Developing a Unique Player Experience

Background

Our client, Entertainment, wanted to create a new kind of baccarat game. A new product, one that has never been created before. One that is part entertainment television, part social engagement, part online gaming, all blended into one unique player experience. This format of game is a world first and is patented in 17 countries. The new unique game features live streamed baccarat play allowing players to engage remotely on their mobile devices or computers to compete globally.

Client

Avantage Entertainment is a well-funded, privately owned, pre-launch company entering the global iGaming arena with an innovative new approach. Avantage is developing a portfolio of sophisticated, immersive, fun table and sportsbook pool-based casino games which will live on Avantage’s proprietary game platform and plug into a global network of partner/third-party operator platforms. Avantage games feature unique aspects that include dynamic odds, social and competitive interaction, and immersive entertainment.

Challenge

Avantage Entertainment needed a company that could provide the knowledge, expertise and creativity to develop something that had never been built before, working remotely across multiple time zones. They needed a team and process that was flexible yet able to deliver a high-quality product. A team that could create a product that would delight users globally.

They were looking for an experienced igaming software development company to build a fully functional, interactive, feature-rich player interface application for this unique, first to market, custom casino table game.

The game would be based upon elaborate studio productions featuring croupiers, players and commentators that will be broadcast live to mobile or desktop players around the world. The requisite interface had to contain multiple data layers in real-time sync with the video feed of the game.

In addition, the game needed to be compliant with UKGC jurisdictional regulations.

Solution

The multidisciplinary teams followed the Symphony Solutions Engagement process, adopting a lean and agile approach. The experienced teams worked with the USA-based project team to quickly agree on a high-level roadmap, identify key features, and prioritize work with a focus on proving the product hypothesis early.  

The project was split into key milestones, with the first being focused on project kick-off activities as well as the design, definition, and alignment of overall system requirements, architecture, and overall solution experience design.  

Incremental releases were to take place every two weeks, with demos being provided to key client stakeholders by the teams.  

The technologies chosen were based on the client´s platform and technology choices to ensure a homogenous approach to the solution—one that would support the growth and aspirations of the company. A summary of those chosen is listed below for reference:  

• AWS Elemental media services for live stream video, encoding, packaging, and propagation towards  
• AWS CloudFront as a CDN  
• AWS CloudFront and Lambda @Edge as a CDN  
• 3rd party CDN services were considered as a part of future solution optimizations for specific regions & conditions.  
• Together with AWS API Gateway was used for frontend interaction  
• Amazon DynamoDB for game state and application-specific latency monitoring data;  
• AWS Simple Notification Service for messaging  
• AWS Cognito & AWS API Gateway for user authentication and API authorization  
• ReactJS  
• NodeJS  
• TypeScript  

The teams at Symphony worked to deliver a fully functional, highly scalable, secure solution with the new game ready to accommodate many hundreds of thousands of simultaneous players around the world.   

The game was scheduled for its first release in the summer of 2022.  

Result

Symphony Solutions was able to provide the knowledge, expertise, and creativity needed to build a fully functional, interactive, feature-rich player interface application that was compliant with UKGC jurisdictional regulations. Also, Symphony adopted a lean and agile approach that accommodated multidisciplinary teams working remotely across multiple time zones to quickly agree on a high-level roadmap, identify key features, and prioritize work with a focus on proving the product hypothesis early.