2010-09-28

cubeia

How To Start a Low Cost Poker Network

Implementing a poker network is a very expensive project to undertake. There are many barriers to overcome; development, license(s) and player liquidity just to mention a few. The cost and effort involved has proved to be prohibitive to new actors on the market, leading to a fairly stale and static playing field. But does it have to be this way? In this article I will discuss an idea on how to start and scale up a poker network without the enterprise big bucks.

Building a low cost poker network from scratch:

  1. Use open source products
  2. Don’t use real money
  3. Iterate and find a model that attracts players
  4. Evolve into a real money network

But how would I implement the actual points? Read on…

1. Use Open Source Products

Open source products gives you two key advantages, it is free to use and you can tweak the source code to expand the product to fit your business model if needed. Cubeia offers a near-complete set of products for running a poker network (this article assumes a released Cubeia Poker). By taking advantage of Firebase, Network and Poker you will have a minimal, but functioning multiplayer poker game up running without spending a fortune on development. The cost will be limited to installation, configuration, skinning and some tweaks to the client.

You also need a web site for your users. I would actually not recommend a full CMS solution such as Joomla or Drupal for this, tempting as it may be, since I consider the user management to be too coupled with the CMS framework. My recommendation would be to create a site using a more low level framework such as Ruby on Rails, Django or Wicket. All free, all open source.

2. Don’t Use Real Money

Gambling with real money has legal issues and the legal issues this will force you to:

  1. Get a gambling license, and,
  2. Host your servers where you have your gambling license.

Getting a license will be a time consuming and expensive process. There will be a fairly high running cost for the license as well. Hosting at the approved data centers is far more expensive than any decent host in your own country (guaranteed). Bandwidth can be up to 100 times as expensive.

How will I make money?
Ask Zynga 😉

But seriously, even though you can certainly monetize on non-cash games if you get enough players, the long term goal here is to get a viable cash game network up and running.

3. Iterate and Find a Model That Attracts Players

This is the part where ‘insert magic here’ happens. This is where you iterate on your game design and offering. If you can make a poker game that is fun to play and feels new & fresh then you should be able to attract players. The key of this step is to refine your game and gain traction while still keeping the organisation lean and the costs down.

When you start to get traction you know you have a game that is attractive to players.

4. Evolve Into a Real Money Network

You now have a player base and proven traction. The biggest risks and uncertainties have been addressed, so now it is time to expand into the real money space. Investing into licenses and expensive hosting should be less of a risk at this point.

You will need to integrate with payment providers at this point as well as start adding external integrations for other operators.

Discussion

All of these sounds easy enough, right? Know that many have tried, and few have succeeded. The hardest part is definitely to get enough liquidity and growth in the system finding an attractive game model (step #3). But to be honest, this is exactly where you as a game producer should be spending your time and energy. The key will be to find a unique offering that will attract new players, i.e. you don’t want to compete with other networks on their own conditions – you want to carve out your own niche (PKR *cough*) and you will increase your chances of success massively.

But what about critical mass? If we have no players then we will not get new players…

This is the classical chicken or the egg problem, you need one to get the other. One classical approach to this is being compatible with any existing systems – thus making a transition easier or even completely transparent to the user.

For example, Cubeia Networks user module supports Facebook Connect, meaning that your players can login using their Facebook credentials and that you can tap into the social network virality by posting on their walls etc. This might help drive traffic and ease the signup/authentication process.

But in the end, what will make or break your business model is your ability to make a fun, addictive and compelling game. Can you make the Poker experince into something better than what is out there now? If so, then you might have a winner on your hands 🙂

So what do I need?

You need a solid idea for how to niche and market your poker game, you need time and you need a couple of developers (don’t even think about starting an IT based business without solid developers). It will not be easy, but it is certainly doable, and someone will eventually succeed.

How To Start a Low Cost Poker Network