Online casino games are not a new invention. The first online casino with real money wagering appeared in 1996, a quarter-century ago! Since then, online casinos have evolved consistently with the available technology and steadily gained popularity. The convenience and versatility of online casinos is something that brick-and-mortar casinos just can’t compete with, but those in-person locations do have a certain something that online casinos want to recreate. One of the great ways they’ve found to do this is with live dealer games.
Online live dealer games are booming, offering classic table games played in a familiar way. Instead of using software to emulate a dealer, a dealer is streamed live and players can interact and chat with them directly. While there are certainly technological hiccups to a complex game set-up like this, it is the perfect solution for players who want more traditional game options online.
The Devil You Know
Live dealers are, for some, a more trustworthy alternative to slots and automatic table games. Not all players like to rely on the “random” mechanical style of slots, which use Random Number Generation (RNG) to determine winning outcomes. Even though not all of the games offered are skill based (an example is the live roulette) the human element of a live dealer feels more transparent for skeptical gamblers.
Like the Real Thing
Bringing a human element to online casinos also appeals to players who want more social connection out of their online gambling hobby. Some sites used to promote this by having chat rooms and socializing themed games with chat features, complete with chat moderators. Now, live dealers help to create an experience more akin to what you might find on the casino floor. Being able to communicate with the dealer–although slightly limited–is better than the cold, sterility of the artificial intelligence games.
Interactions between players and dealers may even become more sophisticated in the future although, at the moment, the boundaries are finite. Players usually can interact with dealers by typing or choosing a phrase or query to send, which the dealer can then see on a screen and answer at their leisure while entertaining with stories in between play. Players can also talk with other players using a chatbox function.
Complex Connections
There are some potential roadblocks when playing online with live dealers, primarily because playing and streaming live dealer games takes more effort all-around than other less involved casino games. For players with a poor internet connection, live dealer games may be impossible or frustrating to play.
Also, depending on the site live dealer game selections can be limited to certain times of the day or just to certain games. For example, some sites may only have the studio availability and the staff to have two or three live dealers streaming at one time. So they’ll only have two or three different types of live dealer games available at any given time. Issues like these may improve with time as technology advances and as sites grow their budgets, especially since the popularity of online live dealers is still growing.
Mobile Advances
Part of the reason online live dealer play continues to boom isn’t exactly due to the appeal. Mobile phones have made online casino games more accessible than ever. Whereas in the old days of online gambling, sometimes you would have to download software to play on your home computer, now many casino sites are optimized for mobile web browsers or even have their own apps.
The widespread availability of online gambling combined with the want for fast, convenient entertainment at a time when many people feel they have very little time has created the perfect opportunity for online casinos. And live dealer play is finally joining the fray. Sites are now starting to enable online live dealer games for mobile browsers, opening up an entirely new market for these kinds of games.
A Glance Ahead
As technology continues to evolve, so will the boundaries of the online casino industry, changing the games that people play and how they play them. There’s lots of speculation about what’s in store for the future of online live dealer play, with mentions of fun tech advances like virtual reality and augmented reality being thrown around. But with innovations always bubbling to the surface of the highly competitive tech and casino industries, who knows what’s just around the corner.
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