Colorado Lottery GameJam - Tyson Barr, Account Director of IGT

so tyson from igt uh he's an account director so they're a global leader in gaming and works with the lottery to develop the games and build responsible gaming experience for our colorado game lottery game players so with that i'm going to let tyson talk a little bit about what they're looking for in a winner he'll be part of the um judging crew of course they they work very closely with the lottery in the game development so tyson do you want to go ahead and take that away yeah thank you john uh first of all i just want to thank everybody for uh for putting us on for uh for organizing this tonight and especially the the game jam in general um i think tom covered a lot of important points with what we're trying to do here the the lottery industry can be a little bit foreign to some people who haven't played before but but the bottom line is it's a very fun industry uh and even more important that it goes to some great beneficiaries across the whole country specifically here in colorado for all the great outdoor stuff that i think so many of us enjoy so um again thank you i want to thank tom and and his staff i want to thank lou the state and also the governor for including us um i won't go on too much about what igt does we're a little bit the magic behind the curtain we provide uh lettering casino technology across the world we've been a partner with with colorado lottery in one capacity or another for uh going on 25 30 years and what we do is supply all the technology um that various lotteries need so in colorado here we have a data center um but it there's a vastness to what we provide there's the technology but then it also comes more to what we're talking about tonight with regard to game development innovation uh things like that and speaking for the industry as a whole tom's exactly right the innovation has never been more important in the industry and tom's done a great job of leading this lottery to say we have to think really think outside the box because lottery products it's a very mature market um you know powerball specifically is one of the strongest brands in the country but it's also been around a long time so tom is really again trying to think outside of the box and get his staff to do so and and we want to be partners in that that said when he first presented this idea to me is something we want to do uh in combination with some some potential monitor plans i think i looked at him like he had three heads um hadn't heard what a hackathon is or or a game jam for for that matter but it's great uh i think it's going to be awesome um i want to kind of go at it from the angle of again speaking from the lottery industry i think make a few recommendations uh for our for our developers and have some ideas but the main thing is really you know anything with it as long as it's within the rules really really uh try and test the boundaries a little bit on ideas as far as creativity um some of the other things i'll say is is you have to play a little bit of both sides from the standpoint of saying uh it also has to be a little bit easy to understand um one of the challenges we often face with launching new games in any lottery is is explain to players what it means as simple as drawing six balls example for powerball or megaminds others seem simple it really can be confusing so i'd encourage people to try and make it as as simple as possible obviously very exciting but it's something our retailers both current future gonna have to explain to players and and we want to make sure it's simple understand um but this again this is a whole new realm i think we're trying to reach a new market here um both demographically uh age-wise but also just with the new types of retailers we're looking uh to add in with regards to monitor games it's more of a a game that lends itself to bars restaurants where people tend to lean excuse me linger longer versus you know in and out of a convenience store or grocery store where they're just getting their items and leaving so those are some of the things i'll say um as far as just thinking outside of the box that i think this is going to be great just uh i would encourage people to go research the current games in colorado if if you haven't played some of the games i have in colorado of course are the same elsewhere uh powerball is offered in a lot of states so it's mega millions but really go look and see uh wherever you might be in whatever your state is go into a store and say okay what are the games uh how many numbers are drawn when is it drawn things like that a lot of the games currently are drawn only on certain days of the week we're looking at something a little more frequently you know under 10 minutes it kind of keeps people engaged so keep that in mind as well but my point is that's a good starting point say let's do something different than we're seeing uh in the states with the the current projects and let's expand on that so i'd encourage people to do that so other things is i think everything's been covered i'm excited to see what happens with this again igt is a huge company there's a lot of people even with our company seeing how this is going to go this is a brand new approach to something like this but i think it's going to be great and i'm very excited to see what happens so i appreciate it again and with that john i'll i guess i'll hand it back over to you