1. Don’t tie yourself to your first platform

Though you’ll probably start building on one platform, but that doesn’t mean it will always be the best fit. Startups and gaming companies invest a lot of time, money, and research into new technologies, keeping the mobile games community constantly on its toes and evolving.

You will always be at a crossroads when it comes to platform development, and every gaming company goes through an evolution — that is natural and expected especially if you make an online gambling game or online casino application. Be willing to try new platforms as well as work across platforms because there is still no clear platform winner.

2. Don’t waste time on imitations

No genre is a stranger to a gaming copycat, where a highly successful and popular mobile game or mobile casino is mimicked by a budding startup in the hopes of riding its coattails.

Many studios create simple and repetitive games with no creativity or imagination, especially in mobile casino games. Hundreds of mobile casino games never evolve after their initial launch, and there seems to be no focus on a demographic or target market. This strategy of “redoing a winner” may work for knock-off fashion companies or endless Hollywood classic remakes, but in the world of mobile casino gaming, it’s just a waste of engineering, time, and development dollars.

If you’re in a heavily saturated mobile market, use existing hot-shots as inspiration, but never remake what’s already been made — you’ll never be able to make a dent!

3. Don’t create anything without a market-specific checklist

You and your development team could have an incredible idea for a mobile casino game, but you need more than an idea to get things moving in the right direction. It’s best to create a checklist that echoes the needs of your target demographic as well as what elements or mechanics you’ll need to include to stay on par or one step ahead of the competition.

Some items to consider for your checklist could be:

• What is your target demographic?
• What are the top-ranking games that cater to this demographic?
• Should your game have social integration or capabilities?
• How can your game be different from competitors?
• How should your game be the same as competitors?
• What visuals will captivate your audience?

There are hundreds more that could be added to this list, but the key to success in mobile casino gaming is addressing your audience first and foremost; you can ruffle game-design feathers with your exciting innovations after you know your audience is hooked.

4. Don’t launch without first receiving feedback

Find a test market and live there until the numbers make sense. Canada is a great test market, and I couldn’t be more thankful for Canadian players. Canada is an all-mighty resource in helping the U.S. app market find bugs and user issues and adjusting for a near-perfect product launch in our own country.

Any mobile casino game that launches full throttle in the U.S. without first gathering selected-user feedback will not succeed. You can research your target market and competitors until you are blue in the face (and you should!), but the best refinement comes with real people’s reactions to how your game plays, what they dislike, and how you can make it that much better. Real-life feedback is much more valuable from a developer standpoint. Many games are not built for or played by a developer-focused market, so how can you gain real perspective from a group that doesn’t reflect your audience?

5. Don’t be afraid to mobilize the un-mobilized

Find a casino genre, game, or innovation that has yet to be mobilized, and make it so. That’s what I did with bingo. Years before Bingo Bash launched, I looked at the mobile gaming market and saw slots and poker but no bingo. Had this game really only found a home at churches and veterans’ halls? I didn’t think so then, and neither do our 1.5-million-plus daily active users now.

When it comes to casino gaming, online or offline, the experience is the focus: thrilling wins, feeling glamorous, hopping from machine to machine to grasp that lucky pull, and meeting different dealers at various tables. Putting this physical excitement onto mobile is no easy task: I thought the iPhone would never be grand enough for an experience like this — the screen was just too small.

We took the risk of launching Bingo Bash on iPad only, knowing we’d hit a much smaller demographic of players but also knowing that the experience would be richer, more exciting, and more rewarding on a larger screen. It not only helped make our game a success, but it also helped in socializing the game, as the iPad lent itself greatly to seeing your opponents and engaging with friends.

Building a mobile casino game is a unique and challenging experience in mobile gaming and one that relies on real-life expectations and equivalents. Where some games have fantasy on their side, people who want to play mobile casino games choose to do so because they like playing those games in the real world. That makes it your mission to bring home that brick-and-mortar casino lifestyle on a small, 2D screen.