This article was taken from the April 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Facebook casino games are two a virtual penny, but what if you could bet and win hard cash on the social network? French entrepreneur Nadya Jahan is letting gamers do just that: her social-games startup Mandala Games allows players in the UK to bet real pounds on Facebook. Founded in August 2010 in the small town of Nantes, the company has managed to become one of two European startups -- of six in total -- to sign a deal with real-money gaming platform Betable, which licenses developers to integrate cash gaming into their apps and then release them in the UK (which has legalised online gambling). "We want to have that distinctive French flavour, so we are focused on gambling games such as slot machines and bingo,"
Jahan says. In its slot-machine game La Riviera, released last December, you can bet 10p to £1 per spin and win up to £2,000.
Jahan, 34, a trained computer scientist, has video games in her blood. "My father was a gamer and my mother worked in software," she says. She has released two games on Facebook -- the other is Divinitiz, a role player without gambling -- and garnered about 500,000 players in the first two months. <span class="s2">La Riviera can be played either with virtual or real money and currently around two per cent of gamers are paying to play, according to Jahan. The self-funded startup plans to stay away from time-consuming games such as poker, though. "We want to keep our women players too, and we've noticed they prefer quick, casual games," she says. "Our final, ambitious goal is to convert all of our social gamers into real-money gamblers." Sounds like a good bet.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
