Chipy’s Exclusive Interview with Junior Goncalves - Product Lead at Caleta Gaming

Caleta is one of the leading game creators in Latin America, offering a full range of games that use cutting-edge technology.

Their motto is “Making Better Games”, so they are constantly struggling for improvement. 

Let’s find out more about the company, its people, and its plans for the future from Junior Gonçalves, the product lead at Caleta Gaming. 

1. Hello Junior Gonçalves! We are very excited to have you here on Chipy, and let's start by telling our readers a few things about yourself and your role in the company.

Hello everyone! I’m very excited as well. Thank you for having me.

Well, I'm the product lead here at Caleta Gaming and my role is to help the teams involved in developing our games to reach the best synergy they can to keep improving our games. It’s a day-to-day problem-solving type of role. 

This process starts with concepts and math models for games. Then, we move on to game design, art, and sounds until it reaches developers, QA, marketing, and the release process. Basically, I’m involved from start to finish.

2. Now let’s discuss Caleta Gaming. Tell us how it started and how it got to where it is today. 

The company started in 2013 when the 2 co-founders, Fabíola Jaeger (Caleta's CEO) and Paulo Nova (Caleta's CTO), who already had experience with gaming, decided to start their own business because they knew the great potential of the industry, in addition to both being passionate by games. 

Since then the company kept expanding and getting better with every release. When I joined the company in 2019 we were a team of 8 people in a small office and now in 2022, we are almost 30 in a much more comfortable place. And still growing.

3. That sounds great! And what are the plans for the future? Where do you see Caleta Gaming in 5 years?

Definitely among the top game providers. Caleta combines experience, creative talent, solid technology frameworks, and processes to scale and foster innovation.

Its premium online and mobile gaming solutions are built using in-house cutting-edge technology allowing us to create an appealing and innovative game portfolio, with all titles available across platforms.  

As well as slots, Caleta offers a full range of video bingos, lotto, scratchcard, and keno games, and has quickly established a reputation as one of the most popular content creators in Latin America.

Our motto is “Making Better Games” for a reason. That’s our goal. To keep creating better experiences for our players and developing new and relevant ways to play.

4. None of this would be possible without an amazing team. So tell us a few things about the people behind Caleta Gaming. 

It's all about the people here. We have a  small but very solid, innovative, and creative team that is always looking to improve on the last game released.

And we take full advantage of this. Having a small team turns communication easier, and keeps everyone relatively close to every project. That provides us with ideas and points of view from people that care about the games and the final product.

From the devs to management, everyone is key to the success of our games.

5. How do they come up with ideas and what inspires them to create such awesome games?

Our team is very creative by nature. But I believe that having people from many different backgrounds is a big help in that subject. Here we have a lot of people involved with art in general, like painters, concept artists, and musicians.

But not just that, we also have people that came from very small towns inside the country and those who came from large cities like São Paulo.

Our portfolio has a plethora of themes and mechanics, and that makes us deal with many different subjects daily, so there’s always something new to talk about. All that added to having a great working environment that surely increases creativity.

6. What technologies are you using in the creation process?

There’s a lot involved in creating games. The most important tool is our Game Engine, the GP5. It was built in-house and through which we can develop games with much more flexibility and agility.

Building this engine from the ground up allowed us to mold our tools to our needs, delivering a unique game feel to our games. The GP5 still has a lot of room to grow, and it will keep improving, but it’s the base of our robust development.

7. How does the company keep in touch with its fans and community?

Mainly by participating in events all across the world, getting feedback from customers and partners, and doing a lot of data analysis.

An advantage of being a small game provider is that it is very easy to reach us. Through our website or on our socials we do check every message and consider every feedback.

We have very ambitious plans for the future in that regard, but this is something I can’t go into much detail right now.

8. Which is your most popular game up to date?

There are a lot of different metrics to analyze which one is the most popular. I would say that games that have a community behind them have an advantage. 

Games like Paradise Trippies, Imperial: Operation Rio (that we just released), and Gamdom Strike, are a success within their communities.

When we talk about original games, Torch of Fire, Madame Fortune, and Heroes Empire are slots that have a lot of loyal players across all our partners. 

But in the last two years, we also have been developing games with a focus on Latin America, mainly Video Bingo games. Atlantis Bingo, Banana Bingo, and Bingo Royale are among our top-played games every month. 

Just last month we released Fruitverse, a game that gives a new spin on the bingo concept, with very innovative features, and is already among our top-played games.

9. You were part of the creation of the first slot game to reward players with real NFTs. Tell us more about that. 

Yes. Paradise Trippies. It was indeed a trip! At first, it sounded crazy and very ambitious. And it was. Crazy and ambitious.

But the payoff was great. We partnered up with Paradise Trippies and their unique visuals and believed in the content they had. We knew they had a community built already, and that’s a lot of fans we don’t want to disappoint, but at the same time, we need to make the content available to newcomers.

That was a challenge in itself. But like I’ve said before, our team is very creative and can come up with great ideas to implement their unique theme into a game and make it work.

The technology needed to make the rewards of NFTs possible was developed over several months and it required a lot of effort to make it work properly. As innovations often do.

After all that hard work, the game is a huge success and it spawned a Bingo variant that is also making waves, with even more engagement and unique features.

10. Thank you for this awesome interview and looking forward to your next games! Any last words that you want to share with our readers?

It was a pleasure. Thank you again for having me here at Chipy.com. Try our latest release, Fruitverse, and keep an eye on our socials on Instagram @caleta_gaming and LinkedIn page.

We’ll never stop trying to come up with unique ideas and experiences.

The interview was a pleasure for us as well, and we are now even more fascinated by Caleta Gaming.

We hope you are too, and you will try their games. You can play free demo versions of the Caleta games on this page.