Manoeuvring through the gaming industry can often lead to roads many of the industry’s most notable figureheads could not have ever envisioned.
This was certainly the case for FunFair Games CEO Mark McGinley, as he discussed his journey through the gaming industry in the latest edition of CasinoBeats’ ‘100 Club’.
McGinley opened up on his start in the industry admitting that, after completing his A-Levels, his intention was not in gaming but rather to train as a Physical Education (PE) teacher in London.
He said: “I took the year out in 1996 and I remember applying for three different jobs, one was to train to be Hotel Manager, one to train to be a Print Manager in a big print factory where I lived in Wakefield, and the other one was to be a QA tester, testing games at Team17 Software.
“I’d been a gamer all my younger years, I’d grown up playing games, had a huge passion for video games, usually the old-fashioned ones. As it turned out, I got offered all three jobs and the QA testing job was the least paid of all three.
McGinley thanked ‘lady luck’ for his breakthrough into the gaming industry, working on a myriad of titles that went on to become fan favourites. His work helped him climb the ladder, eventually landing the CEO position at FunFair Games last May.
The new CEO was tasked with enhancing the gaming firm’s product roadmap and seeking innovative FunFair Games titles with new methods of output to enhance the company’s global presence.
“It’s been a long path but I’ve worked hard to get to that point but I’ve really enjoyed it,” expressed McGinley.
“I’ve had a really good career to date and I’ve met some fantastic people and worked on some great games.
“We’re currently rethinking about how we think and how we work whilst looking at the portfolio but, I think, at a very early level when I spoke to Jeremy Longley and Lloyd Purser, they were the two people that really got me excited about what they were trying to do here at FunFair.”
“We shared a mutual vision of what we wanted to do with FunFair and where we wanted to take it. We saw a great opportunity in that non-traditional arcade marketplace and coming from video and social gaming, I could see a lot of that cross-over thinking of ideas and game types.
FunFair is now looking to differentiate itself from the competition and the challenges that come with finding new and innovative approaches to enhance the players’ interaction with gaming titles.
McGinley admits that they are operating in a space that is “very well established with a particular game type”, with players leaning towards a lot of familiar suppliers that have been tried and trusted.
He added: “We’re operating in an industry that’s already very well established with game types so when you’re going up against the premium suppliers of content that are creating slots and table games, there’s a lot of familiarity there.
“As a new supplier in that space doing non-traditional content, you’re immediately in a minority as a supplier so I’d say there’s a couple of challenges.”
