just want to say “Bomb!” (On the subject of social media, I threw that in to get a few hits across the pond from our friends at the F.B.I. in the hopes this post is read worldwide), now please allow me to continue.

It is the people in our fantastic industry that make it, in my opinion, the best industry in the world! Just take ICE for example. Where else do you have free booze by the bucket load, beautiful women, handsome men (I don’t know if you had the chance to visit the Hyperion Gaming stand) hangover breakfast courtesy of the guys at LVS, a HUGE bar thanks to Microgaming and of course the immortal Hulk Hogan. So with Valentine’s day approaching and “love” seemingly everywhere from cards to chocolates, balloons and last rolos, I wanted to take the time to say I love you gaming world. With our Movember attempts, socials, larger than life characters (you know who you are), stories of great wins, tight knit community and, even though commercially it’s a highly profitable industry, the unique ability to put “fun” first truly makes the gaming industry the loveliest place to be this Valentine’s day!

PS: If you love gaming visit us.

Ben

Business Cards - Not Interested!

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:15:04 +0000

Alex and myself have been knocking around town recently looking for a new office for Hyperion. We have been based opposite the Emirates stadium for the past three years, the lease is up soon, and we think it would be good for the company to move to a more central location.

Hopefully this will make it easier for us to attract the bright grads that have made up around half of our recent intake of consultants. Location, location, location and all that!

We have moved three times since we have been trading, and as the resident bean counter I have got used to the associated and not insubstantial costs of a relocation.

This leads me onto one of the outgoings: business cards. I for one can't be bothered with them anymore. I am in the minority in our office, but would opine that surely business cards are somewhat passe? Come on, we live in an age of LinkedIn, and Google+ (do feel free to get connected to me on Google+ by the way!).

On the very few occasions that I give out a card I still use an old batch that have the address of our Malta office on the back.

The guys still like business cards, and I can see the benefit for Consultants at conferences and meeting clients, but personally when the order for the new business cards with our new address goes out I won't be bothering with an order for myself.

Chris

Regulation and Consternation

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:13:35 +0000

With ICE now over and fully back in “work” mode, it struck me that the main thing people are talking about in the iGaming industry is regulation. The main territories in question are Greece, Belgium, Germany and of course the US. But it has also struck me that regulation often equals consternation.

Many of us assumed that the regulation of the French market would be a significant milestone for operators and also recruitment companies, such as ourselves. Wrong. A ridiculous tax regime and tough entry to market have meant that French regulation can only be described as disastrous, with various operators pulling out of the market completely, or significantly reducing marketing/operational spend in the territory.

Betclic Everest lost six senior members of staff last quarter and as sports betting revenues in particular continue to slump in France (23% year on year to Q3 from 10/11) we must all face up to the fact that regulation is not always what it is cracked up to be. What this does mean is that operators without a licence may prosper further in territories where regulation stifles those companies doing things by the book.

Greece appears to have offered legislation that is not acceptable to most major operators and with only 4 approved applications, it seems that this could also be another massive white elephant for the online gambling industry.

Regarding Belgium, Unibet and BWin.Party both have licences pending to offer online sports betting, which is great news and would also imply that the road to regulation in the territory offers operators a genuine chance to prosper, with a fair rate of taxation.

I have spoken to a couple of people recently who are keeping tabs on German regulation and from what I can gather the German market may very well be a good place to be for operators. Hopefully developments in Schleswig-Holstein will be positive for the region and mean an influx of licences for operators wishing to regulate in Germany.

As for the US, well, it is 17:15 now and I don’t have all night to write this blog. Breaking news is that Iowa are producing an eGaming bill, so they can be added to Nevada, California and New Jersey who are doing the honourable thing and also looking to regulate online gaming.

The good news for us is that new regulation often means the creation of new jobs within the iGaming market, so we always welcome the introduction of legislation that expands our clients reach within a given jurisdiction.

Alex

TV Adverts and how they really affect

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:57:26 +0000

It’s been a little while since I wrote so a belated Happy New Year to everyone! (January blues are out of the way and I’m suddenly feeling much better about 2012!)

So it seems at the moment that most of the big players within iGaming are having a bit of an ‘Ad Battle’, i.e. who can make the funniest / most ridiculous / most memorable advert out there. The likes of William Hill, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power and Bet365 have all taken surprisingly different approaches, but all of which seem to work in their own way.

Paddy Power have gone for their usual approach, simple and controversial, with a spoof Mobile Phone ad, see here. I like it, it’s simple, funny, and very Paddy Power, but there isn’t really anything that sticks in the mind in terms or a catchphrase or particular character?

That’s where Ladbrokes have focused, with their most recent reel of adverts concentrating on a crazy Italian commentator. Now while they’ve gone for a stand-out character and the very imaginative ‘Game On!’ slogan (really?) it really doesn’t work for me, it irritates more than it tickles.

