How an Outsider Built an iGaming Studio

Yevhen Krazhan: Welcome to Bet It Drives, the show that takes you for a ride through the iGaming world. I’m Yevhen Krazhan, and today I’ll be driving you to the industry insights, hot topics, and juicy trends. And if we don’t take the wrong turn, we might even get to the business side of things. So let’s hit the road and see where it takes us.

Tonight, we are diving into the big gaps in the industry. Joining us is Helen Walton, who left the beauty world to build G Games from scratch. Now, with 200+ titles and a spot in our GR8_TECH casino platform, she’s reshaping gameplay with multiplayer slots and pushing for more diversity and innovation in iGaming.

I was told that you are still a newcomer to this industry, but, you know, 10 plus years, I mean—

Helen Walton: I would like to pretend to be a newcomer. I think I sometimes kind of present myself as, yeah, with this kind of scrappy little new company. And I’m so new. I’m such an outsider. But really, I just cannot say that anymore.

Yevhen Krazhan: You’re a veteran?

Helen Walton: Oh, God, no.

Yevhen Krazhan: So, just some easy starting questions. If G Game was a person, and imagine, for instance, this person walking on iGB between the stands.

Helen Walton: So G personified as a company. Well, first of all, G would definitely be taking the piss out of everything because both the founders and the people who work in the company are way too irreverent. Nothing delights us more than taking the piss out of how everyone has a tendency to look a bit the same at these shows, which we were the company that was famous for putting guys in high heels saying play differently. And grannies with branded Zimmer frames. They’d obviously be looking out for customers. They’d definitely be looking at competitors and going, that’s interesting. What’s everyone else doing? And going, call that innovation? Like, hell, yeah.

Yevhen Krazhan: This industry, you know, what we observe is far from innovation. But we like copycats, we like repeating ourselves and watch over the shoulder what competition is doing. And Helen, your career was not always smooth. I think the way your company looks now, just different and innovative. This didn’t appear from the first attempt. Watching your LinkedIn is full of stories. I hate to say disaster stories. Why are you showing your disaster stories?

Helen Walton: Well, first of all, you’ve got to remember I’m English and English people can only tell self-deprecating stories. We are fundamentally incapable of any other kind of story. And you are here in London, so you’re going to have a lot of self-deprecating humour going on. But you know, we were a tiny scrappy company that knew nothing. All three founders, none of us had truly worked in the industry. We didn’t know who to go to for advice, we didn’t know how to find our first customer, we didn’t know where to get financing from. I mean honestly.

Yevhen Krazhan: But good timing, by the way. Maybe now it’s already too late, but 10 years or 11 is a good timing.

Helen Walton: Yeah. Well, it worries me. How have we not gotten bigger than we are? We have always been trying to do things differently. And when you are trying to innovate, the whole fact is that you often fail. Innovation is by definition risky and you are going to fail, frankly, more often than you succeed. The thing that I think we have done that is really impressive is that in spite of having lots of failures, we’ve managed to survive. We’ve kept going and we do that through having an incredibly loyal workforce, through keeping everything really lean so that we can keep trying things, fail and try again.

So, yeah. So here we are building software, creating games.

Yevhen Krazhan: That’s a bold move.

Helen Walton: Taking five years for our current multiplayer product to get to market.

Yevhen Krazhan: Either way, that would be one of my next questions about multiplayer slots. What is it, multiplayer slots?

Helen Walton: I mean, when people say multiplayer, it’s a very big umbrella, right. And they’re including a lot of different things under it. So some of the crypto sites are doing these kind of battle bonuses where different people fight very high volatility because they’re kind of all pooling their bonus money and winner takes all. And then there are — but it’s just, in many ways, it’s just a classic leaderboard. And then some people are talking about kind of bet behind or bet alongside where a streamer is betting very big and you’re betting small amounts alongside them. So when they win, you win. And then other people are looking at kind of where a bonus or a jackpot gets shared between just a few people, like a few friends. And that’s not unlike things that already exist in the casino. As far as I know, we are the only company that is doing true competitive battle slots where your play, it’s not just a tournament or a leaderboard where what you do will impact on another player. So it’s True Battle Royale. And our product is called 99 Royale.

Yevhen Krazhan: Following your career, you have moved from, fashion industry into iGaming.

Helen Walton: Yeah. I mean, like a lot of things in reality, it was accidental. I was running my own agency and I got a call to go and meet with an agile consultancy. And I said, why on earth do you want me? And they said, oh, well, we want someone who’s really good at talking to customers and who will give it an interesting tone of voice. And anyway, we hear you have interesting ideas on agile. I was like, oh God. That was, that was me talking at a dinner the other night after a bottle of wine. I’ve got interesting ideas on almost everything after a bottle of wine. So I went and met these guys and that was how I started working with Paul and Dan, my co-founders.

