Meet the Developer: Red Desert Games
Anthony Oh, Co-founder at Red Desert Games, details his plans for taking the Australia-based studio from rising start-up to industry power player.
Could you tell us more about Red Desert Games?
Red Desert Games is a new studio based out of Australia that is producing slot games for both online and land-based casinos. We are focused on developing innovative mechanics and bonus features to deliver never-seen-before experiences that put players on the edge of their seats spin after spin and that ultimately keep them coming back for more.
We are taking a quality-over-quantity approach to our product roadmap, and only release games when we are confident they will hit the mark with players. We know this is a competitive space, but we have a clear identity and a highly experienced founding team with a proven track record when it comes to developing games that not only meet but exceed player expectations.
Who is behind the studio and what’s their background?
The genesis of the idea for Red Desert Games happened a couple of years ago and rather innocuously when I sent a LinkedIn invitation to leading game designer, Edgar Pau. I’d spent several decades in the industry, including two stints at Aristocrat, but despite Edgar also working for the supplier giant, our paths never crossed.
Ultimately, I left Aristocrat and established my own advisory and consulting business, Horizon3 Group, while Edgar went on to work for Bally, Ainsworth and Wymac as well as consulting roles with the likes of GECO, Lightning Box Games and Hit Sqwad.
Through my consultancy, I learned that many companies were looking to engage outside game designers to improve and diversify their game portfolios and my clients were regularly asking if I could recommend anyone. That’s why I initially reached out to Edgar.
Ultimately, we ended up working together on a number of projects and at some point, a seed was planted in regard to launching our own studio. There were a couple of false starts over the years but in 2021 we made our move and formed Red Desert Gaming.
Industry veteran Alex Ciampoli, a Co-founder of Atlas Gaming which was acquired by Everi, joined the founding team and brought his Atlas Gaming colleague David Lewis, who became the fourth Co-founder of Red Desert Games.
David also has an impeccable pedigree, having been an early employee of NextGen Games which was ultimately merged with NYX Interactive and acquired by Scientific Games for $626.5m. We then raised some funds from a strategic investor in Europe and officially opened the doors for business.
In addition to the founding team, we have 15 employees with VGW and NextGen Games alumni Adrian Gray completing the management team as Lead Engineer (Edgar has taken the role of Head of Studio, David that of Lead Creative Director and myself that of Business & Commercial Director).
How will you leverage this experience to ensure Red Desert Games delivers compelling content?
We have a deep understanding of what it takes to make great games across both land-based and online. The entire team is aligned on the core components of our games – striking themes, innovative mechanics and smart math – and knows how these components must be packaged together to ultimately produce games that players want to play.
Across the management team, we know our strengths and weaknesses, and when we need to allow each other to take the lead on something. With no egos to contend with, we can lean on each other and leverage the vast experience, knowledge and skills we have at our disposal to take Red Desert Games from rising start to power player in next to no time.
What’s Red Desert Games’ USP? How will you stand out in a highly competitive market?
The pedigree of our founders – and the incredible team we have built around us – really does give us the edge over our competitors. Edgar is one of the most renowned game designers in the industry, while Adrian and Dave are among the OGs at pioneering studios like NextGen.
I really can’t think of any other studio that has this depth of experience and knowledge around not only what makes a great game, but also what makes a great studio. This experience and knowledge are also what provides our other USP – mechanics.
You will not find copycat concepts in any of our games. We believe mechanics provide the greatest room for innovation and are what will allow us to truly stand out as a studio. We have some awesome stuff in the works, especially around Cash on Reels and Hold & Win, which has transitioned over from land-based and proven very popular with players, as well as some really experimental stuff that has the potential to be very successful.
We are fans of true persistence games that facilitate longer playing sessions with rewards that build up over time, so expect to see a number of our titles explore this popular characteristic. In addition to this, we are one of only a few studios that can develop for both land-based and online. And I’m not just talking about reworking a land-based slot for online or vice versa.
At Red Desert Games, we can produce dedicated titles for retail and digital that have been developed specifically for that channel, allowing operators to launch simultaneously across omnichannels. In fact, we have been working with IGT for more than a year now on a series of retail games that are performing well.
Have you identified any markets in particular for your games?
Initially, our core markets will be the US and Canada, Asia and Europe. Land-based games and mechanics have proven popular in the U.S., and we have a lot of experience in this area. Asia is a big market and one that we are keen to explore, although we will only be going into markets where iGaming is not prohibited.
We also see opportunities in Europe and will be entering the fray in several jurisdictions across the region over the next six months. We want to take a considered approach to international expansion, and ensure that our games are appropriate for the tastes of local players.
What challenges have you encountered thus far?
The biggest challenge has been to determine the right approach to our technology setup. We initially opted to partner with a third-party provider and rely on their technology, however ultimately, we found that we needed the flexibility to control and develop certain aspects of the technology stack ourselves.
Given we are looking to develop new, unique mechanics, an off-the-shelf package developed by someone else and whose roadmap was outside of our control just didn’t make sense. This has proved to be a major setback as we have ultimately opted to build our own solution in-house and are now considering also taking control of the game engine builds on our partner remote game servers.
Distribution has also proved to be more challenging than expected. With all the new studios appearing monthly, it’s incredibly difficult to get aggregators to agree to stock your games and push them to operators if your games don’t bring something new to the table.
That said, we have the experience required to overcome these challenges and are now on the cusp of releasing our first titles. This is a milestone moment for any studio and for Red Desert Games, marks the start of the next chapter in our story.