Bet365 have done a typically sterling job in getting Ray Winstone to do their Live Odds adverts, exactly the kind of celebrity that the kind of demographic who watch the footy on a Sunday afternoon will respond to. Nice graphics, simple message, spot on.

But the undisputed champ of the ads as far as I’m concerned is William Hill with their latest offering. This is simply by the virtue that whenever it comes on the missus and I are up dancing around the living room as it is just so fantastically catchy. If you were to ask my Partner to name a bookie, she’d only be able to conjure William Hill, and that’s purely because of that advert, surely they’ve therefore done exactly what they set out to do!

Back to the more important matter of Recruitment! We’ve had an influx of roles since ICE 2012 in Earls Court, and so we’ve got vacancies across the spectrum including Testing, Development, Project & Product Management and Architecture, so if you’re currently looking for a new role and you fit any of the above, get in touch!

Until next time, enjoy the ads and be lucky!

Lloyd

Job Hunting and Social Media

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:14:10 +0000

Back in the day, before all this social media malarkey, searching for a new job was a relatively private affair. These were simpler times, whether you registered with an agency or applied to vacancies directly your boss would be none the wiser. Since then it has become considerably more difficult to keep your intentions confidential.

This has been a gradual change and some of you may not have noticed it. Then again, maybe you have but because everyone is constantly raving about the power social media and how it can help you land a job you may not have seen its steady decline to the dark side of the force.

I won’t throw out any statistics here about how many people use social media, how many employers use it to recruit and how many people have landed amazing jobs via social media. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you all know these are impressive and ever rising figures.

At this point I should also point out that I am not about to condemn social media and deny its importance in recruitment (as marketing exec for Hyperion I’d probably be shooting myself in the foot if I were to make such a ridiculous statement!).

What you need to remember is that social media is not private. The only way that it could truly be private is if you simply didn’t have a Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ or [insert current popular social media platform here].

Let’s start with Linkedin as this is predominantly used for recruitment. Simply having a Linkedin profile shouldn’t get you into any trouble with your boss, although there have been a few exceptional cases where this has caused some problems.

However, if you do work for a particularly suspicious employer here are a few things you could do:

Select who can see your activity feed as ‘only you’ and turn off your activity broadcasts – this way if you add any of our recruitment consultants to your network or join our group or follow our company this will not show up on your employer’s LI home page
Select who can see your connections as ‘only you’
Under groups and associations select ‘change visibility’ of any recruitment groups and deselect the ‘Display the group logo on your profile’ box.
Under the types of messages you’re willing to receive option deselect any of the appropriate boxes, specifically ‘career opportunities’

Hopefully, if your employer is a paranoid android his should diminish any suspicions.

Now on to the much more invasive social network: Facebook. The new layout has been out long enough for all of you to have gotten used to it by now and not still be annoyed with the changes (after all, the timeline and ticker are pretty awesome, yeah, that’s right, I said it).

Besides the standard liking of a recruitment page such as the Hyperion one there’s another thing you need to be aware of when interacting with recruitment companies or professionals on Facebook: The ticker.

This is the real time feed on the right hand side that shows everything and anything all of your friends do. EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING! Whatever they comment on, like, post, listen to, read, et cetera et cetera.

What you need to worry about is that your Facebook friends can see when you comment on somebody’s status update. For example, if Friend A posts a status update about an available job and you comment on said update with something like “For the love of Christ where do I apply?! This job will finally get me out of the cruddy prison I work in!” all of your friends (including your employers/colleagues if they’re your Facebook friends) will see this even if they’re not connected to Friend A. Unemployment will shortly follow. How to avoid this? Send private messages instead, it’s common sense, really.

Well, that was easy enough. Now on to the next problem: Facebook also publishes actions on the ticker as well as your news feed.
You’ve probably noticed that now you can see whenever a friend listens to something on Spotify, reads an article on the Guardian/Independent/other news site, plays a game, throws a rock at a tree, uses the toilet, or any other imaginable action. Yes, that’s right, any action imaginable, if there’s an app for it, and they’ve accepted the app, it’ll be published.

Can you imagine the possibilities? Today Chris (my boss) started talking to me about cheese because he noticed I’d read an article on the Guardian about a cheese only restaurant. Sure, this is pretty harmless, loving cheese is not a sack-able offense. The problem is that I didn’t read that article via the Facebook site; I visited the Guardian site independently. So what if I were to read slightly more damaging article? How to avoid this? Don’t accept apps on Facebook.

Alternatively, don’t add your boss on Facebook.

Oh and don't worry, Hyperion doesn't have an app, so no one will know you read this article. But while you're here you could always check out our vacancies.

