Should Casinos Be Involved In Game Development?
In the world of videogames, the people running a platform are typically very involved with the development of games which appear on that platform, especially if they’re meant to be exclusively on that platform. I mean, it’s not hard to find a list of game development studios which are owned by Sony (and as such develop their games exclusively on Sony’s PlayStation), and I can guarantee you that on each one of them Sony is listed as a co-developer. And why shouldn’t they be? The exclusive games represent their platform, in a way. Good exclusive games means more people will be attracted to that platform, so Sony are inclined to hire experts and quality control people to make sure that the games which represent PlayStation will be as good as they can possibly be… But that almost never happens when it comes to online gambling.
Online casinos have tons of connections, mostly to various e-wallet services (I mean, just look at all the casinos listed on ponlinecasinos.co.uk), but I’ve noticed that they don’t really have a connection with probably the most important people in the industry – casino games providers. You’d be surprised about how little communication happens between the developers and the online casinos, especially in relation to game development! Imagine that Casino A wants to commission Developer B to create an online slot that will appear on their site and on their site only. They’ll agree on a budget and… Well, that’ll be that! Casino A will no longer care. Developer B can literally produce whatever they want within the allocated budget without getting into trouble at all. Of course, in many cases the casino can reject a game and back out of the deal if it doesn’t meet their quality standards, but they will do absolutely nothing to assure that these standards are even being met in the first place when it truly matters – during development.
One of the worst offenses I’ve noticed is that the games which are exclusive to certain casinos (for example, 888 and their “Millionaire Genie”) rarely, if ever, have anything at all in common. 888 isn’t a site about genies. It doesn’t have anything to do with Middle-Eastern mythology whatsoever. Hell, not even the blue and brown color scheme of the slot matches the green and black hues of the site! I mean, come on, couldn’t you try to make it look more like the game belonged? You primarily hear me talking about the visuals of a slot, and that’s because I’m one of those people who care about them more than other aspects, so I’m particularly agitated by this. With a bit of communication between developers and casinos maybe soon enough we’ll be able to start seeing games which better represent the casinos they’re associated with not just visually, but in various fun and creative ways. One can dream, right?