Nailed It! Games’ Pawel Piotrowski: “Every Beginning Is Challenging, But We Are Aiming to Create iGaming Hits”

With a name like this, Nailed It! Games is bound to hit the mark. The studio founded by iGaming veterans Paweł Piotrowski and Grzegorz Przybyłowicz has all the makings of a great company. While the developers have kept it pretty close to the chest, the upcoming Gold Mines Stacks slot is the first of many other games to come, as the official website discreetly suggests. Having spoken to Piotrowski, we found out that there are more exciting developments on their way.

The studio has been up and running for good five months now and Nailed It! Games is pretty sure that this is just the beginning. Piotrowski and Przybyłowicz are both seasoned iGaming specialists who honed their skills as part of Yggdrasil’s team for a good many years.

Now, they are taking their creativity and industry nous on the road to bring even more ground-breaking products that hold the promise to innovate how we experience iGaming and enjoy online casino games. Whether this is all that Nailed It! Games has to offer; we will find out in the lines below.

Q: Nailed It! Games is a new slot supplier on the iGaming market. Could you tell us about how you got started and what motivated you to jump at this opportunity?

We met with Greg for a beer in March this year. That was when the idea for our own slots studio startup was conceived.  I was still at Yggdrasil and Greg had recently left his CTO position in another iGaming company. We both felt that we’ve gathered enough expertise in a variety of iGaming business areas to take that big step forward and start Nailed It! Games. Greg used those couple of months before the studio was launched in August to build the server and the frontend frameworks, which now allow us to efficiently build the portfolio of games. For me personally, being a long-time slots geek, I always had that ambition to start a new studio one day and I was lucky that Greg had the same vision. 

Q: Your team is only getting started. What is your main development trajectory as of now? What do you expect to happen in the months to come?

The beginning is equally exciting as it is challenging. On top of the development of our first games, we spend quite a lot of time working on the distribution deals and potential investment partnerships. We had a tremendous response to the launch announcement and now we want to make sure we pick our partners wisely to secure the fast growth of Nailed It. We’ve already managed to gather some of the greatest talents in the industry but we’re only starting to scale up and have very ambitious recruitment plans for 2022. The most fun part is clearly working on the games and already seeing the fruits of that work. That being said, we expect our first game to hit the market in Q3 next year.

Q: How good are Nailed It! Games’ releases going to be and what would set them apart from the rest do you think?’

We left our previous companies to produce the games that would be at least as good as the ones we made in the past, and hopefully even better! There’s a lot you can improve upon when you build the processes from scratch and are aware of the many pitfalls along the road. That knowledge allows us to produce some great games and in a much more efficient way, too.

The initial games on the roadmap are mostly high volatility concepts with an option to buy the bonus round or enable a special bet that will modify the game in one way or another. Big wins on our games, ideally ending up in social media would mean an invaluable boost for the studio recognizability.

In terms of the game design, we start with the features that are rather familiar and largely enjoyed by the players, but we always make sure to add a fun twist to a known mechanic to turn it into an even better experience. Later on in the roadmap, we have a completely new mechanic up our sleeves which will open a new category of slot games.

Q: Are there shortcomings in the industry you are looking to address with the launch of Nailed It! Games?

The focus of Nailed It! Games shifts strongly towards quality rather than quantity. All of our game concepts are tested from the early math prototype stages so that we don’t spend too much time on games that are unlikely to become hits. We’re not cutting any corners in terms of game design and art production either. With the market being so saturated with slot games and new game studios popping up almost every month, the focus on quality and engaging game mechanics seems to be more crucial than ever. You need to make sure your game is a long-term performer and even if it’s not, the least you can do is to thoroughly analyze the game metrics and gather customers’ feedback to help you improve your future products.

Q: Has the way the world’s changed contributed to your decision to launch Nailed It! Games or set any of the core development principles? Has the industry been too heavily impacted by the pandemic in the last two years?

I don’t think the pandemic had a significant impact on the decision to launch Nailed It. However, I feel like the work from home and the hybrid work model had loosened up the bonds between the fellow workers, making a decision to change jobs easier. We appreciate all the pros of remote work, especially the fact that you don’t need to relocate the best talent, but at the same time, we see that we’re most efficient working together from the office.

The market is clearly changing and there’s a new generation of players entering the world of iGaming, with a different taste for the slots experience. In the last two years, we’ve witnessed new and existing game studios having a breakthrough and becoming some of the top suppliers, while some others that were leading the pack five years ago almost disappeared. It’s easier for the smaller, more agile studios to adapt to the quickly changing market and you need to be constantly on your toes and react to the market if you want to stay on top. The success stories of the up-and-coming studios are an inspiration for us, and we believe that we have the recipe to disrupt the market in the next few years.

Q: What do you reckon the biggest challenges ahead of Nailed It! Games would be?

We’ve set some ambitious goals for the studio, and one of them is to become a top 10 slots provider in 2023, then work our way up from there. Building the brand awareness of products and the studio as a whole will play a crucial part in our journey. With the team that we’re building, and the exciting game concepts lined up, we’re looking at the future with confidence. We are going to scale up the studio significantly during 2022 to increase the number of games we release in the following years but the quality with always remain our top priority.