MEGA’s Clawee: Why Soft2Bet brought the arcade to iGaming

iGaming has come a long way from its humble beginnings in the late 90s, when clunky websites with basic UIs brought online gambling to rudimentary home computers for the first time.

Trailblazing companies like Microgaming, Sportingbet, William Hill and Interops may have kickstarted iGaming before the turn of the century, but in the decades since, the product has been iterated. Intuitive design, clean interfaces, new products and new verticals have brought a small revolution to the way we bet and game over the internet since those early days.

But there’s only so far a wide game offering and shiny UI can take you. Yoel Zuckerberg, chief product officer at major iGaming turnkey solutions supplier Soft2Bet, thinks there’s been a lack of innovation in other areas of the iGaming user experience.

“In 20 years of being in this industry, nothing has changed. If you take all the operators and all the platform providers, we all have all the same tools, the same games, the same payment methods, the same regulated markets. All the sites look the same – although yes, there’s different graphics, design, UX.”

Real innovation, Zuckerberg says, is to give players an experience that can compete not just with other gambling sites but with major sources of screen time consumption – the TikToks and Netflixes of the world.

The answer, he says, is to bring gaming into the gambling mix – to gamify experiences. For Zuckerberg, gamification is the next big opportunity in iGaming – and MEGA is the next big opportunity in gamification.

Enter Soft2Bet’s MEGA

MEGA, short for Motivational Engineering Gaming Application, is Soft2Bet’s proprietary gamification solution designed to be compatible with a range of regulatory landscapes. MEGA is built up of a huge number of different ‘engines’, each one a unique gamified experience that balances player rewards with sustainable margins. Operators can customise the gamification engines by setting reward levels, bonus triggers, user segmentation, level of difficulty and more.

“Gamification isn’t a new thing,” explains Martin Collins, chief business development officer at Soft2Bet. “Within our industry, in the last 10-13 years, gamification has existed but it tends to deal with the customer experience without delivering content. It doesn’t take you to a different experience.”

With the focus always being on optimising the casino games or sports betting odds themselves, the quality of the whole user experience being delivered to the customer has arguably lagged behind other industries.

“If you look at casual gaming, if you look at social, if you look at ecommerce, the way that these guys engage with their customer is entirely different to how us in the online casino and sports betting market did,” Collins continues.

“In iGaming the relationship with a customer was very, very transactional. They weren’t coming back for anything but to transact.”

The idea behind MEGA, Collins explains, is to “deliver experiences and mechanics like they have in casual games, like they have in social, like they have in ecommerce, within the casino and sports betting experience.”

Introducing MEGA Clawee 

MEGA is Soft2Bet’s grand project, its comprehensive attempt to deliver on the lofty ambitions of reinventing the playing experience in online gaming.

One of the jewels in this crown – one of Soft2Bet’s most unique engines – is MEGA Clawee, which offers a new, innovative way to deliver bonuses to players.

The genius of the idea is hidden in its simplicity. With MEGA Clawee, users get the chance to play a literal arcade claw machine, attempting to pick up toys from a real-life machine cabinet that they control remotely through an operator’s iGaming site.

By default, users of a given iGaming site receive a free ticket to play for every first deposit of the day, though the amount is configurable and players can buy more tickets from a shop.

“The origin story behind MEGA Clawee is that we took on a new office that was a playground with games,” says Zuckerberg, laughing. “One level had bowling, one level had an arcade. When we arrived at the office there were all these arcade claw machines. And we said to ourselves, what can we do with this?

“The idea came up to livestream the machine and give a chance to the customer on their first deposit of the day to catch something for free – if they catch something, they get a reward.”

The idea may be simple, but it’s surprisingly effective, adds Collins. “You’d think it’s very simple and niche, but actually it’s not. It plays on nostalgia, so it massively drives engagement. It’s a real product created by a talented team.”

Nostalgia is a super power. But to fully maximise engagement, Soft2Bet has mixed it with another core driver of player behaviour: competition.

Built for social engagement 

MEGA Clawee is social by design. The game is livestreamed to a public lobby, complete with a live chat, where users can watch each other have a go at the game. The best performers will make it onto the leaderboard, designed to drive a sense of competition among players.

“The purpose is to create something a little bit more social there to have some kind of race between the customers, increase the deposits and boost retention on a daily basis,” says Zuckerberg.

“The players are so impressed about these mechanics, honestly speaking. We started with two machines and now we have many, many more.”

There is a skill-based element to the game, meaning savvy players can unlock more bonuses, which Zuckerberg adds is an integral part of its design. 

“You can actually be better than the others and that adds a lot [of value] because you want to try again, you want to try again.”

There are, of course, limits on how many bonuses even the most adept MEGA Clawee players can claim – limits which are customisable by operators. Zuckerberg says there can be any trigger, whether it’s a deposit, wagering value, or any other criteria that suits an operator’s needs.

MEGA Clawee boosts key metrics

The design philosophy of MEGA Clawee rests on solid fundamentals – the genuinely fun, gamified activity adds value by building beyond what Collins terms ‘transactional relationships’, bringing players back for the experience itself.

But what about outcomes for operators? The cold hard data speaks for itself, the company says. 

Soft2Bet’s data shows that average gaming session length is 35.4% longer for users that engage with MEGA Clawee, when compared to average industry standard bonusing mechanics – a core reason why MEGA Clawee has been dubbed the ‘claw of retention’.

The same data also reveals that average revenue per user (ARPU) is 44% higher, average deposit per user (ADPU) is 56% bigger, and on average net gaming revenue (NGR) is 60% higher than what Soft2Bet says are industry averages for standard bonusing mechanics.

MEGA Clawee significantly improves the number of deposits and the return rate, Zuckerberg says, because it motivates players by offering them clear progress through bonuses and rewards like multipliers and cashback. 

It is also just a good time – an important end in itself when trying to genuinely innovate on the player experience.

“What I’m trying to achieve,” Zuckerberg concludes, “is to have fun, and to give something new to our customers, new experiences that they will enjoy more than the rest.”