17 June 2024
By Roger Kennedy
roger@TheCork.ie
Entertainment
In the ‘90s, the first casino games made their way online to create iGaming. Nobody knew it at the time, but this would create an industry that’s still flourishing in 2024 while redefining what it means, and what it looks like, to play games through the internet. Now, we are seeing fully-fledged game shows emerge in the iGaming space, providing complex entertainment that has come a long way from desktop solitaire games.
Source: Unsplash
The Evolution of iGaming
Like everything in the early days of the internet, the first online casinos were rudimentary compared to what we have today. Over time, slot libraries grew and became more varied, with different themes and new features like Megaways. Table games didn’t change much but the tech around them did, as providers could now stream games live. This provided a new, interactive, social experience that players could access from home.
That same technology enabled new, innovative projects to take hold. If you can stream a card game, you can stream a lot more, and that’s exactly the kind of attitude that led iGaming providers to make game shows. The result is Paddy’s Mansion Heist, a show with a full set, a giant spinning wheel, and four distinct rounds of minigames that are all played live on-stream. The viewers play along with the hosts, blurring the lines between what it means to be an audience member and a player. It keeps to the spirit of classic game shows from broadcast TV, where players are picked from the audience, except now the whole audience can get involved.
To understand how we got here, you need to know how video streaming and live streaming have redefined modern media. At their core, the game shows coming out of the iGaming space are built with the same technology that made services like Netflix and YouTube possible. That is, the ability to package and send video to users instantaneously over the internet, including real-time transmission. If you’ve ever wondered how streaming technology works, you can find a step-by-step explanation of how video content is captured and spread online at Cloudflare.
The Streaming Technology Timeline
The earliest and most basic forms of livestreaming date back to the 1990s. That was when the same tech used to deliver live sports coverage was made available to the internet. Though it’s hard to say, many agree that the first notable livestream happened in 1993, when the band Severe Tire Damage broadcast video and audio online as part of a live performance.
Naturally, the quality of the stream was terrible and latency meant that far-away viewers weren’t actually watching it in real-time. Those wrinkles wouldn’t get ironed out until the 2000s when CDNs went mainstream, ensuring that servers close to the user are always used when distributing online content.
When they launched in 2007, sites like YouTube and Justin.tv proved video-sharing and streaming were viable business models. 2007 was also the year that Netflix committed to becoming a streaming service and have since evolved into the media giant that it is today. With several sports acquisitions this year, Netflix is also becoming a hub for live-streamed events as explained by Yahoo! Finance.
As streaming became viable, and smartphones found their way into people’s hands, gambling and betting platforms became widely accessible. In response, providers created live table games where viewers could play blackjack or roulette with a real host. It was a formula that started on certain TV channels but was now possible through online websites and apps.
Those live experiences were successful, so reinvestment and innovation followed. New, casino-inspired games were added, the backend tech got better and sets experimented with different themes to stand out from the crowd. The viewers liked what they saw, and today software providers like Playtech and Evolution Gaming sustain 24/7 live game shows for the biggest names in iGaming.
