Emiliano Sanchez, Mancala Gaming: “We developed a gamification system flexible enough for marketing teams but good enough for the player experience”

Mancala Gaming’s Chief Commercial Officer discusses how Panther Legacy has performed since its release, the effect of the company’s gamification system and what else it offers operators.

Exclusive interview.- During the latest edition of SBC Summit Lisbon, Focus Gaming News sat down with Emiliano Sanchez, chief commercial officer at Mancala Gaming, who explained why the company built its stand around Panther Legacy.

Sanchez also discussed the company’s gamification system, which he says lifts all metrics by almost 50 per cent when campaigns are activated, and the support services Mancala offers operators.

At this year’s SBC Summit in Lisbon, Mancala Gaming brought Panther Legacy to life with a fully customised stand designed around the game. Why did you choose this particular game for this branding?

That was one of our latest releases. Panther Legacy has been crushing it in markets. Eight weeks after release, we are seeing a substantial increase, with bets doubling. Our player pool across Africa and the CIS has grown as well, so it’s been really good. We’re celebrating the success of that game.

I’m imagining the timeline on your stand setup is probably a little longer than eight weeks. Did you know it was going to be such a success?

No, we didn’t know, but when we started seeing the metrics, we understood where we were heading. Still, we had enough time to plan the stand, thanks to our wonderful marketing team and the teams who helped us build it and bring it to realisation. I think it also shows where the brand is going after our “un-boring” update, which won awards at SiGMA North America, and it now shows the face of what we want to achieve. I think it’s a good place to start.

It’s great for an operator or an aggregator to know what to expect. I guess it’s not really a surprise coming from your outfit, as you’ve had other games that have crushed it over the last seven years, right?

It’s never a straight path when you’re dealing with games, because we have a convergence between maths and art, which has been quite a learning curve. Like all providers, we’ve had some fumbles along the way, but I’m proud to say that our success has overcome any mistakes we’ve made so far.

“It’s never a straight path when you’re dealing with games, because we have a convergence between maths and art, which has been quite a learning curve.”

Emiliano Sanchez, chief commercial officer at Mancala Gaming.

So maths, art and regulation. With regulation you have to be playable enough that the player will want to play, but you can’t be too playable. What’s your approach to gamification?

In a sea of games like we see nowadays, what is the added value you provide to your partners? That was the first question we asked when we started the company. Based on my experience, we developed a gamification system flexible enough for marketing teams but good enough for the player experience. We have been analysing the results, and the moment we activate our gamification campaigns, we see an uptick of almost 50 per cent in all metrics, just because of the gamification layers we built: trigger systems that automatically grant rewards to players in the form of free spins, treasure chests or a fortune wheel. When we showed Mancala for the first time at the first ICE after the pandemic, we were one of the few brands talking about gamification. Nowadays you see a lot of brands doing it, and I’m proud to say our company was one of those that carried it forward, and the systems work. We recently published a study on our website about the effects of the gamification system on operators.

I was going to ask about the secret of a successful game, but I guess there are no secrets if you’re publishing all the results for everyone to see.

It’s for the partners and for the industry. At the end of the day, all of us in the industry are trying to find the next big thing, and sometimes we tend to forget that our main focus is entertainment: entertainment with flexibility for operators, keeping regulations and player protection in mind. At the end of the day, we don’t want players to burn out. We want them to have a fun experience and to carry on with our product. That’s the whole idea.

“At the end of the day, all of us in the industry are trying to find the next big thing, and sometimes we tend to forget that our main focus is entertainment.”

Emiliano Sanchez, chief commercial officer at Mancala Gaming.

When you’re selling yourself to operators, you have great games that work for players. Is there anything else you offer in addition?

Let’s remove the obvious: the games. The gamification layer is very flexible, and marketing and retention teams tend to love it. What else do we provide? Honest service, flexibility and adaptability. A lot of our team has experience in B2C, so we understand what operators are going through and try to resolve things as fast as possible. We also have 24/7 support and a back office in multiple languages to make life easier for our users.