Building the First Multiplayer Slots Platform at BeyondPlay
Working at BeyondPlay was one of the most exciting chapters of my career. I joined the company at a very early MVP stage, which gave me the incredible opportunity to be involved in building and shaping the product from scratch. We were creating something that had never been done before in the iGaming industry: the first multiplayer slots platform that would allow players to place bets together as a group and share the winnings.
Picture Credit: https://www.beyondplay.io/
A First-of-Its-Kind Innovation
Traditional online slots are solitary experiences - players spin alone, win alone, lose alone. At BeyondPlay, we were pioneering something revolutionary: social features that transformed individual gambling into a shared experience. Players could now form groups, place collective bets, and celebrate wins together, creating the excitement of a real casino floor in the digital world.
The Challenges We Faced
Building this innovative product came with unprecedented challenges. We needed to create a platform that could handle streaming with incredibly low latency - every millisecond mattered when multiple players were betting in real-time. The scalability requirements were immense, especially knowing that we might need to support thousands, if not millions, of users at once.
This scalability concern became even more critical when BeyondPlay was acquired by FanDuel, the #1 sportsbook and casino in the US. Suddenly, we weren't just building for a startup's user base - we were preparing for enterprise-level traffic from one of the biggest names in American gaming.
Life at BeyondPlay
What made BeyondPlay special wasn't just the innovative product we were building, but the exceptional people and culture. The company was thoughtfully composed of seasoned engineers and product managers who brought deep expertise from the iGaming industry. This wealth of experience and domain knowledge proved invaluable in navigating the complex challenges of creating something entirely unprecedented in the gaming world.
The team was filled with genuinely nice people who were passionate about what we were creating. Having colleagues with such profound industry insights made every challenge feel surmountable and every breakthrough feel that much more significant. The company organized really engaging integration events with fascinating speeches from industry leaders and gaming experts, further enriching our understanding of the landscape we were disrupting.
Every day brought challenging tasks that pushed us to think creatively and solve problems that no one in the industry had tackled before. Whether it was optimizing for real-time interactions or ensuring fair play across multiplayer sessions, we were constantly breaking new ground.
Recognition and Success
Our hard work didn't go unnoticed. BeyondPlay achieved some incredible milestones during my time there:
- Joined the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield '23 cohort - being selected among the most promising startups globally
- Showcased at TC Disrupt in San Francisco - presenting our innovation to thousands of industry professionals and investors
- Earned global recognition from major industry publications including EGR, SBC, Sifted, and Business Insider
- Secured 2nd place for Breakthrough Company of the Year at the 2023 Global Gaming Awards - a testament to our industry-changing innovation
The Impact
Working at BeyondPlay taught me that true innovation comes from reimagining entire user experiences, not just improving existing features. We weren't just building better slot games - we were creating an entirely new category of social gaming that brought people together through shared excitement and competition.
The acquisition by FanDuel validated everything we had built and proved that our vision of social, multiplayer gaming was not just innovative but commercially viable at the highest levels of the industry.
This experience reinforced my belief that the most rewarding work comes from solving problems that haven't been solved before, working with exceptional people, and building products that genuinely change how people interact with technology.