Reimagining TEXAS HOLD’EM POKER

About GetMega

GetMega is a Real Money Gaming (RMG) platform that attempts to set the gold standard in India for safety, reliability and skill-based, social, responsible gaming. The goal is to reimagine the RMG space by innovating the experiences and becoming a one-stop platform for games category like trivia, cards, casual and fantasy categories. As the founding designer, I was a one-person team for a few months before I built the design team of 9. I shall be taking you through an end to end process, reimagining the Game of Texas Hold’em Poker. I have tried to demonstrate my ability to tackle a complex design problem with ‘hands on’ design skills across product thinking, interaction design and visual design. We shall also look at the metrics and impact of the design decisions.

Role and Approach

I was the fourth employee of the company, brought in as an overall platform designer. Earlier games were crafted by a Game Artist. The CEO wanted to integrate UX design processes in the gameplay. In this project of poker experience design, I ended up becoming a game designer cum product designer cum product manager responsible for execution as well. Mayank (CEO, GetMega) wanted the look and feel of the game to be like an app that is functional and user friendly rather than Gamified. I loved the idea of a UX designer building a game; I threw myself at this challenge.

Context

GetMega started as a casual and trivia gaming company, mainly with games which were player vs computer, e.g. Dot’n’Dash, Fruit Ninja etc. We needed to pivot to player vs player games. We investigated card gaming categories further as our initial research and market survey showed promising results in this domain. Our competitors were building similar games. The most popular game in that category was Poker(Texas Hold’em), so we decided to make our version. 

Here are the key findings from our research about poker: 

  • It is a multiplayer game with up to 10 Players.

  • It is popular in India, people know the rules of the game and player acquisition was easy with a higher adoption rate.

  • It is a combination of skill with a sense of luck, which adds another layer of excitement.

  • Online poker gaming is growing 35-40% year on year.

  • There is a lot of room for innovation in poker as there are multiple versions of poker available.

  • The rising number of mobile phone users in India means a steady influx of new users as well.

  • Poker also has multiple winners in every round that is a good incentive for repetitive behaviour.

3 key challenges

I went through our existing limited user data, game design and identified a list of features that would bring the change. With the help of Product Leadership, we prioritised features based on the user need, business value, tech feasibility, and alignment to strategy. Following are the identified pain points.

Poker Post Game Analysis

Rummy Design

Texas Hold’em Poker Concepts

Texas Hold’em Poker is played with a standard 4 suit 52 cards deck. In the game, players compare their hands according to the hand rankings. Every player places an agreed equal amount of bet with their poker chips. The Players with highest card rank in sequence win.

Betting Vocabulary

Pre-Flop: Initial Round with blinds posted

Flop: Round two with three community cards opened face up

Turn: Round three with the fourth community card face up

River: Final round with the final community card shown to the players

Betting Options

Check : Pass the chance to the next player

Bet: Place the initial bet in a particular round

Call: To match the highest previous bet

Raise: Raise the bet by putting in more than the last person’s bet

Fold: Quit the game

Design outcome

The marketing collaterals now speak of the thrill of winning money in a contest. We avoided provocative and hyper-sexualised images of the dealer by converting the dealer into a gender-neutral entity.

  1. The female to male player ratio in our platform improved from 2% to 14.6% and climbing.

  2. Poker is now a feature testing pod for the platform. Maximum innovation happens on poker and successful experiments implemented into other games. Recently we have been able to increase the retention of Carrom and Pool by incorporating the same UX principles as used in poker.

  3. We are currently working on creating another version of poker called Omaha poker etc.

  4. We will be introducing social features in poker like a live video feed, chat, multi-table play and celebrity interactions.

Areas of Improvement

Because of the fast-paced execution and scaling of the product and the team, there have been multiple inconsistencies. These issues have resulted in patchworks. For example, onboarding and walkthrough are accessible through a small nook on the screen.

  1. Hud and social widget overpowered the screen and could not scale very well in games like 8 Ball Pool.

  2. The company's direction is changing, and we are moving towards social gaming. There is practically no space available to show video feed, chat and reactions to make the game more social.

  3. We were unable to build a good experience for the spectators in the game.

  4. We have matured as designers because of which the game has started looking dated. With newer technology, we can now execute more sophisticated animations and effects. We are currently working on this.

  5. On a personal note, many decisions were intuitive. I was not able to do extensive user research and feedback. I would want to spend more time understanding GetMega users in depth.