Q&A: Krzysztof Opałka, CPO, Yggdrasil Gaming

Having just scooped the EGR B2B Awards Slot of the Year gong for the third year in a row, Yggdrasil Gaming is in the midst of a rapid growth period.

June marked the opening of the supplier’s new development hub in Krakow, home to ‘the Lab’ where novel and creative gaming concepts are coined and constructed. Since then however, the team has already outgrown its office in the epicentre of the thriving student city.

Meanwhile, GVC’s Italy-facing bwin.it and Gioco Digital brands just signed a fresh deal to integrate Yggdrasil’s portfolio of video slots into both sites, further expanding the supplier’s reach into new regulated markets.

CEO Fredrik Elmqvist promised a more targeted vision for the UK loomed on the horizon. The supplier first entered the market in March 2016, cementing its position with major deals to provide content for bet365 and William Hill.

“It’s untapped territory for us. A few of the Nordic guys have increased their presence in the UK so of course we’ve piggybacked onto that,” Elmqvist previously told EGR.

The latest venture currently in development down in the deep, dark depths of the Lab is an RNG blackjack game incorporating crisp 3D visuals and a mix of traditional table game and live casino functions. “This mixture of live and RNG offers endless possibilities,” chief product officer Krzysztof Opałka reveals, remaining mostly tight lipped on the matter. “We are basically trying to blur the line between live and RNG in a very surprising but exciting way.”

Krzysztof Opałka, CPO at Yggdrasil Gaming

Opałka arrived from Candy Crush creator King in 2014, subsequently being tasked with helping put together Yggdrasil’s Krakow-facing development office and forging a young and innovative team with the ability to drive the firm’s lofty ambitions.

Speaking to EGR Technology, Opałka offers an insight into the creative process of product development and the threat that the constant turnover of social entertainment apps like Tinder is having on the industry.

EGR Technology: How did you find yourself working with the Yggdrasil Poland team?

Krzysztof Opałka (KO): The whole adventure started over three years ago while I was working at King in Berlin. Fred called me and said there was a new project that I could have the opportunity to build from scratch, which was pretty exciting. In bigger companies you don’t have much impact on movements, so being able to do something from scratch, also in my hometown of Krakow, I knew I would be able to build a really good team because I knew I could rely on certain people’s skills. Also in terms of the market, there was a gap as it moved away from Flash and we had an opportunity to build something in HTML5. It was only just emerging then, and wasn’t fully developed, but I knew we could do something great. All these things resulted in my decision to move back to Krakow.

EGR Technology: What’s your career background?

KO: I started in different advertising agencies, then I moved into gaming, but mainly building Facebook games, and then I moved into social casino slots. I mostly worked on the technical side, but I always leaned to wards product development as well, so I can combine experiences from both sides, which is pretty valuable now as I can understand the technical language and business issues.

EGR Technology: What does your role entail now?

KO: I take full responsibility for the full product lifecycle, so from coming up with new innovative ideas, to taking care of products after market and making sure they perform well. Also, one of our goals for this year in terms of growth is to move towards being a more product-driven organisation. So one of my important tasks is to build the organisation from scratch: hire a new PO, set up the whole workflow between the business, commercial and marketing sides and also delivery org, which is currently divided into the technical organisation and the studio.

EGR Technology: What makes Yggdrasil stand out and how do you lead in innovation?

KO: That’s a very interesting question because if it was easy to answer, then innovation wouldn’t be so difficult. I think our motto is that we don’t want to be the biggest, but we want to be the best. We are always questioning things, including the status quo. We always want to stay hungry. The optimal way to achieve growth is by doing something differently, so it’s about always questioning things.

EGR Technology: Can you give us an insight into the RNG blackjack product you’re currently working on?

KO: A year ago we wanted to know if there was room for something fresh as the market was becoming stagnant. We started thinking about how to adapt recent technologies in order to re-use them in the new product vertical. We are basically trying to blur the line between live and RNG in a very surprising but exciting way. This mixture of live and RNG offers endless possibilities, and so one of the biggest issues we have now with this project is that we have too many ideas and most of them are good, but we have to prioritise them somehow.

