Dice & Spells

About Dice & Spells

SmartSoft CEO Guram Gotsadze said the company’s decision to join the AiA reflected its growing focus on the continent and its commitment to supporting the development of regulated and sustainable gaming markets.

“Africa is an important and growing part of SmartSoft’s international strategy, and joining the African iGaming Alliance represents an important step in strengthening our long-term commitment to the continent,” he commented.

Peter Kesitilwe, CEO of the AiA, added: “SmartSoft already has significant exposure to African markets, and we look forward to working with their team on issues ranging from B2B licensing and market access to responsible gaming, channelisation and sustainable regulation.”

What is Dice & Spells?

Now, the focus is on what the company does with the additional capacity AI has created. Six months ago, Cubeia’s experiment was essentially about replacing human-written code with AI-generated code.

Since then, it has evolved into something broader: a different development pipeline, a different role for developers and quality assurance (QA), a different way of organising teams and, increasingly, a different relationship with customers.

Cubeia’s first phase was an open approach to AI. Developers could use it whenever they wanted. Phase two brought structure, with everyone using the same agents and working through the same AI-driven pipeline. That required Cubeia to solve questions around quality, reliability and how agents could work together, while getting employees comfortable with the new way of working. Grenstad believes that work has largely been completed.

What is Dice & Spells?

“Some of them [investors] that were looking at Japan were looking at a big IR licence or nothing. With Tokyo and Yokohama being out of the mix, maybe some weren’t as interested anymore and decided to sit back, and wait and see how regulation and licensing shake out.”

One concern for operators is “the short duration of licences and renewal of licences”, notes Leckert. For operators, the casino business licence is renewable every three years, while the IR development-plan authorisation runs for 10 years, in contrast to the 18-year IR licence term in the Philippines, for instance.

Limiting the duration of licence validity “puts the entire capital investment at risk”, says Klebanow. Further regulations, including limiting residents to 10 visits per month and requiring them to present a ‘My Number Card’ when gambling, further erodes project viability. “Ultimately, casino developers individually concluded that developing an IR was too risky, and they took their billions of dollars in potential capital investment and walked away,” observes Klebanow.