Colorado Lottery GameJam - Q&A

there's a q a function in the webinar series here if you go to the q a function you can answer ask a question and we will direct the question uh to the right individual or we will um answer it here on a live stream right now so the first question that's popped in is from daniel target payout of 65 of each game around betting pool or is that 65 chance of getting a payout at any given play so tom or tyson do one of you want to take that you bet um that's a good question the 65 percent is around the payout it's not the chances on any one given play those are more characterized as odds so the odds we like to think about the odds as if you play it you know how many times would you play it on average before you would have a winning experience that's that's more about the odds the payout is based on if we take in a hundred dollars how many dollars are we gonna pay back to the to the players so odds and payout that's how i would think about those two things thank you hopefully that answers your question daniel we'll move to the next one which is from drew anderson will the winners be given the opportunity to work on the continued development of the project they worked on so tyson and tom i think that's also a good question for you it's tbd we uh this is something i wanted to cover before on what i was talking about really where igt comes in is where the rubber meets the road and saying uh okay we've got a great concept here let's look at to see uh just that what is a concept what do you do with that and then also the back end on the technical side what does the coding look like um obviously being in a company of our studies we do have proprietary code things like that but we write languages such as c plus so um i'll say this we'll look at the ideas look at the code we typically just take it over that's that's literally what we do with a lot of our customers and uh the contracts that we have so it's conversation that can be ongoing um we have internship programs things like that at a corporate level so it could be in that capacity um so that was a little hard to answer right now but i like the question i like where it's going to say you know this is obviously a new realm for a lot of people um that are on here but uh but yeah we typically do that uh to in-house and also some third party but we can we can chat with that and tom and i can have that conversation yeah i would just add that you know we really don't know what we're gonna get i think that's part of the fun of this is you know we can see a concept and when we start doing the evaluation of it it could look like a really really promising idea but we would need to maybe drill down a little bit with the creators to find out you know what they were thinking about with a with a play style or what they were thinking about with you know a winning action or whatever there's so many variables that until we see the actual concepts themselves it's going to be really hard to say how much more follow-up and how much more kind of explanation we're going to need from the creator so yeah i agree with tyson but i also would say that you know there's a pretty good chance that we'll have follow-up questions and dialogue that we'll have to you know have to follow through before we can go on to the next step so i'll add one thing in my conversations with you tom and with your team if i was to frame in this just you know a little bit slightly differently i would say we've agreed that we all understand that the the projects that we get are going to be you know not half-baked but they're going to be proofs of concept and and sort of early development mo in large part and i think that what i've noticed is the uh the willingness from your team to sort of keep it open like i think what you said about we don't know what we're going to get is true so i think that we what we had to do is create some base frame of engagement like here's here's the rules but there's a lot of flexibility in that depending on what comes up absolutely you know we didn't want to put too tight of a fence around this because we don't want to discourage people from being bringing their best ideas and um you know let's see what we get and then let's see how much more exploration or how much more elaboration we have to do with the creator okay okay cool let's move on to the next question so just remember there's a chat function and a q a function please put your questions in the uh q a function but i did see that there is a question that popped in first into the chat so what are the odds of submission can you make a game with any chance of winning could you kind of restate that question sure what are the odds of submission i'm not sure exactly what that means but can you make a game with any chance of winning so in other words um when you talked about odds versus payout can they make any any odds of winning yeah we're not going to dictate what the odds of winning are i think um what you start getting into with the math is that you can't make every play a winner um or you you know no one wins anything so you kind of have to balance the play the payout with the odds of winning and um but no we're not going to impose you know it has to be roughly one in four or roughly one in ten no we want to hear uh different approaches to winnability um it's a big challenge in our industry balancing off having a significant enough prize with with uh giving people enough winning experiences so that's part of what we're looking for is uh new perspectives on that and new ideas about how to fulfill people's expectations thanks tom um so we have a similar question i think we may have just answered now that you've clarified the difference between payout and odds is there a target percentage of odds that you're looking in the game submission with 50 odds so i think we've just answered that so you know we're not going to dictate the odds that you need to do so use that in sort of in consideration with the payouts and and obviously creating a a game that's sort of multi-dimensional and beneficial for everyone so i think that's that's good there um so next question is is it okay if we choose not to use web3 code if we choose to focus on wem2 instead so lou cordova is going to answer this one so go ahead lou well i i my understanding is that you can use web 2 but you wouldn't qualify for a second round from chain link of the second price the sort of bonus prizes yeah bonus prizes so the prize you know the top prize is ten thousand dollars there's a second set that the top prize is five thousand dollars but you have to use web three for that so if you did three you could if you were the total winner of everything you could win up to 15 000 but those are separable things to get the web three prizes i believe you just have to qualify so you have to submit it has to be qualified but if you also use web3 you can qualify for more prices do i have that right john you do you you do have that correct so yes so just one point of