Yevhen Krazhan: Your future co-founders.

Helen Walton: My future co-founders. And we got on really well together and we built this product together. And we were so sick of telling companies how they should be working differently and then just completely ignoring us. And they all went, yes, yes, agile, yes, teams, autonomy. But really they were just doing the same old waterfall command and control that we went, okay, we’re going to do it ourselves, we think we can do better.

Yevhen Krazhan: But the shift to gambling, that’s an interesting point. What do you think has made you successful in this industry?

Helen Walton: I mean, really, it was just the ability to keep going while we learned. Not that experience doesn’t have value. Of course it does. And indeed it can shortcut things. It’s that anything that is new can be learned. So when you’re trying to build a network, it’s not that already having that network isn’t helpful and valuable. Of course it is. But you can build a network. We proved that we could. From knowing nobody. We now know lots of people in the industry. Almost all the things that people value from experience can be found in another way. But there are things that you can’t teach and things that are just natural to somebody’s character and therefore we value those more. But in general, as a company and indeed as an individual, I really value the characteristics of being prepared to learn, being good at learning and being hard working. And if you’ve got those things, then pretty much everything else you can find, you can get.

Yevhen Krazhan: I agree. And my view is that the industry is so dynamic, so fast paced, then all your past experiences could be of no value. If you don’t adjust, don’t adapt—if you don’t keep learning and change for the good and bring new ideas and put them into practice. 

Let’s transition a little bit into something more personal, like music. If you were thinking of a soundtrack that could describe your storyline, your career story, what soundtrack could that be?

Helen Walton: I’m gonna have to pick. So a song. LSD, No New Friends. That would be my song. And that’s because it’s got a little bit of a gambling flavor. We are the kings and queens, we get our aces out.

Yevhen Krazhan: If you were thinking of a soundtrack, when you celebrate something like a big win, a victory.

Helen Walton: Oh, it’s more of a resilience one. But you know, I think I’d go with something like Chumbawumba. I’m showing my age. I’m showing my age. We get knocked down but we get up again.

Yevhen Krazhan: Okay, okay. But what about the song that sometimes is in your mind when something is not going as planned?

Helen Walton: Well, actually, funnily enough, that’s when I think you need the most comfort. So I think I would pick something by Ray. You know, her 21st century blue, her worth it song. And that’s partly. Not only is it kind of comforting, but it makes me think about being in the car, actually driving in the car, listening to music with my daughter and her playing me new songs and increasing my musical education.

Yevhen Krazhan: That’s nice. That’s nice. Just remembering your last, I would say, media event with boxing. Where you were sparring with Lee.

Helen Walton: Oh. Lee is running a big session for people to come and do early morning boxing networking. The idea that we can all have a healthier conference. So rather than staying out late, drinking, we can get up early, go do a proper workout, do some sparring, enjoy ourselves. Goodness me. It’s starting at 7:30 in the morning, so that’s going to be pretty intense. I’m going to have to get up pretty early to be there.

Yevhen Krazhan: It seemed maybe a little weird, but what are the other weirdest places that gambling has taken you to, or iGaming?

Helen Walton: I’ve been to some pretty obscure, weird, dingy casinos over the years. I will never forget the first time we went to Gibraltar. We had, you know, we had no revenue yet, so we were all three of us, we had no salaries. The three of us were travelling on our own dime and we hadn’t been earning for over a year, so it was pretty painful.

So we were looking for somewhere cheap to stay. So Paul found this little boat and he was like, oh, it’s really usefully near the offices, but it was tiny. I referred to it as a dinghy. And there was no shower, obviously, on this tiny little boat. So in the morning we had to walk along the quay and there was a sort of a shower block at the end. But unfortunately, when Paul said it was near where we were going to have meetings, it was. We were walking past the windows of the customer that we were about to try and sell to wrapped in a towel. I was seriously questioning my life choices at that point; of us with our little sponge bags and towels.

Yevhen Krazhan: Helen, since you are working a lot with innovations and at least experimenting, what was the most brutally honest feedback that you got from one of your clients?

Helen Walton: Your games are shit and our players hate them. We also get players writing in and that’s normally because they’ve been losing and they’re really angry and they send you really angry emails and we actually often try and answer them.

Yevhen Krazhan: Were there any specific feedbacks that you could actually take on board and maybe take use of it?

