It’s hard to believe we are racing ahead into a new decade, but 2020 is mere days away. The 2010s will certainly be remembered for some great leaps forward when it comes to technology. Indeed, consider that as we entered the start of the 2010s nobody had yet heard of an iPad, Uber, Twitch TV or Instagram, whereas today those things are commonplace.
In the iGaming industry, i.e. the online betting and gaming industry, there were incredible achievements too. Most notably, the rollout of live dealer casino games, which effectively created a whole new subsection of the industry. But what about the 2020s? Will online casinos remain the same? Definitely not. Here are our five predictions of how tech will change the industry:
Live Casino Sees and Explosion of Creativity
Live dealer casino was the success story of the 2010s, and the tech that brough live blackjack, roulette and other games to devices is something that can be harnessed to bring even more exciting games to the fore. You can already see here https://www.casino.com/live-casino/ that games are becoming varied and more ambitious, and moving away from the spheres of traditional casino games. Indeed, we see a lot of potential in merging live dealer games with VR technology (see below).
Virtual Reality
Let’s be clear here, we are using VR as a catch all term for AR (augmented reality), MR (mixed reality) and XR (extended reality). Anyway, VR is the main buzzword you hear at iGaming conventions, and developers really believe it’s going to impact casino in a big way. Interestingly, the ideas being bandied about suggest the ambitions of developers are more in line with creating adventure games and surreal experiences, rather than ‘extending reality’ and bringing people into a virtual casino setting. Like other industries involved with tech, VR is going to be pivotal to the casino industry.
Players Harnessing Data
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A trickier one to predict, and possibly something that will be used in online sports betting over casino. We all know that data has transformative powers, yet it usually involves businesses using our data to make better predictions about our tastes. However, what if the roles were reversed? We mentioned live casino games above: It is very feasible to have a situation where players will use data to analyse the optimum strategy for a live blackjack or poker game. Effectively, we are talking about card counting apps (perfectly legal), but there are other possibilities too.
Skill-Based Gaming
Blackjack arguably requires skill, otherwise there wouldn’t be people banned from casinos for playing too well. Yet, there is a lot of talk about casinos introducing skill games over the coming years. What will they look like? To begin with, you can expect skill games to be something like those arcade classics of the 80s, like Pac-Man and Asteroids. However, we expect the popularity of games like League of Legends and DOTA 2 to inspire casinos to create big budget titles that could challenge the eSports industry.
Tailored Experiences
Plenty of games in recent years have offered players the chance to adjust settings to their own types of experiences. For instance, the new Ozzy Osbourne Slot allows you to adjust the bet to access better features and more lucrative ways to win, and the Book of Oz slot allows players to pursue different features based on their risk appetite. However, this feels like the tip of the iceberg. It’s likely that we will be able to change the structures of casino games for a personal experience, with the software remembering our tastes and thus further enhancing the tailored offering. At the fundamental level, it will make games unique to the player that is playing them.