clarification here um this is the merging of two worlds we're not just looking for web three you know fully decentralized applications that's not at all what this is about the first and foremost priority is is really the idea generation and crowdsourcing of creativity around a new game now how you execute the game and what code you use to build the game is entirely up to you and we're not going to stifle your creativity however i will say the more you do and the more you can provide as far as a full comprehensive gaming experience and also venturing into some of these web 3 techniques and and sort of things that sergey talked about on his talk i mean it's going to win you some bonus points but focus on the gameplay first that's what what lou means when she says you have to qualify you do have to make a submission to the lottery game jam 4 lottery proposed game not just probable fairness tech right like we're not just looking for that we're looking for a fully demo-able game okay so thank you lou for your contribution there john i would i would john i would even say that um the most important thing is the idea you know what that is what that you know it's the idea you can work on how to make it fraud proof later how to do different things how the mechanics of it works but yes a demo of your idea is first and foremost and worry about the deep mechanics you know after that fair enough all right next question can i make a game that's meant for a touchscreen that allows constant swipes and multi-touch or is it supposed to be that you just pick one thing at the start and don't interact until it's over so um i'll just say this we're not looking for you to do anything particularly um we're trying to make sure that we oh we keep the fields of creativity open um but tom do you want to speak to that at all on on sort of any simple hints but i know that you guys are judging on a very open criteria so you're not looking for any sort of specific vector on this but go ahead right so um i would say don't restrict your your creativity on this um because as we mentioned earlier even though we're focused primarily on a monitor game platform for now there are other ways that we can play the monitors that we're going to start out with probably won't have that functionality and i'll look to tyson to jump in at this at this at any point but i wouldn't let that be something that you know completely shuts off your your flow um think about the game think about the game and and how to win and how to play let us worry about the technology and how to act and how to deliver it yeah but keep also keep in mind that to the point that you are swiping right left whatever you're doing things it still has to be a game of chance so if your ability to swipe faster or do something different changes the odds then it's no longer a game of chance so that's just a caution that a lot of times the interaction implies a skill level can be increasing and then it no longer becomes a game a chance yeah if i can if i could say something lewis great point um i will say is if you're doing something that does not change the odds of the game or the outcome or anything like that i say go for it um you know we have certainly you know there's some self-service terminals that we use there's other you know typical games where you run a place up things like that but for the purposes of this effort i say again as long as it doesn't you know impact this um you know not being skill based go for it let's see what you got so hopefully that answers that yeah just one more one more point from me you know in the lottery world we've typically developed the technology first and then fit games into that technology one of the things i'm excited about with this is we can actually have a game that if it comes out to be so good we'll take the game and then fit the delivery mechanism to the game you know we're we're going to flip over the the typical development mindset if we come out of this with some kind of game that just you know blows people's minds and and tests great and just delivers an experience that lottery players have been looking for we'll figure out a way to bring it to market that's that's what i really want to impress upon people yeah that's a great point and thank you tom i in talking with your team what i really love about this collaboration is is i'll say it again you know to have that willingness to kind of step out into experimentation and just really be uh honoring and rewarding to creativity is a huge boon for this this competition so um don't don't feel like you're constrained i mean as thomas and tyson have said like go for it you know don't let it constrain you like if you've got some um interesting things to do then do it but i think the point about the game of chance is really important so if you don't understand if you don't know the the difference between game of chance and game of skill that's a really important distinction to make so game of chance have fixed odds game of skill the odds can vacillate depending on player input so just make sure it stays as game of chance that's the key here that takes away from this all right moving on to the next one and we've just got a couple more minutes i'm going to go ahead and clear out the queue and see if any remaining ones come in and then we're going to wrap up so next one is there any specific requirement to the license used for the code submitted copy left aloud so dan i'm not sure exactly what you mean on this one but we did cover this a little bit earlier the license you have to have all the permissions and licenses to use the the code that you've submitted and any iep that's being submitted you either have to have again license or you have to own it yourself in order to qualify for a prize next question i think uh you may have just answered this but i want to clarify my can my game submission only run on one specific platform like for example if i get no no exactly we just covered this uh i think ad nauseam so uh we just want to put an exclamation point behind that that like look don't don't feel limited if you've got you know some really creative awesomeness that you want to express then do it and and the state wants to see it we want to see it everybody wants to see it all right so if we do use web3 technology as their specific token to use for purchasing tickets such as die or usdc so i'll answer this one no again you can use whatever you want i would say when we talked about the idea earlier when lou mentioned that like it's really the idea i'd actually i don't wanna i build on that i'm not gonna contest that but what i'm gonna say is yes it's the idea but most of the competition is probably gonna come down to the ux and the experience so the only thing that i would caution in the web 3 world is just making sure that your your your game is very usable because the last thing that you want to have do is to have the ux get in the way of the creativity right so we all know that in the web 3 world we're still