Inside Asian Gaming speaks with Albert Yu, Chief Operating Officer at blockchain innovator Alphaslot, about the company’s plans to transform the gaming industry.
Ben Blaschke: First of all Albert, can you tell us what Alphaslot is and why casinos need it?
Albert Yu: Alphaslot is a company leveraging blockchain technology with the aim of reshaping the future of the gaming and entertainment industry. Realizing the pain points and challenges of the existing gaming market, we believe this new technology is the fundamental base of not only the gaming industry’s future, but could also seamlessly apply to almost every other industry segment.
This new distributed gaming technology Alphaslot has built will connect the world’s casino gaming ecosystem – acting as a bridge between gamers, designers, operators and regulators – where data can move across systems and parties with the most transparency and least friction possible, so all participants and the industry can benefit from the economies of creativity at scale.
BB: Who is the Alphaslot team and what do they bring to the table?
AY: Our team is built around industry veterans and personnel with appropriate background to execute our vision.
CEO Raymond Chan has a solid data science background in the US prior to his involvement in the supplier side of the gaming industry throughout Asia. Wayne Hu, our CMO and Head of Investor Relations, has a strong gaming operator marketing background with Caesars and Sands China. Our Chief Architect, William Luk, brings in solid technology experiences from being the former Head of Innovation at Samsung. Professor Joseph Chan, from the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Business and Economics, leads our innovation business approach with his creativity and academic background. I was previously with Aruze Gaming as Global Operations Manager focusing on sales and distribution of EGMs across Asia and Europe.
BB: How have your past experiences in the gaming industry helped you in your current role with Alphaslot?
AY: I was blessed with the opportunity to be based in Macau for several years with Aruze working closely with every large Asian casino operator and understanding their needs. Overseeing EU market business development also gave me an enormous insight into the differences between various gaming markets. Having this experience allows me to have a better understanding of the pain points within our existing land-based gaming industry, which is “how do you attract new players”?
BB: Blockchain seems to be widely misunderstood. Can you explain exactly what blockchain is?
AY: Blockchain is a technology using cryptography linking up a growing list of distributed records which is verifiable and permanent. Alphaslot is leveraging this technology to build a perfect use case in the field where our team has the most experience, land-based gaming, and to expand it to other gaming sectors, creating a new gaming ecosystem. Simply put, blockchain has many more applications than we can imagine. Gaming is one of the few that fits the bill at this early stage of its technology development.
BB: What are the main barriers in the rise of blockchain and how do you overcome these?
AY: Lack of understanding and regulations. I think this goes with every new technology that surfaces. Do you remember what it was like before online banking? Laws and regulations will adapt sooner than later.
BB: What is the potential role of blockchain to the gaming industry?
AY: We believe the casino entertainment value should be appreciated like all other entertainment modes in today’s internet age – interactively, securely, globally and responsibly. By design, this entertainment value will be built on an interactive blockchain ecosystem and involve the participation of existing service providers such as game designers, casino operators and regulators, and new types of providers like distributed gaming technology companies.
BB: How can Alphaslot help transform the modern-day casino experience?
AY: Alphaslot is uniquely positioned to achieve a distributed gaming ecosystem with a native digital asset, SLOT, that directly bridges casinos and customers by increasing incentives to play on the casino floors. SLOT is rewarded by betting with fiat currency on the casino floors based on the amount of time spent, speed of play and other gaming-related circumstances. By using SLOT, casino customers will be able to unlock digital accessories that aren’t available for direct sale, creating compulsion and additional in-game boosts to enhance the gaming experience. These features will engage players for longer time-on-device and drive up revenue on casino floors.
BB: What exactly is the Alphaslot ecosystem?
AY: We believe there is a disconnect between game makers and casino operators. Casinos don’t have the ability to make the games they desire, while game makers can’t interact with players directly on casino floors to develop games they like. In Alphaslot’s ecosystem, casino operators and game manufacturers for the first time have a compatible channel (Alphaslot API) with encrypted data working together to provide a competitive environment for visitors and gamers, who now have more incentive to spend on casino gaming.
BB: So what are the potential benefits for each?
AY: For casino operators, Alphaslot offers an entirely new, rich customer segmentation of next generations. Alphaslot increases the customer retention rate which casinos spend millions to acquire. The “Alphaslot-ready” gaming machines can add new features to interact with gamers via the SLOT tokens and related digital assets, offering competitive products to attract new customers and prolong their gaming activities on the casino floors.
For game makers, Alphaslot offers, for the first time in history, direct access to interact with casino gamers through the Alphaslot ecosystem, making modern gaming elements available from within the games themselves. Game makers will be able to offer digital assets for gamers to acquire, making them stay longer on their games and increasing revenue for both game makers and casino operators.
These unique characteristics present new business opportunities for the industry to compete with upstarts.
BB: Are you specifically targeting Asia?
AY: Definitely not only Asia, blockchain technology is borderless. We have the support of the Gaming Standards Association (GSA) based out of the US; Ron Goudsmit from the ECA (Honorary President of European Casino Association) as our advisor; Jason (Sora Ventures) and Paul (Pantera Capital) have both supported Alphaslot as our LP and VC. We aim to leverage this technology and have as much adaptation as possible on a global scale.
BB: What is the long-term goal for Alphaslot?
AY: We believe one of the core long term goals for Alphaslot is to focus on the infrastructure layer, creating access for regulators to promote responsible gaming and AML, for game designers to tap into new sources of information about players, for casino operators to expand their reach to customers via CRM, for technology companies to innovate in presently unimaginable ways and for gaming values to grow exponentially.
To revolutionize the gaming industry is to bring seamless entertainment with value to all parties involved. Gaming and entertainment is only the first step from Alphaslot, we have more ambitious plans in the works that are equally exciting, so stay tuned!
