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Welcome to our very first podcast episode where we explore insights into the igaming industry and today’s episode is particularly special as we sit down with João Dias a visionaire who started coding at the age of this just 13 years old and went on to revolutionize the I gaming industry as the co-founder and Chief Architect of the mill Adventure xia has helped create Europe’s only fully serviced gaming platform an achievement recognized by AWS themselves in this conversation we dive into how João Dias and his team are redefining what’s

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possible in the I gaming from their Innovative gaming feature to their Netflix St smart lobbies powered by Machine learning we explore the challenges of being a Pioneer in serverless technology when there was no road map to follow and how the me adventure continues to push boundaries in an industry criticized for lacking Innovation join us for this conversation about Technology Innovation and the future of igaming with someone who started coding before it was cool please enjoy this conversation with

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Shia I’ve been programming things since I was like 13 or something like that I did my first commercial application around that time and I’ve been doing developing ever since in more recent years from like 10 years ago I joined the IG gaming industry I really like this industry it feels like you know like Evergreen kind of projects you could we we can usually use latest patch and that kind of thing and I never left I’m still in I gaming and even in more recent years I created my own company

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with some colleagues uh the mail adventure and um we I got the opportunity to create a platform from scratch and I’ve been the architect of that platform ever since and I’m really passionate about distributed systems and architecture and that’s what I do nowadays started coding before it was actually cool um quote quote unquote and as of one of the founding partners uh how did the idea of starting Mill Adventures come about and what was the what’s the one factor that distinguishes it from the rest of the

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gaming platforms out there so we we were doing something very very similar in our previous company we used to work for Sherry which then became Kon and we were working at a company that did a platform for Sherry come on um except and at the time things didn’t go well and we left and then when we left we decided hey guys come on we’ve been doing this for a while we have a lot of experience in gaming we can do Platform we knew the competition and we say we can do better than the competition if we focus on it

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and we put our effort into it we can to develop an amazing product and we have a market for it so we decided to try and uh we did and I’m happy with it we do have a market for it we have a lot of work and it’s an amazing platform according to our partners which I’m very proud of and here we are we still we’re still alive and kicking and with a lot of work actually okay oh that’s good and and you’ve been designing systems for over 15 years for it was actually cool um but what’s been what’s been the most

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challenging architecture project or you’ve tackled and how has that shaped your approach to the innovation in igaming this platform was the most challenging we I wanted to challenge myself when we started and we decided to try uh in the beginning to use serverless technology only and obviously that requires a completely mindset from more the from the more traditional systems where they either are like a monolithic application they are distributed systems with like containers or virtual machines and stuff

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like that and stress it’s a completely new thing because basically everything is EV oriented by definition which for me at the time was still kind of new I had some experience but not a lot and we didn’t have servers right so it’s not like you can go into a server and change the code or something like that there there’s no such thing so we I had to create a distributed systems using surveillance technology so that that was the biggest challenge and in the beginning it was rough because everything was new

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and it’s not like you can go to the internet and start googling how do you do this didn’t exist so we had we had to come up with a lot of things that didn’t exist at the time nowaday things are much better it’s been six years after all things are much better there’s a lot more material on the internet as well and we have a lot more experience but at the time it was rough so that was the most challenging thing I don’t regret it there in the beginning there were times we were like ah this is probably not

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going to work things were slow and like H but then we overcome those challenge we learn more about the technology we evolved and we adapted and we are I’m very glad that we did because it’s really really cool it’s a really cool text T it’s still up to date from we work a lot with AWS and if you Google for the M Adventure news you’ll find some articles that we did in collaboration and the the thing is even for them they say we are the only completely serverless platform that they

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have as a customer the in Europe the only one that has more than us is Toyota no one really does the same way at least up until now or as far as we know anyway and I don’t think has any reason to lie obviously but yeah we are very happy about it and we don’t see it doing it any other way anymore yeah six years ago there was no CH GPT unfortunately so ask no there wasn’t chat either but even nowadays if you go to shop there’s not much material so you won you will get just garbage responses maybe the P

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version yes and a common remark we keep coming across from uh some industry veterans is that the igaming industry has been lacking Innovation over the last years and the M Adventure on the other hand amongst other nominations has recently been nominated for the platform innovation of the year at casino beats and innovation in sports betting so far at EGR B2B Awards so do you agree with such statements and how do you stand out and not risk becoming stagnant Innovation since the beginning I mean in

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the beginning was kind of playing catch up because the platform was brand new but we always adds like we wanted to do two things at the same time try to catch up with the rest of the system the rest of the industry because we were a new platform six years ago of course we need to work in this kind of functionality and at the same time we wanted to have a unique feature that no one else has uh and that would be the Innovation part of the company so I would we manage these how can we stay relevant and and try to come up with

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something that no one has which puts us you know in a different like why would why would people choose our platform instead of someone that has a platform for like 10 years right so from very beginning we went live like a we went live with the brand with which we migrated but then I think less than a year I think it was like I want to say three or four months we went live with a product that we call it internally bed poool um probably can Google about it a little bit but like we basically the idea is

