GMW: "We understand that game development is an artistic creation well beyond business and numbers"

In an interview following the company's presence at the recent edition of G2E Las Vegas, the brothers Peter and Dimitri Palexas, responsible for Game Media Works (GMW), analyzed their positioning in the international market, detailed the company's business scheme, and considered that, as a boutique development company, what makes them stand out is that they consider the creation of games as a true art.

What are the products you showcased this year at G2E Las Vegas, both for the U.S. and international markets?

This year we introduced a highly customizable platform for slots. We have three new cabinets, and we have also introduced progressive signs and several new games developed by the company.

We also have multigames, along with premium titles that we call Persistent Games, and our online games: we have added about 220 titles to the platform. In this segment, we are creating a weekly game for the online market, and from them, we make a selection and choose the best ones to bring them also to the casino machines.

If we focus on online games, what are the expectations you have in this segment, and for which markets are you creating content?

When we develop games, we seek to generate themes that can work very well globally. They are themes that, with our 20 years of experience, we know are going to work well with the player.

In iGaming, the market is global. That's why we have several important licenses internationally and we always look for our clients in regulated markets. And if the client is in a regulated market where we need to enter as a supplier, we take out the license so we can always provide a very professional service.

Today we have a presence in several parts of Latin America, South Africa, England... here, in the United States, and we are already taking our first steps to enter Asia and Europe with greater strength.

Is the production of the games in-house, is it done by a team of the company, or do you work outsourced with other studios?

Everything is in-house. We have a team of 200 people, and as I already mentioned, we have 20 years of experience developing games and slot machines. Therefore, all our content is our own.

Concerning physical gaming, in terms of cabinet development, you presented new products at G2E, amid entering new segments in the United States. In which jurisdictions do you have a presence, and how do you expect to expand in the US?

The process has been the other way around. We started manufacturing slot machines in 2004, and in 2008 we started developing online products.

We entered Social Gaming with Facebook, Android, Apple... and we have been in the United States since 2011, as a supplier in Oklahoma. We opened offices here five years ago, in 2019, and we are already present in Florida, California, and Texas.

Now we have faced a new expansion, entering New York, which is the market in which we are expanding strongly.

Is your core business here in the United States more related to online gaming, or are you more focused on products for land-based casinos?

Although we are working for both sectors, today we have a greater development for the physical casino, although we maintain a great expectation in the development of online. We have a presence in social gaming, but we have plans for further expansion in the iGaming sector.

The Las Vegas show was one of the most important events in the sector, and in a way closes the international schedule for 2024 for many companies, which are working towards next year. What are your objectives for 2025? What are the key markets that you identify today as the most attractive for the company?

The United States offers a major market for our slot machines. We are excited because we have just finished a new platform, which will give us the ability to create more content, and faster. In this new scheme of work, we also have expectations of having a bigger market share in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay... and Brazil, we are still waiting to see what happens. We have a wide experience in video bingo and a wide range of games that could work very well in that market. In addition, we are looking at generating Crash Games soon as well, which gives us expectations to enter Brazil.

And finally, being a boutique company developing games and products for casinos, if we had to say what makes the company special - why is your product is more effective or better for the buyer than one of a larger company? 

The key is our team, they are the most important part of the company, together with the 20 years of experience we have under our belt.

We've had some very good games, we've had some bad games, and we feel that experience as a company gives us a sixth sense that is required to be successful. Our products work very well today, and we have experience operating small casinos in Peru, which has allowed us to observe and learn about player behavior. It all adds up.

And there is one more factor, which is very important: we understand that game development is an artistic business. A game is a creation of art, and we focus many times more on art than on numbers.

Here we can see a big difference with other companies, maybe bigger in structure: big companies focus on numbers and forget that we are dealing with an artistic business. Each game is a creation, like a song, isn't it? It is an artistic production because if the game doesn't work, the business doesn't walk. It doesn't matter how much support you have or how long you have been in the market, you have to understand that it is an art, and that is what we do.