Around a decade ago, the buzz around the technology sides of online casino software was all swirling around live dealer casino. The concept – real dealers, dice, cards etc. streamed to your computer from vast studios – felt like the final piece in the puzzle of digital disruption, i.e. that online casinos could finally truly replicate real land-based casinos. Live dealer casino games – blackjack, roulette, baccarat, poker – were no longer virtual. They were real games, and you could enjoy them from your home.
Yet, rather than being an endpoint in the evolution of online casinos, live dealer casino has hinted at just being a crossroads, allowing the industry to move in different directions. And, those strands are heading out in many different directions.
To understand the online casino industry’s future, you have to understand its present. Today, if you play blackjack at a top site like casino.com, you will already find that the online casino industry is trying to differentiate itself from the land-based one. Whereas blackjack is much the same in every casino stretching from Vegas to Macau, online it has multiple versions offering multiple types of experience.
Operators Moving Away from the Classics
However, one would argue, it is the moving away from classic games altogether that really should be the exciting part for casino players and, indeed, tech fans. What we are talking about is new gaming concepts, fuelled by Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR).
Despite the lack of need for an Oculus Rift-style headset, traditional live casino games are essentially an example of VR. You are logging on and entering a world designed to replicate the real casinos. Everything looks the same, including the croupiers. The console technology is the key to the experience, allowing you to seamlessly place bets as if you were standing at the table.
But consider what we mentioned earlier on – digital disruption. The concept of digital disruption is to take an existing industry and replace it with something considered better, such as Netflix replacing the traditional television industry. In that sense, having live casino games does not trump the traditional casino industry, it simply emulates it. To truly disrupt the traditional casino industry, there must be more on offer.
New Games Hint at Bright Future
And, we are starting to see those green shoots happen now. Monopoly Live, for example, a game by Evolution Gaming, uses MR to good effect. The first part of the game is a simple wheel of fortune-style casino game, played with croupiers and streamed to your device. Yet, the Monopoly Bonus is something so far removed from classic casino games. Once triggered, the bonus game is played out on a 3D Monopoly board; it’s AR in action.
Games like Monopoly Live are only hinting at the possibilities that we could see in the future. It’s perfectly plausible that live casino games will be played with AR avatars, but going well beyond the idea of classic casino games. There are even plans underway to create skill-based casino games, removing long-standing traditions like house edge.
The point of all this is that the software developers and online casino operators have envisaged a different future, one where interacting with games is completely different than it is today. It is more likely to be MR and AR than VR, but more importantly it is changing the idea of what a casino game is supposed to be like. That gives the developers a blank canvas to create what they want. And that, regardless if you are a gambler or not, is exciting.