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that you could pull your wallet together with other participants and you would join you would play games with like a shared pool basically so bad right so you would go you know I don’t know how much you know about I gaming industry from like five 10 years ago people like on Friday beers at the end of the week they used to sit down together behind someone’s laptop hey guys let’s let’s play some slot machines here’s five here’s five like you know you join together and then you play a game so we

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wanted to have that idea online and so that was one of the first products that we did right from the beginning that we wanted to set out to do things differently than anyone else that was more on the on the part of social gaming like we can play with your friends and that product is very popular actually and it is I can tell you that we had a brand that uh we work together with to to go live because they wanted to have that and and and that brand without affiliation whatsoever and without bonuses whatsoever they kept

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relevant and they are still very very profitable and they still don’t do affiliation they still don’t give bonuses all they have is that product nothing else it’s actually I think from our statistics the average player value is the highest of all of our Brands mainly because of that because they don’t spend money in anything except that’s the product that they promote and they Market it but that’s it and they work with with streamers as well to to promote the product and but that’s

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basically it it’s really cool and then right after that like a year later or even less MH we said hey guys people spend like managing game lobbies right you know there’s there’s I don’t even know how many games there are nowadays I think we have like 10,000 or something like that which is insane like how can a human being or a team of people go there okay this game is really cool for the Swedish people this game is really cool for the Germans this game Let’s but we got a promotion on this game like we we

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wanted to like stop that that’s just ridiculous why don’t we do like Netflix we have 10,000 games we see what people like to play and then we have a machine learning model AI whatever you want to call it that suggests games for for the people and that’s out of the box so if you work without platform you get that for free it just comes with a with a platform at the time we were the first guys to do that even today I’m not sure how many PL have like a Netflix like experience for their game catalog so

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yeah we always try to do something relevant and Innovative as we can do with our resource we’re a very small company to begin with we are growing now we just eat 100 people so obviously now we have more resources that maybe we can in invest into trying to find what’s the next best thing we recently added crypto support to the platform but those are things like just to stay relevant but what can we do that no one else as that will be the next potential good product like bpool was what a cool feature like

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the like the smart L is as we call it or you know something like that and we have some ideas actually we have some plans to work on some of these ideas this year as well in the meantime over all these years we have like tournaments out of the box in the platform we have uh uh wheels of fortune and and loot boxing out of the box as well no one has to pay more for it and a lot of platforms they might be cheaper than ours but you don’t get any of these out of the box right so that’s that’s one

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way we try to keep relevant as well and and try to be at the Forefront of like if you work without platform you’re going to have the best product that you can have I mean that’s what we want to provide and I think so far people are very happy about it so I think we’re doing a good job it sure sounds like it yeah those are IDs are not formulated by J GPT also not the paid version of it no no and um given that you recently took part in the panel discussion on on crypto at SBC and with Bitcoin reaching

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an all-time high recently although it it’s it’s going down again but I’m I’m sure it will go up uh soon but the crypto adoption in the igaming industry still is still lacking um and because you just mentioned it I thought was a good bridge to this question but um do you see this changing anytime soon and if so how um I will steal my answer from that panel uh or something similar so a big topic of that panel is what’s what’s what’s what’s what’s coming next right um people are talking a lot about

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crypto at the moment but for me that doesn’t feel that what’s coming next that’s been around for quite a few years now and it’s the same thing with the crash games that everyone’s talking about nowadays for some reason even though the first one was like bust a beat and honey poot like 10 years ago or something like guys come on that’s 10 years that’s a 10 years old concept so what’s coming what what can we do that’s something different um on the topic of currency specifically yes crypto is a

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currency that’s right now very popular uh but I don’t think it’s the currency I mean it’s just another one like we have Fiat casinos we have crypto casinos we have mixed but we also have Counter Strike schemes casinos and that’s for the generation what Z or whatever it is or no the one that came after that Millennials and then the Zed is like I don’t know or the one that no generation Zed is that and generation Alpha will be Ro Roblox tokens or whatever like we need to to basically adapt our stuff try

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to meet the new generations where they are so if the new generation starts playing with Roblox tokens and that’s what gets popular then we need to adapt our stuff to meet those guys right and that’s what’s going to come next in the Next Generation so but yes right now Krypto is the easier one to work with and it’s getting more and more adopted so people already know what it is and whatnot but there are other things that are not so poer they’re not people don’t really understand how they work uh and

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it’s like why like why do we keep like it it still feels that okay it’s a bit further ahead but it still feels that people are talking about things that guys that’s 10 years old come on like yes you are catching up that’s okay we are also catching up but just be honest about it don’t say it’s the next thing you are still catching up you know what I mean like yeah I think this is part of the mindset which put you up front with these Innovations uh at at the moment that’s why some people are still calling

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it uh new technology ology but you already looking ahead at what’s next yeah I mean it’s not new technology I can tell you that it’s getting pop now but that’s a different thing so well what what do you think is the is the new thing if if crypto is not the new thing what what is the new thing again I’m going to Ste a similar answer that I gave on the panel uh I do think that social gaming and real social gaming not what people call social gaming which is just microtransactions

