Exclusive: Ash Gaming alumni reunite to launch slots studio start-up
Former Playtech marketer Henry McLean joins forces with Andrew Porter and Chris Ash at 4ThePlayer
Ash Gaming veterans Chris Ash and Andrew Porter have once again joined forces to launch slots development start-up studio 4ThePlayer.com.
Ash and Porter worked alongside each other at Ash Gaming as well as Playtech, following the London-listed supplier’s acquisition of Ash Gaming back in 2011.
Ash spent three years at Playtech as head of open platform to oversee the integration, while Porter worked from Gibraltar as the firm’s casino content director.
Porter, who was responsible for building and developing some of Ash Gaming’s most popular titles, including Wild Gambler and Leprechauns Luck, is now CEO of 4ThePlayer.
4ThePlayer.com is a B2B slots creation studio which has pledged to build slots from a player perspective, rather than with mechanics designed to extract the most money from the player.
Hi Twitter! We are 4ThePlayer – We make fun and exciting casino games players will want to play with no confusing game mechanics or over-engineered bonus rounds. Follow us for updates & behind the scenes sneak peaks – our first games are being released in Nov 2019. 18+
— 4ThePlayer.com (@4ThePlayercom) August 19, 2019
Ash is a director at 4ThePlayer.com and in charge of business development, while the start-up also hired former Ash Gaming and Playtech marketer Henry McLean this week.
McLean officially started in his commercial and marketing director role on 27 August, having left Playtech in July 2019 following a five-year spell with the supplier. McLean, who spent nine years at Ash Gaming, told EGR Intel: “I wanted a new job where I’d be able to get my teeth into something and make a difference that wasn’t in a corporate environment.
“We believe a lot of slots companies have lost their way and that when players open a game, many are bamboozled and wonder what they have to do. Rather than thinking about doing things to get the most out of the player, we start from the point of what the player would actually enjoy. We are also going to create a player fanbase so players actively seek out our games once that trust has been built because they know what they are getting,” he added.
4ThePlayer.com will officially launch its first games from November onward, with three titles penned in for release at some stage: 100 Bit Dice, 1 Left Alive and 9k Yeti.
4ThePlayer.com struck its first commercial agreement in February 2019 after joining Yggdrasil’s Masters programme.
The start-up is currently in negotiating with several other platform providers.