We spent a lot of time at World Match stand playing their five new games: Carnival Bonus HD, Monte Carlo Jewels HD, 3D Farm HD, Fruits Evolution HD and Aztec Moon HD. ICE is an amazing opportunity to play games that are yet to be released and we are happy we had a chance to be the first to try World Match slots. 

We spoke to World Match Executive Director, Andrea Boratto, to get to know more about their exciting games and their plans for the future. Learn what he had to say!

What do you expect to gain by participating in ICE 2015?

World Match has been authorized by the Gambling Commission to provide its gaming services in the UK market, according to The Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act, which came into force on November 1st 2014. So to present our portfolio of online and mobile casino games there is no better occasion than the ICE Expo, where we expect to meet the operators who own the licence for the UK regulated market, in order to show them how to enrich and enhance their casino games offer and start to do great business together.

Furthermore, we have great expectations for the UK market. Speaking of data, the market analysts estimate an annual increase of 12% of the spending for the online gaming, which is expected to reach 4.4 billion pounds in 2018.

In addition, thanks to the recent renovation of the online gaming regulation, which means more guarantees of transparency and legality for the players and a cleaner and more reliable source of income for the operators, the British scenario is even more promising.

What products are you exhibiting during the show?

We added many new games to our portfolio, making our offer for the online casino the richest and most complete among those available on the market.

World Match is indeed the most substantial and reliable business partner for the regulated markets with a huge offer of more than 100 Slot Machines, every variant of Video Poker games, Roulettes and Table Games available in Flash technology and the most sizeable bouquet of Mobile games, which include more than 50 games in native iOS and Android technologies.

Recently you managed to enter the UK market. Are you going to enter other regulated markets in the near future?

We are constantly monitoring all the regulation processes undertaken by other countries.

There is now every expectation that the Dutch market opens its doors late this year, or early 2023, but potential might also lie in markets elsewhere. The emergence of regulation in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, and to a lesser to extent Poland, may also represent very good opportunities.

Latin America still seems to be a very exciting scenario: Brazil is as close as ever to regulating and it harbours the greatest potential for online gaming with a population of approximately 200 million, of which there are expected to be as many as 77 million smartphone users by the end of 2023 – more than the population of the UK.

Last year you launched a lot of new exciting slot games. Can we expect any new games to be released in the upcoming months?

With the new year we have renewed our commitment to the study and development of new features for the next Slot Machines for the Web, in order to make the gaming experience even more exciting for the players.

Besides, we are going to implement our offer of Mobile games, to allow playing our Slot Machines as much as possible, even "on the go".

We have chosen ICE 2015 to unveil our very latest Slot offering. The titles of the five brand new releases that has just been officially presented in London are: 3D Farm HD that revisits the classic and very popular Slot theme of the country farm in the style of the funniest comics; Monte Carlo Jewels HD with tons of shimmery diamonds and precious stones that makes the player's eyes light up; Fruits Evolution HD that refreshes a classical setting in a very shiny way; Aztec Moon HD that awakes the survivors of the ancient Aztec empire with all its mystery; Carnival Bonus HD, a Slot full of the spirit of the Venice Carnival and surrounded by its magical and romantic atmosphere.

All these new games have some great in-play animations and plenty of cool sound effects, plus there are some awesome new special features available. Above all, many of these Slots are equipped with Bonus Games that really dominate the picture.

What technologies do you use to create your entertaining games? What are the advantages of using them?
At this stage we are developing with native technologies. Last year we had a few request for HTML5, but I think that this was because of the related costs of certification on the regulated markets, because if you have HTML5 you need to do only one certification that is valid for both web and mobile. What our biggest operators, biggest clients are asking for is a different opportunity to interact with the player, so they need some additional information regarding where the player is. Some operators need to push messages to the player in order to recognize when and where the player is playing and if you want this kind of information, then it is impossible to work with HTML5. Probably the best thing to do is to have both, because native technology has some pluses and minuses and even though HTML5 is pretty different than last year and it’s more flexible, it has pros and cons too.

Are you going to continue using your native technology in the future?

At the moment we prefer to continue this way, because this is what our clients are requesting. It’s impossible for a company to do everything, so probably if they just want to have the mobile version of web games, but do not mean to push on mobile, they will take some HTML5 from some competitors. On the other hand, I believe that for the mobile strategy they will continue to use native technology. If our clients request this, then I  suppose there is a reason.

What are your hopes, plans and goals for 2015?

We are working at several new projects, Social Gaming first among everything, and we expect to release the first Social Network games by the end of the year.