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and whatever social gaming for me is the ability for you to play with your friends like the product that we launched four years ago or 5 years ago bpool right so that kind of interaction uh playing online uh gambling something uh with your friends in one way or another it could be by I don’t know if you remember bubble bubble the game from the the ’90s or sorry puzzle bubble uh anyway it was a game where you would play side by side with the friends and the more the more points you would score

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then you would basically introduce garbage on the other puzzle on the other side so it was like a racing to who could clear the field faster so but in the meanwhile every time someone did a big score it it it like so that kind of interaction the games like that but uh with gambling in the middle and socially because basically a big thing even in traditional gaming uh nowadays I’m sure you’ve noticed every game nowadays even if it’s a single player game it needs to have some sort of Co-op

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it’s the it’s the first thing that people request when a single player game is launched think about you know subnotics Rim World ah but can I play with a friend like Co-op can I finish the game together with my wife you know that’s what we need to look into into because if the other industry the the agency non-gambling parties looking into those things we should also look into those things because that’s what people want people want to play with their spouse or with their kids or with their

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friends and right now as you know gambling is very is a very solitary um gaming and and I think for this day and age it shouldn’t be solitary anymore it’s not like it’s a taboo anymore it used to be but it’s not anymore like it’s just entertainment right and that’s it we just need to find a way of entertain people and not just give bonuses you know or or they like to play with random people online that’s uh that’s fine as well that’s perfect we can create so we

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can we can start playing you know matching and maybe find dates and people are going to get married out of it I mean it has happened oh that’s that’s the new innovation which is going to happen dating platform let me take some notes of myself and as the Chief Architect which is a fascinating Title by the way but what’s what’s one challenge or what’s something that keeps you up at night what’s the what’s the main thing that’s going on right now architecture of a system not of a building um but it it it

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it’s the same I mean the word is the same for a reason right um we I I want our system our systems to be reliable to be cheap secure and easy to work with so that’s what gives me up at night how can we continue doing that uh without having any Legacy issues or baggage if you will uh and how can we keep up to date and even looking at the next thing uh so in my case looking at the next thing from a technical perspective it’s a a lot of a lot of my job is basically doing that kind of research and then okay a new

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technology just came out how can we take advantage of it is it going to make our platform faster cheaper more secure or something like that you know so that’s what keeps me up at night it’s the the architecture of things and all the systems work together and and whatnot yeah and you’re doing as far as I hear you’re doing a great job at it um yeah I mean I’m not doing it alone don’t get me wrong I’m the chief I guess we have a really nice team and then that’s that’s people are honestly a

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big part of any company and I think we doing a good job on that front as well I’m very happy that we have the people that we have and I hope we can continue hiring good people but yes I as an architecture team that’s that’s that’s that’s my part of the job yes and what advice would you give to others stepping in this into this Dynamic Green Field sector what advice Yes Man research like don’t don’t stay stuck in the past honestly especially in the I gaming industry there’s so much opportunity to

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stay up to date and relevant because a lot of conversations I have with peers from other companies that you know we meet in events like there was an NS event in Malta recently I did a talk there and there was talking to people after the talk I did the services talk mind you and I was talking to people after the talk and people are still like very skeptical and very cynical it’s like guys we’ve been doing this for six years with a with like a really nice platform like it is possible you just need to be

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brave because yes it is a different mindset of course but if people want to you know stay relevant and start working on what comes next for them um then research do try to find some time to do some Concepts play at home if you if you don’t have buffer at at at work and if your work doesn’t allow for that because sometimes it’s not possible then I don’t know if you really like these kind of Technologies and whatnot try to find another we are hiring by the way so I’m just throwing it in there

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interesting okay okay and um on a on a different note if you had a magic wall want and you could wave it to solve or change one thing what would that one thing be World fine no it’s not it’s not the world famine starvation in the world no I’m joking obviously that’s that’s out of context um that’s a good question I mean in which context in the I gaming industry in our company in what’s what’s let’s keep let’s keep it broad Broad in the I gaming industry or yeah um

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regulation what the uh we work a lot in regulated markets it’s our it’s one of our strengths uh we have jurisdictions in uh we have support for jurisdictions like Sweden Finland Germany Georgia we are just getting certified for Netherlands and Portugal and uh Austria and next year we’re looking into oh and Canada next year we’re looking into Belgium Denmark which is okay uh regulation is necessary I think it should we should have more not less but the thing that is annoying and the magic one that I want

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to wave is come up with something that is universal or at the very least in Europe come up with something in Europe that is European no every country has their own regulation and if you go to United States it’s one country but every state has their own stuff as well come on guys come up with some framework or something that everyone can agree with like an ISO standard or something like that right nope everyone has their own ideas their own taxes they own everything so if if I could come up with

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something it just like fix this fix M make it consistent and you know I’m not going to say Universal but at least more broad or more standard let’s say I mean it’s a magic one so you can do whatever you want one regulation for the world that would be perfect there we go solved I want to thank you for your time joining the our podcast thank you for inviting