New iGaming Frontier: Technology by the People, for the People [After Centuries in Making]
As we wind up the second decade of the 21st century, it is almost impossible to pinpoint the business not influenced by technological advances of our information society. Some industries have been meaningfully improved or radically changed, invented from scratch or deemed unnecessary, while there are also those which base its sole existence on software products and services. Intersecting majority of them to a certain extent is the online gambling industry.
As is the case with any feat in the history of human progress, advances do not always go smoothly or without glitches. On occasion they take us much further we have initially envisioned requiring not only legislation and regulation but also elaborative evaluation of consumer habits and behavioral patterns.
Serving as the peculiar representative sample of all prevailing notions, the online gambling industry has taken strides in this century providing the fertile ground for innovations in almost every segment.
As we circumambulate new trends and developments in this business field, it is worth remembering — it’s nothing more than information technology applied to one of the most intriguing, mesmerizing, and controversial companions of humanity since the earliest days of our recorded history.
Mother of All Revolutions
Resembling four industrial revolutions thus far, gambling has been moving silently through the centuries hand in hand with people, booming with each technological breakthrough. True to the maxim that best always comes last, nothing came with such a loud bang as widespread adoption and integration of zeroes and ones into our lives.
Gambling embraced information technologies readily and continued to build upon it: iGaming is nowadays quite removed from wallflower it used to resemble only a few decades ago.
The name of the game is not gambling itself but delivering premier gaming experience.
Casino credentials from reputable online jurisdictions, licensed games with tested software, transparent Terms of Conditions, fair-play based RTPs, supreme service in safe processing of payments, dedicated customer support, groundbreaking gaming concepts, reliable hardware infrastructure providing for fast loads — those are just some of the musts online casinos have to have if they are to prevail in a highly competitive iGaming market.
Underlining all of them is a flawless software platform, the foundation. Most successful operators and powerhouses invest significant time, effort, and money in this segment, quickly adopting progressive frameworks like HTML5. Not surprisingly, visitors and players respond accordingly — in hordes.
Provided those expectations are met, the next level of technological advances delivers gamification with astonishing graphics, virtual reality, successful deployment of blockchain technology, live dealer games, augmented reality, artificial intelligence.
In essence, iGaming is about offering the immersive experience rendered by technological ubiquity.
High penetration of mobile devices caps the pyramid of the final level and underlines the paramount segment — always be available.
Resolute Protection of the Future
If iGaming was the isolated instance showcasing proliferation in providing a solution to ancient human craving — better life through the fulfillment of needs and wishes, hopefully quickly — one might understand conservative pundits trying hard to turn the tide of widespread gambling legalization efforts worldwide.
But iGaming is not the only occurrence. Most notable are only a few clicks away, either through browsers or social networks; every parent can correlate.
Because, it’s not about technology, it’s about us.
Gambling is well aware of this truth, being with humans for centuries. Correspondingly, supreme iGaming behemoths and crème de la crème of online jurisdictions use technological advances to limit problem players and suppress gambling addiction.
Software analytics and particularly artificial intelligence are deployed to detect pathological patterns and recognize warning signs before the pastime has turned into unhealthy dependency. Which just might be the single greatest development of iGaming incarnation of gambling — players’ protection and support system way beyond anything we saw before.
In the end, as with anything, walk around usually leads to look ahead.
While the house will always strive to win — just as every single player shall — the opulence of land-based casinos so vividly transferred to online space through enhanced gameplay and out-of-this-world features will continue to grow as we, the people do.
New limits will be met, new boundaries set. Gambling and humans will continue to coexist as they always did.
We know it, and iGaming knows it.