Dita

IGT's Acquisition

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:22:06 +0000

IGT said Thursday it would acquire Double Down Interactive for $250 million in cash, $85 million in retention payments over the next two years and as much as $165 million in cash payable over the next three years, subject to certain financial targets.

Stifel Nicolaus Capital Markets gaming analyst Steven Wieczynski said "The deal offers an attractive bolt-on acquisition opportunity that is expected to be accretive to adjusted earnings in the near term, while providing the optionality to evolve into a much more meaningful earnings contributor over the longer term should the passage of U.S. online gaming legislation finally become a reality,"

Nomura Holdings gaming analyst Harry Curtis said the transaction positions IGT as a company can grow further. "IGT now has a new, and the fastest growing, distribution channel for its game content, which should allow them to attract new customers to their land based (slot) machines," Curtis told investors. "(For example), someone playing Golden Goddess on a social website might be inclined to go play a Golden Goddess slot machine at a land-based casino."

IGT Chief Executive Patti Hart said "We intend to drive meaningful value from this rapidly growing distribution platform that reaches a new, but complementary, demographic of gamers”

Launched on Facebook in 2010, DoubleDown describes itself as the world’s largest virtual casino with 4.7m monthly active users. IGT believes the deal will give it a foothold in casino-style social gaming while broadening its own titles' appeal.

Matty

Cool as ICE

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:59:12 +0000

So what if it’s cold, you’re broke, your gamble on City to beat United didn’t come in at evens, you have the January blues, you don’t fit in to your favourite jeans after the Christmas feasting, it’s the last episode of BBC 1’s fantastic series of Sherlock or you’ve realised you’re getting old by virtue of the fact you got teatowels, socks and a dressing gown for Christmas!! (I am 27 mum!!!)….

All of your dreams are about to come true (actual results may vary depending on said dreams) as the biggest event in the gaming calendar is almost upon us!!

ICE is BACK!!

Aside from the legendary Hyperion Gaming Socials, ICE really is the greatest event on earth!

Where else can you come visit Hyperion gaming’s friendly staff including: Lloyd “The Lad” Cremer (currently looking for Java Developers), Manny “The American” Steinfield (currently looking for a head of PPC) and Ryan “The Badger” Burgess (currently looking for Sports Traders).

We will be at stand 5150 and are looking forward to seeing many faces old and new….and partying the night away at Fire and ICE!

It looks as though this will be another fantastic year in gaming with the possibility of the U.S.A opening up their gaming regulations, which could really see the software solutions providers mop up as they look to partner with the major operators such as Bwin.Party and MGM to open their doors to the U.S. players.

This is a very exciting time for the gaming world and as we embark on the 2012 journey Hyperion would like to take the opportunity to thank all our clients and candidates for helping make 2011 great and wish you all the best for 2012!

Ben

Sexual Honeybear

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:45:17 +0000

Hello all, thought I would kill a few birds with one stone, or should that be knock over a few pins with one bowling ball?

So first off back in the office, it's cold out there, and January's gradually ramping towards ICE. Part of the shock return to work is that most of us took a fair amount of time off, and we had both an end of Quarter day at Plumpton Races and also a Christmas Party that as per every year took in the team doing the Hyperion Bowling Challenge and ending up at Ally Pally for the Darts.

Alex won the bowling with 5 strikes and a score of 159, beating Steven into second.

The last three years are here:

2011 Bowling Champ

2010 Bowling Champ

2009 Bowling Champ

So the other bird to be killed by the stone (bloody ponderous analogy I know) is that I can put a few links in this article to our social media photo sites, namely Flickr and Facebook.

We are trying to strengthen our position on the SERPS so that when Hyperion is shown our S/M sites also fill the Google front page. In terms of SEO our brand name is falling away slightly as we share "Hyperion" with a software and also a Sci-Fi book. We will need to do some work on this with some brand name anchor text link building.

On the subject of link juice and anchor text just spent a rather boring 45 minutes deleting spam posts on our blog comments. To give you an example of the type of anchor texts used the usernames registered included "Sexual Honeybear", "Milf Summer" and "Big boob tits"! They say that in the affiliate game the most competitive markets are PPC - Porn, Pils, Casino - and we seem to have got hammered by the lot.

Sadly our web developers built us a bespoke blog and it's rather ponderous, also the "highlight all & delete" facility on the CMS back end has a bug, so I had to manually delete 18 pages of indivdual spam comments. Rather an oversight on the developers part that the comments field is "dofollow" instead of the "nofollow" that would have helped detract these pesky link juice thieves!

Over the next few months we are going to be rolling out some changes to the blog, and site in general. The blog in particular will most likely be powered by Wordpress and should both look better and be a lot easier to administrate for us.

Leaving you with a picture of Alex taking his mini trophy, when I get the main trophy etched I will get a picture up on a twitter/facebook.

Chris Denny