Over the years, there have been so many successful innovations in the casino gaming world that faced initial scepticism. Believe it or not, there was a time when gambling experts and the big bosses at land-based casinos shrugged off the rise of digital platforms as a fad.
Of course, hindsight has not been kind to those who took this viewpoint back in the early 1990s, but in their defence, back then, computers were incredibly expensive, and the internet was far slower than it is today. It was a glorified basic message board – which also happened to send e-mails.
Obviously, it’s since become the premium way people play every type of casino game under the sun, including poker, which experts almost unanimously agreed would have the most challenging time transposing from land-based casinos.
Not through any issues with mechanics or technology but purely because of the spirit of the game, which often involves conversing with others at the table, reading their body language and getting to know their tics to see if they are trying to bluff their way into a position of prominence.
Poker’s Flexibility
While many reasons led to online poker’s success, one factor was more crucial in determining its triumph: the fact that it inspired game designers to think outside the box with versions of poker that flourished in a digital format.
Mystery knockout games involve players receiving a bonus for each player they eliminate. Theoretically, this can result in a player walking away with the biggest prize; even if they do not win the game, it’s a unique take on poker. Mystery knockout tournaments explained the appetite of online poker gamers. They expanded into it, showing that poker enthusiasts were more than keen to explore the possibilities beyond the framework of the traditional versions of the game.
While it is played at other types of casinos, mystery knockouts show that there’s not just a big market for poker games but that variants of the game can also prove to be a success, given the overarching popularity of the flagship game. Poker has also adapted to other areas of technology.
A growing number of brands offer cryptocurrency payment options and crypto poker tournaments. The incredible success of prominent cryptos like Ethereum and the level of investment flooding into this asset have caused casinos to sit up and take notice. While this applies across the iGaming world, poker is one area seeing a lot of traction.
VR Casinos
Whether intentional or not, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become the poster boy for VR. To say he is a fan of the technology and believes it has potential would be the understatement of the century. He has wholly reshaped his entire business model to cater to VR tech.
Now, we won’t sit here and say that his end goal is ensuring you can play Texas Holdem with your friends. Still, anything that encourages people to use these headsets will be music to the ears of the Meta CEO—and given the way that casino gaming is rising at the moment in the US, it really wouldn’t be outside the realms of possibility to see VR poker becoming a big talking point in iGaming over the next couple of years.
While AI has been the hottest topic in the tech world for 2 years straight, more or less, VR definitely has more of an intriguing use case from a user perspective in comparison to AI. Sure, there might be quirky generative AI tools and customer service departments looking to implement AI more aggressively, but it’s business as usual for poker players.
VR offers a stark contrast and a real chance for something new here. If gamers are on board with it and looking to give it a go, we wouldn’t be surprised to see it become a popular avenue, so long as the price of VR stays down and casinos are willing to work with the tech.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, because poker gaming platforms and game designers have been so open to technological change in the past, VR at least has some sort of opportunity to establish itself. If there’s money to be made, then casino companies and game designers will explore it.
They won’t write it off as a fad or say that VR headsets are too expensive and should only be used for console gaming. If there’s enough interest, then it is feasible. As with any casino gaming, it will ultimately boil down to supply and demand, and although VR headsets started at eye-watering costs when they first launched, the number of them now in circulation has brought the average price down.
If more people buy them, want to play casino games with them, and sit around a virtual poker table, casinos will accommodate this. Anything that can change the rhetoric in the casino gaming world and encourage new ideas while keeping old classic games fresh will catch the attention of CEOs and designers who have the power to remodel their brands—intriguing times indeed.