advancing ourselves in the space of your user experience um so just keep that in mind as you're doing things uh you will certainly get points for a really great user experience in using web3 technology so that's something i'm definitely looking for um but you know again you're not constrained on whether you know if you've got a funding mechanism whether it's usdc or die no nobody really cares at this point which you what you use all right with that i think we've cleared out the queue and oh we've got one more i'm gonna let it happen so bran venter is asking you mentioned wanting to expand into a broader target market for these games what is your current lottery market and who are the demographics you aim to bring into the lottery tom tom and lou the lottery's demographics are pretty similar to colorado's demographics um and explain that and say who that is because some people are going to be out of the state so yeah um there what i mean by that is that there isn't a specific age group income group or education group that is over underrepresented very significantly most coloradans have had some college we have a pretty good ratio of college graduates which is also true of colorado the population of colorado is skews a little bit younger but our player base really falls into all of the different age categories except for obviously the youngest uh people because many are still in college or don't have you know incomes yet so and it also doesn't include a lot of older people at the highest end of the age spectrum because if they're retired or on fixed incomes they don't have as much money to spend on lottery so think about people with jobs you know think about people that are smart enough to figure out how to play a a game on a lottery terminal um think about people who can afford to play um a continuous amount of lottery if they want to i know that's not super helpful but it really is just every person's game who are we trying to bring in well i think what what we're really focused on is trying to grow our retailer base to include more bars and restaurants social establishments where people hang out it's not about how old they are or what they you know what their education is it's about the social experience that we don't really have right now with any colorado lottery products but in many states i think there are 19 states in the u.s now that have monitor networks where people can go to a bar restaurant a sports bar hang around play play a lottery game while they're waiting for their food it's more experiential than it is really targeted to demographics it's more about getting people involved at a different place than where then they're going to a convenience store or a grocery store we want to expand their experience and we think by expanding their experience we'll appeal to more people it's it's not really how this what those people look like it's kind of what experience are they looking for and something new that we haven't been able to provide them uh historically yeah i i don't know if that's super helpful or not but that's kind of how i would characterize it lose yeah i would add to that so everybody who's on this ask yourself if you play lottery and i'm not talking about buying a christmas presents you know to give to everybody i'm talking about are you really a lottery player if the answer is no we want you to be a lottery player build it for you build it to be fun for you because we're trying to get people who don't normally play the lottery so those of you who don't play the lottery you're the perfect people to figure out a new game of what would get people playing the lottery and your friends as well what would make your friends play that's kind of what we're looking for great thanks lou thanks tom um all right so we're going to go ahead and wrap up the q a we've closed that out so if you have more questions feel free to ask them via the discord server and you know we've got that open um from here on out um you know we will be officially kicking off the game jam so with that i i officially open the game jam so you are welcome to begin your projects and we look forward to seeing your insane creativity if you haven't registered yet here's one distinction that we're going to do differently than most hackathons or game jams we're leaving it open okay we've got it what nine days or something and we're going to go ahead and leave registrations open so if you've got friends that want to join late it's okay um they're going to have a little bit of a disadvantage possibly if they come in three or four days into this but we don't want to limit anybody's creativity and contribution so we're going to go ahead and leave that open on the gamejolt page if you want to do that just go to the gamejolt page and just have your friends register there don't forget hashtag your project when you're ready to submit it you've got to use the specific co lottery game jam half hashtag in gamejolt to submit your project we will be reminding you throughout the week so don't miss that now i will say one last thing to announce um on monday monday afternoon we will have the governor back and the governor will be doing an open q a session for all game jam participants to talk with him directly about his plans for the state why it's a great place to come move live play work whatever you want to do visit um and the innovation goals specifically directly from him so we we will be sitting around some communications about that you'll be able to join that and get direct insights from the man himself on um the visions of colorado and all this innovation collaboration and modernizing public good infrastructure through technology so that's about it so one last parting comment from me so it's been an unbelievable honor to be a part of what i see is an absolute first in the country partnership of collaboration between very distinct worlds um we found ways to align our incentives and to really create um open channels of sharing and creativity and in just ways that i didn't ever think would actually happen so we are very very honored to be a part of this effort with the state and um we look forward to continuing these efforts and maybe who knows possibly having a call at the colorado jam next something that's even bigger in scope and more even more you know aggressive when it comes to looking and searching for the next vectors of innovation when it comes to modernizing our public systems and just how we work together as as the public service sector as well as just community members so we look forward to that and we couldn't be more full-threadedly supportive of this effort tom your team i want to give a special shout out to gloria who has done an unbelievable job at coordinating and project managing this she deserves way more credit than she's getting so i'm doing that publicly in front of everyone and lou to you and your team as well thank you so much and all the participants and attendees go make it happen so jam on folks let's do it we'll talk to you soon