Justin Chamberlain: “None of this was thinkable only 2 years ago”

Justin Chamberlain is the CEO and Founder of HungryBear, an innovative studio and author of the acclaimed and popular Slot Masters format. The company has found inspiration in traditional video games such as Fortnite and Minecraft and brought over some of the lessons of entertainment and player engagement from those traditional verticals into the iGaming space, creating a highly successful product. From the United Kingdom to Canada, HungryBear is clawing its share out of iGaming bringing plenty of innovative designs with it.

Q: Everyone at HungryBear is an industry veteran. What has brought you together and what is it that HungryBear sets out to achieve and do differently than what others in iGaming do?

Well, my senior management team are industry veterans and they largely followed me from the last business which I sold in 2016. But obviously, we have a big team and a good spread of new and younger, fresher talent that is key to our success also.

What we try to achieve is to be different, to innovate, and to disrupt the online gaming industry. Most of us in the team are avid slot players, and although there are many exciting and fun titles in the market, we struggle to accept the sheer volume of similar banal games, game mechanics, maths, features, and engines that seem to dominate the space. Copy rather than be original seems to be the winning formula in the space, but not one I’m happy to pursue.

Add to that the fact that the slots sector has stayed largely static over the past 15 years with respect to engagement and being single-player only, whereas most other genres of gaming have already adopted and moved to multiplayer platforms, and this to me presented as a unique opportunity.

Q: You have pioneered the Slot Masters format, which has proven a hit with players and studios. Most recently, you signed a content partnership with Blueprint Gaming to bring their games as part of the popular F2P tournament format. In light of this, how successful has Slot Masters been?

Slot Masters has been a resounding success so far, testimony to this of course is the number of operators that now operate our games, and even more so the Blueprint IP deal that we have closed that further enhances the offering. None of this was thinkable only 2 years ago, but our dedication, hard work, perseverance, grit, and never-give-in attitude have helped get us into this unique position as not only the market leader in multiplayer, but still the only provider!

Q: When you developed Slot Masters, did you do so in anticipation of changes in consumer behaviour? Is multiplayer gaming becoming more important for casino players and how does HungryBear come in all of this?

It was exactly the anticipation of a change in player behaviour that led to the development of the game, and in fact, I first developed it over 12 years ago, so I was a little too early!

What I saw in the market, and with my own experience having 3 young children at home, was that multiplayer had very quickly become the dominant and ubiquitous gaming experience for a whole generation of young gamers. Every game my children played, from Call of Duty to Fortnite to Minecraft, had them all immersed in, and comfortable with a multiplayer environment. In fact, they came to view multiplayer as the norm, and wouldn’t engage with games that offered only linear single-player campaign modes.

When I first tried to bring this idea to market in 2012 it failed miserably, because the market wasn’t ready, and the technology didn’t exist to deliver a good enough experience. In 2020 I decided to revive the idea based on huge shifts in technology, mobile phone capabilities, broadband penetration, and broader market trends. With that, it was reborn, rebuilt, and brought to market. We haven’t looked back since!

Has multiplayer become an important experience for the average slots player, well given we surpassed 1m unique players on Slot Masters back in January, yes I think we have proved the potential.

Q: Many of your games have already been featured with the PlayNow platform in Canada. Where is HungryBear's key focus in terms of geos? Are you focusing on North America, and Europe, or intend to work on a global expansion instead?

Yes, we have a great relationship with BCLC in Canada, and in fact, was the whole reason I established the business in the first place. We are still developing content for them, and potentially for other UK operators in the coming months, which gives us quite a broad spread with respect to markets.

We have Slot Masters now live, going live, or being built for over a dozen market operators already, and by the end of the year I forecast we will be double that. This trend will continue into 2024 I am sure as we onboard more and more operators based on current demand.

Q: Do you see your products as continuously evolving and do you think this ongoing innovation is mostly going to do with your Slot Masters format or is it going to also apply to other releases by HungryBear?

Always evolving! We never stand still! We are continuously evolving the current product line, and even now working on new product lines where we are planning to utilise the potential of the multiplayer aspects of Slot Masters in other gaming genres.

In the very short term, you will see a whole host of new features, weapons, mechanics, bespoke Blueprint versions of games, and gameplay models come to market with our customers, including a completely new sportsbook/football-focused version of Slot Masters launching in August with a Tier 1 UK operator.

Not far behind that milestone will witness the release of our biggest evolution to date – real Money Slot Masters! We are in the final stages of acquiring an industry-first certificate for a real money multiplayer slot game, which I am sure is going to prove another game changer for us.

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