NEW EXPERIENCES
What does the future hold for online gambling? Are our grandkids still going to be clicking away and watching virtual rolls spin on flat screens, or are they going to play in a holographic representation of a casino inside their own room, with their personal android serving as a dealer? Nobody knows for sure, but it’s always fun to look at the past and try to guess the future based on it. After all, history does repeat itself, and while there are always differences, we can always at least try to get a general idea based on what we know.
Same Old, Same Old
Most casino games have been practically unchanged for a hundred years. We’ve got roulette, which was being played during the French Revolution; blackjack, which has been around even longer; hell, even roulette – the newest casino game that’s traditionally played – was invented in 1891, more than a century ago. There hasn’t been any innovation in our games whatsoever… But then again, why should there be? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! The beauty of casino games is in their simplicity. For a lot of them, all you need is a deck of cards and a table. That’s kind of part of the charm. Everybody’s familiar with a deck of cards, everyone knows how it works and what the cards in it are, so by definition all card games build upon knowledge that we already have. Even the games that don’t involve cards – such as roulette – still use things that we’re familiar with, such as numbers. It’s easy to accept and easy to grasp when you’re in the real world. But when you’re in the virtual one, suddenly things change. The cards and the ball are all replaced by pixels that are trying to relay the same basic concepts, but are inherently foreign to us. There are no cards on your computer screen, just digital representations of them. It’s something entirely new… Yet for some reason casino developers have stuck to recreating the same old physical games, with all their physical restrictions, into this new format of infinite possibility. Because that’s what is expected of them – when people hear the words “online casino” they imagine a casino, but online, and probably wouldn’t accept anything else. But what if it wasn’t quite like that?
Boom Of The Videoslots
For the better part of the 20th century slots weren’t really all that impressive – they were loud, unreliable, easily breakable and, in my honest opinion, a little bit boring. The concept of slots was great – you put a coin in and, depending entirely on chance, you might win or you might not. There’s no skill involved, anyone can play and it was fate that determined whether or not you win. But while the idea was brilliant, the execution was not, and as a result the game felt a little bit boring. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really – the technology of the time just didn’t really allow for anything more spectacular than a bunch of spinning reels. In the 80s, though, everything changed with the invention of the video slot. Suddenly, slots were exciting! They were no longer just about pulling a lever and hoping for the best – the player was given more agency when it came to selecting paylines and engaging in bonus games. They had video and sound effects, they gave you free spins, and I know I already mentioned the bonus games, but holy crap, you could play a game within the game! Slots turned from a kinda boring “end justifies the means” kind of game into one of casinos’ biggest moneymakers, earning more than 30% of casino revenue, all thanks to technology. Obviously, when casino games began making the transition to the world wide web, video slots fell right at home, with some even improving upon the formula with multiple bonus games and intros that organically show the mechanics of the slot, making them more complex (and thus more interesting) than ever before. Video slots have now become a staple of both online and offline casinos, proving once and for all that there is room for innovation when it comes to casino games.
So, Where Is It?
Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? In reality, online casino owners are businessmen, and businessmen notoriously hate taking chances. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, as the old saying goes. Innovation costs money, and it’s extremely risky. Even though the online space provides literally infinite possibilities for all kinds of gambling games that can be created (space that the free-to-play videogame market has already explored quite rigorously, leading to literally billions in profits), casinos prefer to simply recreate the casino games that everyone’s already familiar with because they know that people will play them. On the other hand, something brand new might be played a whole lot, or it might not be played at all – it’s a bit of a gamble, and ironically enough, casino owners just don’t want to take the risk. But who knows! As the aforementioned free-to-play market grows with every passing year, perhaps some online casinos might decide to take a page from its book and start creating brand new experiences – ones that, like video slots, are best suited to the online space. I certainly hope that this would happen, at least, but considering how many years the traditional casino games have been played for, progress might be a bit farther away than we might like. Still, we can always hope, right?