How Have Live Experiences Online Evolved to Provide a More Interactive and Genuine Experience for Audiences
Because of the drive to provide bigger and better services for customers, businesses never stop innovating. In the online casino sector, after years of static game play through slots and video poker, along came a new wave of interactivity with live dealers hitting the scene.
Live dealer games like roulette, blackjack and craps are a major part of the online casino industry and are designed to give customers more of a real-world casino experience, without having to leave the comfort of their home. But how did the live experience evolve over time to produce such a great interactive experience?
Pre-Live Era
Although it is a little hard to imagine now, there was a pre live-dealer online casino era. Around the turn of the century, online casinos started to become prevalent, and of course, everything at the time was based on the technology that was around at the time.
So, it was predominantly simple slot games with a sprinkling of video poker thrown into the mix. It was nowhere near as expansive in terms of variety, or as high quality, as online casino games today are. Then around 2006 with internet technology improving, more and more live casino games came online.
These were low-quality live-streaming games compared to what is available today, but they provided something new and exciting because suddenly players could get a more personal, real-world casino experience of table games.
The Basics
Understandably, in the early days of live casinos, the gaming options were fairly limited across the board. Roulette and blackjack were essentially the only ones available as they were the most popular casino table games and so naturally got developed first.
This was enough to build a strong platform for further expansion, even though the early live casino games had their issues. They were typically streamed through one static camera and were hampered by slow internet connections and limited in-game features for the end user.
Technology Provides More Options
The evolution of live gaming experiences could not have happened without better technology. Computing power rapidly improved and internet connections continuously got upgraded, which meant that bigger and better games could be developed.
High-definition streaming was a major game changer because it allowed players to get a much clearer picture of what was happening at a roulette table, for example. Not only that, viewing angles of live casino games were updated, with multi-camera views allowing players to watch from different perspectives, like different close up angles on the roulette wheel, or a dealer’s hands when dishing out blackjack cards.
Features Improve
Better live casino features have evolved as well, with the addition of chat being one of the most popular ones. Because live dealers can initiate banter with players thanks to in-game text chat, suddenly players had a way to respond, which provided a much deeper, immersive gaming experience.
Another newer feature of the live casino experience to come along was optical character recognition. Much like the old OCR that would “read” a page of printed text and convert it to editable text on a computer, practical character recognition was a big game changer for live casino streams.
It allows for the tracking of the ball in roulette, can read the dice on a craps table and the suits of cards that have been dealt to a player at the blackjack table. This technology immediately presents the information on the screen for clarity about the in-game situation so players stay informed on the action.
Explosion of Variety
In the early days of online casinos, at most there were a handful of live rooms, nothing like the extraordinary volume that is available today. While other games like baccarat and poker came online to join the live dealer experience, the expansion also included variations of games, like Lightning, European, American and Double Ball Roulette.
But the growth of live dealer games didn’t end there either, because a new wave of game types came on board, based on game-show style formats like prize wheels, lotto-style and board game play. The international flair of games like Teen Patti and Andar Bahar, along with live crash games drove up the volume further.
Technology Still Growing
With the incredible processing power of artificial intelligence around now, plus faster connectivity through 5G and mobile processing power, the degree of interaction with live dealer games has never been greater. Yet, there’s one thing that players can rely on and that is future advancements in technology, with one of the most likely to be augmented and virtual reality interfaces where players can get an even richer and deeper immersive experience.
Live Dealer Games Thriving
Live dealer casino games remain hugely popular because they add an element of realism, game variety and a level of social interaction. They are also trusted, because players can see the transparency of dealers handling cards, for example, which raises the confidence in a game’s fairness.
