The worlds of traditional video games and online casinos strongly influence each other. There are mechanisms that, as we will see, affect players and determine the best platform on which they should play. In this regard, the oddschecker casino comparison site offers bonuses and promotions on the best online gaming platforms available on the web. This is a quick and easy way to minimize losses and choose the site that best suits each gamer and gambler needs.
What we wrote in the introduction is exactly the point: nowadays, the difference between gambler and gamer is slowly but surely reducing. Casinos are trying to make themselves funnier and attract more and more youngsters. A good way to do just that, of course, is trying to replicate what they love in video games, gamifying the whole gambling experience.
Gambling and gamification: how the latter can embetter the former
Casinos updated their visual aspects. The massification of online play linked to the diffusion of smartphones put a lot of people in touch with online gambling. In order to keep people on their platforms, casinos decided to renew their graphics and built a bridge to the world of videogames. Today, when a user opens his or her favourite online casino app, he or she may find world leaderboards, experience points, season passes, customized avatars, cool lights and sounds and so on. Everything is studied and assembled to keep the user engaged and avoid his or her exit from the app.
There are no strong associations between consumption of video games and online gambling, as a research published by Science Direct confirmed, but each and every user prefers to gamble on a platform that reminds a videogame, since funny avatars, cool effects and a competitive environment are bound to attract and fascinate everyone, and especially young people.
Gamifying is a working way of gaining the trust of users. And not only that. If a platform offers prizes and rewards for every daily access; puts out weekly missions and monthly targets, the enthusiast will probably log in every 24 hours to get that reward. Once the player is in, he or she could stay for a couple of minutes and maybe bet on something or pull the lever of a virtual slot machine. Whatever the case, the operator will probably gain something out of it.
What are skill-based casino games and why do they matter?
Once casinos met virtual reality it soon became clear that the sector should have taken another step forward. If you want to attract gamers, you can’t rely just on luck-based games. People who play video-games on a weekly or, quite often, daily basis, won’t be interested in an experience where their handling and muscular skills do not mean a thing.
Random number generators (or RNG) are the typical games that casinos used to offer: slot machines, videopokers and similars are based on this mechanic and do not require anything. The player is completely passive: he or she pushes a couple of buttons and hopes for the best. Nothing more and nothing less. A gamer would never play something like that. He or she needs to be rewarded for his or her skills, the strategy used or the time invested.
This is the reason why games where strategy matters and elements like aiming, reflexes or exploration are important to win out are becoming more and more popular. It is possible, if not probable, that in the near future all casino experiences will look like videogames, allowing players to live console-like adventures while gambling. We should not be surprised: mobile phones are becoming the main digital hub in our lives and mobile gaming is increasing in accessibility and popularity. It’s only natural for casino operators to try and intercept that huge user-base.
