How Online Casino Games Innovate and Evolve

The online casino industry is booming in the United States, despite legislation not allowing some states to offer games.

Forbes explains how iGaming, as the online casino industry is known, brought in more money than ever before in 2021, with Connecticut and Michigan joining those states with legal games. Fueled by the 2020 lockdowns and recent pandemic, online providers caught new customers, many of which they have retained going into the post-pandemic era.

There are plenty of obvious benefits for players when entering an online casino. The comfort of playing from home is one, along with the convenience of not traveling miles to a casino. Of course, when casinos closed during lockdown and sports ceased to be played, gamers had no option other than to play online if they wished to indulge, with the online casino industry more than happy to oblige.

The other big benefit is the wide range of games and the ability to innovate and adapt quickly. Space limitations of a physical location do not bind online providers; they can quickly swap games around if they’re not performing or adapt to a changing environment. For instance, lots of themed games featuring eggs and rabbits will appear around Easter, but they’ll be gone as soon as it is over. The same happens at Halloween and Christmas, and that flexibility is attractive to gamers.

Online providers also innovate and evolve their game offering, looking to find a niche within a niche that they can offer, but bricks and mortar locations cannot. This is exemplified in these innovative game types that can be found across various providers.

Progressive Slots

Progressive slots are certainly something you’ll find in a real casino, but they’re hugely popular online, and developers ensure they’re front and center of their offering. These are slots that see the jackpot go up each time someone plays. It’s a bit like a bingo chain raising their top prize each time different locations play, only the scope for players on a global online casino is far wider. The prizes reach eye-watering sums due to the huge catchment of customers, and that alone draws gamers to the slots. Given the reactiveness we spoke about earlier and the ability to create immersive, graphically impressive experiences, progressive slots are attractive to gamers.

Slingo

Slingo is a predominately online offering and is a hybrid between the age-old game of bingo and online slots. It’s usually played on a five-by-five grid, much like bingo, but instead of a caller, you have a spinning reel delivering the numbers. It’s not a new concept, there was a version on the PC as far back as 1998, but online casino developers have made it their own. Using popular branding, as they do with online slots, creates more than a simple bingo game; they create a proper experience. This is demonstrated in the Slingo titles from Foxy Bingo, which include Friends Slingo and Slingo Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. These games take other popular brands or shows and appropriate them for Slingo games. It’s the natural evolution of an engaging older concept, and it’s certainly successful.

Live Games

An element of the real casino experience that people missed out on during the pandemic was interaction with a live dealer, and that’s where online providers quickly innovated. There were live casino games before the pandemic, but they’ve become much more popular since. They consist of a real person interacting with the player over a stream. It might be a person dealing blackjack or rolling a roulette wheel, but there’s a more personal approach in these games. Some developers have even themed the games towards the likes of Alice in Wonderland, which Upstyle Daily considers one of the most popular fictional stories of all time. By using such recognizable imagery, the games take on a new dimension, they feel more like game shows or hybrids of the fantasy worlds created in online slots. It’s a booming genre likely to see more innovations over the coming years.