Helen Walton: I think we would be brutally honest with ourselves. We recognize that we are competing against much larger, much better funded studios. We’re also aware that a game’s performance is actually often not about the game itself. It’s about the position it has on the website. It’s about the promotion that can be put behind it. It’s about all of the things that live around a game. And if you cannot compete on those, then you have to do something different. And one of the reasons that we are an innovative company, that we’re always trying to do something different and interesting, is because we know that that really is the only place that we can compete.

Yevhen Krazhan: Our industry is also known for buzzwords. If you had a chance to maybe ban some buzzword, what would that be?

Helen Walton: The thing is, it’s whatever’s the latest craze that drives me particularly insane. So at the moment, I’d like to stop a lot of people talking about AI, obviously, because I’ve just, you know, read enough.

Yevhen Krazhan: That’s a strong one.

Helen Walton: Everyone jumping on the same bandwagon and no one actually prepared to talk about what they actually do. Gamification was the one a few years ago that I was really sick of hearing about. As if you’re not actually producing games anyway. Should they not work in being fun in their own right?

Yevhen Krazhan: Games to be gamified.

Helen Walton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That should be a bit of a giveaway that you’re doing something wrong.

Yevhen Krazhan: So we have a fun little section, okay. It’s called Network or Not Work. It’s Network, if you like the idea. Or Not Work, which you definitely hate. So let us start with something very simple. You went into a sparring match, boxing, and then the sparring partner immediately — what? — started pitching to you. Is it something Network or Not Work?

Helen Walton: Oh, Network. God knows I’ve bothered people enough at inappropriate times. I’m more than happy to pay that back.

Yevhen Krazhan: Alright, how about another one? You are invited into a sponsored dinner and this is about inclusion and equality. But then all of the five companies are represented by men. Network or Not Work.

Helen Walton: Oh, Network. If I never went to dinners that weren’t sponsored by all male boards, I would never go to any dinners. And also, what a perfect opportunity for them to realise that they need me on their board.

Yevhen Krazhan: Logical. Logical. Skipping completely the expo and only going after parties for networking.

Helen Walton: I mean, I know plenty of people who do that, but not me. Not Work.

Yevhen Krazhan: So you would go both expos and then after parties too?

Helen Walton: Yeah. Pre-show boxing, show, post-show parties. Burn that candle.

Yevhen Krazhan: Full package all the way. Okay, another one. The guys are pretending that they’re super partners and they want to sign a cool deal. But you realize it’s only for the next sponsorship that they’re expecting from you.

Helen Walton: They’re going to be very disappointed because we basically never sponsor anything. Poor souls. I would take it all away and then just let them feel this pain later.

Yevhen Krazhan: All right, all right. So, Helen, I think we had a pretty good ride. Are there any maybe, you know, thoughts from this ride? Something maybe we missed, something you would like to bring up?

Helen Walton: Probably the best thing about work in general is if the people that you work with are exciting and challenging and you enjoy spending time with them and they make you laugh, then pretty much everything else is going to follow. And that doesn’t mean that you all get along all the time. Often it means that you’re fighting actually. Because the creative collaborative process can often be one filled with tension and difficulty. But when you respect them. I’ve always said that sometimes things can be going pretty badly in the company, but I can be feeling incredibly happy because I feel like we’re doing really quality work together and I’m enjoying working with them. And sometimes things can be going really well, but we’re going through a period of terrible tension and it can feel really painful.

Yevhen Krazhan: Well, especially for the founders. 

Helen Walton: No one talks about founder relationships maybe because obviously it’s not that common in life. But you know, I really feel for people when maybe their business ends or, you know, even maybe it ended well. They got acquired, yeah, but then the product that they cared about so much hasn’t come out or it hasn’t worked the way they wanted it to. And I think everyone has a bit of a tendency go, oh, you’re great. I know you’re going to be okay. You’re going to smash it. But actually, that’s not very helpful. We would know not to do that. If someone got divorced, we wouldn’t say, oh, plenty more fish in the sea, you’ll be fine. We would know that was tactless. People need to be able to mourn or just take a moment for something that they have poured so much of their energy and their creativity and their passion into.

Yevhen Krazhan: That’s a big topic in itself. Founder to founder relationship.

Helen Walton: Well, you work together for such a long time, you’re bound to have cycles. Times when things are going really well. Yeah. Things change in a time period.

Yevhen Krazhan: That’s wonderful.

Helen Walton: But if you still have that basic respect. That gets you through.

Yevhen Krazhan: Thank you, Helen.

Helen Walton: Thank you. This was a lovely. This is the best Sunday ride around London I’ve ever had. Well, that was brilliant. Thank you.

Yevhen Krazhan: That was nice talking to you. Good idea. Helen’s story shows us that being brave and smart can lead to big rewards. That’s it for today’s episode of Bet It Drives, a show that’s about the people that drive iGaming forward.