In the latest episode of Yggdrasil’s podcast, What’s up Ygg, the company and guests from its streaming partner CasinoDaddy discussed how they approach working with the streamer community and how this impacts on the industry. 

The podcast began with a shared discussion between Fredrik Elmqvist, CEO of Yggdrasil Gaming; Erik Joelsson, Streamer at CasinoDaddy; and Kristian Egede Nielsen, Key Account Manager at CasinoDaddy – alongside the podcast host Stewart Darkin.

Initiating the discussion with a question on how streamers are picked, Joelsson explained the risks of choosing a streamer to put in charge of managing money and keeping the channel safe from being banned, as well as taking care of the stream and its community. 

He said: “For us, we need people we can trust. We’re more on a personal level with the viewers than a business level.” 

Pressed on how to engage viewers, Joelsson revealed that there are different types of viewers with varied preferences which he mainly put down to two categories: the loyal viewers who stick around interacting with a stream, and the ones who jump between different hosts looking for the biggest bets and stakes. 

He concluded: “I can say for sure that if you’re doing bigger bets, you’re going to get more viewers.”  

Delving deeper into how streamers are often seen as the face of a brand to the player market, Elmqvist commented: “They can put demands on new operators coming in, in terms of having the right service levels catering for the players. 

“They can also align expectations for suppliers and tell us what we can do better for the players, bringing value to their community and also to the operators – so I think that they can take a really important role here and bring a lot of value for the industry.

“For us as a provider we need to tread carefully and see who we partner with. We’d rather partner with the ones that we know are doing it right instead of taking the risk of working with everyone.”

The CEO continued: “The model of the streamer is also an enabler of creativity and that, as our publishing model, is enabling creative studios to come to market and launch quickly. 

“At the same time, they’re enabling new creative B2C operators to come to market quickly as well and I think that could also keep the market dynamic – so they can take the role of the ombudsman, they can take the role of the enabler, and they can also go down a darker route but as we know, the good guys always win.”

Joelsson added: “We are ten thousand or twenty thousand players within one player. Let’s say we play a new game before release, we build up the hype for the game and on the release date our viewers are going to play it because they’ve seen us play it, they’ve seen us talk good about it, we’ve shown the game, the possibilities and everything – so I think we can be the ombudsman for sure.”

Discussing how real-time feedback can bring value to the company, Elmqvist noted: “There’s nothing better than to test it with a real audience in a real environment, and not only here can we see the streamers play, but I think what’s key here is to see their community and their reactions.

“We see streamers wanting higher max wins, we see the operator saying ‘yeah that’s good but take it down a notch’ so we’re sitting there listening and taking in feedback from various industry players.” 

He concluded by explaining that with game development, the user experience needs to be aligned with the industry’s best players, the streamers. 

However, he stressed that we can’t let the streamers dictate how the roadmap is going to be created because that “may not be completely aligned with what the actual operators want and what gets the player’s money in”.

To watch the full episode of the podcast, click here. 

For the first episode of the series on how innovation has been at the heart of the journey for Yggdrasil, click HERE.

And click HERE for the second on how the YG Masters programme has brought new flavours of game content.