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Speaker Spotlight: Veikkaus game producer Karoliina Korppoo on taking a bet on gambling games

"To me the most interesting trend recently is how people who play gambling games are moving from buying physical scratchcards and playing on physical slot machines to play on mobile"

Speaker Spotlight: Veikkaus game producer Karoliina Korppoo on taking a bet on gambling games

A seven-year veteran of simulation titles at Colossal Order, Karoliina Korppoo has more recently found herself at betting agency Veikkaus.

Korppoo's background may be in testing and graphic design, but game design is regarded as her passion. The allure specifically comes from understanding the end user, making sure that their needs are met and that the product is what has been promised.

With her Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki talk about designing games for as wide an audience as possible just on the horizon, we thought it a good time to catch up and get the inside scoop.

Could you tell us a bit about your talk at this year’s Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2018?

My talk will be about designing for wide audiences.

I work for Veikkaus, the state-owned gambling games company, and basically every adult in Finland is in our target audience.

It's at the same time a very specific audience geographically, but hugely diverse in age, background and game preferences.

Why did you make the move from Colossal Order to Veikkaus? The project sounds very different.

At Colossal I worked with simulation games for seven years.

I loved the projects but wanted new challenges. I love familiarising myself with the less popular aspects of game development.

Seven years ago, when mobile gaming was huge, that meant PC simulation games. As PC gaming did not die out, I looked even further, and gambling games seemed like a very different world under the umbrella of game development.

The audience is different, playing situations are mostly different, and the way the customers spends money on the games is hugely different.

Veikkaus has one of the oldest if not the oldest still functioning game development department in all of Finland, but not many people even in the games industry know it exists let alone know how games are developed at Veikkaus.

Can you give any details about what you're working on right now?

At Veikkaus we concentrate on slot games and electronic scratchcards.

As video games and gambling seem to inch closer and closer to each other with mechanics like micropayments and lootboxes, experience in the video game industry is very useful with gambling games too.

What do you think have been the major trends in the mobile games industry this year?

To me the most interesting trend recently is how people who play gambling games are moving from buying physical scratchcards and playing on physical slot machines to play on mobile.

This means gambling games are starting to compete more directly with other mobile games for the time of the potential player. This is quite a new challenge for the gambling games industry and a very interesting one.

Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki is now just under two weeks away and will touch down in Finland on September 11th to 12th.

To find out more about the fantastic speaker roster, check out the full schedule – and keep an eye out for the latest additions and updates in the run-up to the show.

If you would like to register, you can do so here.


Head of Content

Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.