Technology, gaming and the future

There once was time when a slot machine in the corner of a pub was the ultimate in gaming technology, but those days are long gone. Ever since the first online casinos arrived a couple of decades ago there has been an exponential development of the technology behind them and, with each advance, it has attracted more and more players into the fold.
 
When they first started appearing online casinos were more akin to video games than actual casinos. The action appeared on screen, the graphics were nothing to write home about and, while it was a novel experience, it was hardly overwhelming.
 
However, from their earliest days, there was enough interest in online casinos to persuade the companies behind them to invest in their development. At the same time technology was advancing at a high speed and two key developments were critical. The first was the increasing availability of high speed internet access and the second was the emergence of the smartphone.
 
Together they meant that people could play online whenever and wherever they wanted via a connection that was far more reliable than it had ever been before.
 
Alongside this, the online casinos noticed that new groups of people were starting to be attracted by the possibilities, particularly women and younger people than had traditionally been interested in gambling. As a result a great deal of investment was also put into games that could be tailored to these new players, namely slots. So we saw an explosion of these kinds of games with wide-ranging themes including film titles, sports and other pop culture favourites.
 
For casino fans one thing that had been lacking was the excitement of the casino experience so a concerted effort was also put into developing the technology to create a “live” casino experience. The result was a piece of equipment which uses number recognition technology to convert physical cards into digital information so a live stream from a casino with real dealers could be relayed to players. By involving this human interaction and adding a “chat” feature too it has transformed the play into a far more authentic experience. So it’s no surprise that there is even a growing band of players who have made online gambling their full time job.
 
But for many the live online casino has just been a stepping stone on the way to the transformation that Virtual Reality is going to bring. For many years this technology has promised so much but not really delivered it but now it really does seem to have arrived.
 
With affordable tech as well as a committed effort to develop the software to support it this opens up a whole host of possibilities for the future of the online casino industry. For example it could soon be possible for players to be transported to any casino in the world from the comfort of their own home or even to take part in virtual poker tournaments playing opponents they’ve never actually met before.
 
So the future looks very exciting indeed. And, as it’s already come so far in such a short time, there’s really no predicting just how much further things will advance even in the next few years.