EGR Technology: How do you prioritise your movements in the product development process?

KO: It’s good to have intuition, but you can’t rely solely on it – you have to try to maximise your chances by reaching out to as many stakeholders as possible. That means asking players and clients, operators and even different departments within Yggdrasil. Often we ask the commercial team what they think, and the tech organisation if they have any input. Maybe the functionality can be implemented in a new interesting way? We want to gather a lot of opinions, I think that’s much better than relying on the opinion of a single person.

EGR Technology: How are you adapting to the rapid growth of the Poland office?

KO: The most important thing is to remember that things that may have worked when you were 20 people are not going to work when you are suddenly 60; the same applies when you grow to 100. This is a part of questioning things as I mentioned before. You have to constantly question what is optimal, or whether something should be changed. You can’t rely on the same methods and processes, with growth you have to adapt to new circumstances and the number of people.

Throughout certain stages of the growth we were adapting and making appropriate changes. Occasionally we needed to change certain processes, and other times we needed to hire an experienced person to guide us through it. The big changes currently is the migration to a product-driven organisation, which was a huge change from an organisational point of view. We still haven’t finished this transition but we can already see the first positive results and with this structure we should be able to easily double and maybe even triple our headcount.

EGR Technology: How do you harbour such a relaxed and openly creative environment at the office, and why do you think this is beneficial?

KO: I know a lot of people talk about core values, but for us at Yggdrasil it’s not just a slogan, it’s a real ethos. We have a special word – “Yggdrasil-ish” – which basically means passion and hard work and enthusiasm. I think this describes our environment well. If you have a lot of people with the same mindset, it gives very powerful results.

We try to travel a lot so everyone gets a chance to get out of the office and stress this culture. It’s important in such a rapidly growing organisation that people who are here longer and understand our vision and the way we work, also spread the culture further so the newcomers can understand it.

EGR Technology: What’s the process you usually go through when brainstorming new products? How long are the roadmaps you set out?

KO: Usually we have a product backlog done six to nine months in advance, and we have up to three years of more like a strategy roadmap than a product roadmap so we know more or less the way we want to go. One of the Four Values of The Agile Manifesto is responding to change over following a plan and I think this is hugely important because if we see an opportunity, we don’t wait just because we have something else in the roadmap. We want to tackle it as soon as possible, because if there’s a market window open for something, it is usually short and can close pretty quickly.

EGR Technology: What else are you working on in terms of new products?

KO: What I can say is that ‘the Lab’, our internal R&D department, is working on new product verticals and evaluating Yggdrasil Dragons candidates and there are a few products which we are investigating heavily but I cannot tell you anything more at this point.

EGR Technology: Yggdrasil Dragons has been in motion for four months now – how is that project progressing?

KO: We have had a lot of candidates; perhaps 40 or 50. One or two went pretty far in the process but we’re still waiting for the right idea. We’re still waiting for that one gem. We are open to any kind of collaboration, whether it’s a joint venture, or an investment. We can offer our technology and skilled people, it all depends on the idea.

“Our motto is that we don’t want to be the biggest, but we want to be the best” – Krzysztof Opalka, Yggdrasil

EGR Technology: What’s the next big thing in the industry?

KO: It’s not going to come as a big surprise but in the short term I think it’s still going to be mobile, which has pretty stable growth. The most important thing to realise is that the consequence of mobile taking over is now we’re competing with companies like Facebook and Tinder. It’s all about entertainment and a player’s time is limited, they either spend it playing slots or looking for a date on Tinder. We don’t only compete with other slot providers but also with social media and entertainment giants.

EGR Technology: Is this where you draw inspiration for new products from?

KO: We try to stay well informed with what is happening in the industry, so when someone releases a new product we check it out and see whether it is interesting from our perspective. It’s very important to follow start-ups and others in the IT world, as I said we’re competing with all entertainment companies for users’ time so it’s crucial to stay updated.