May 21, 2009

Live Casino meets Web 2.0 - a compelling online experience

By Martin Reiner, CEO, Visionary iGaming.
Article featured in iGaming Business Magazine - May/June 2009 issue.

Live Dealer games have been around for about 5 years and now, with modern, interactive Live Dealer Version 2.0, are becoming a "must have" product within the casino segment of iGaming. The evolution of Live Dealer products from Version 1.0 to Version 2.0 is occurring due to the confluence of emerging technologies and social behavior on the Internet (Web 2.0) and the experiences learnt from Version 1.0 Live Dealer offerings.

Live Dealer casino games were born for one primary reason: trust. In the prior 10 years, since the inception of online betting, online casinos were limited to Random Number Generated (RNG) games. While this experience is the norm for modern day slot machines and video poker, a table game player was forced to shift from real cards, real dice and real roulette wheels to the video world - a place where many of them were not comfortable. The discomfort came both from the difference in the player experience - a computerized voice saying "Place your Bets" and "Player Wins!" as well as the unpleasant feeling when the computer draws a 21 in blackjack and beats your 20 with uncanny (or perceived uncanny) frequency. This lack of reality of the real table games, and lack of trust that many players have for RNG games, spawned the Live Dealer product.

Live Dealer 1.0 was a novelty when it first came out - software providers quickly learnt that producing and deploying live video streams alongside an Internet based user interface that was both authentic and high quality, was not that easy. Two main strategies were used: broadcasting directly from a bona fide live casino and broadcasting from a studio.

In addition to the technology challenges of the day, primarily related to a lack of bandwidth that often led to choppy and delayed video streams, providers had to find ways to overcome other logistical challenges related to gaming. For example, broadcasts from live casinos, where I began my live gaming career, are challenged by wide shots, poor lighting conditions and the inherent conflict between live players and online players, often resulting in very slow game play. Most early Live Dealer platforms were studio based. Their biggest drawback was a lack of authenticity, where, for instance, dealers used oversized cards to make them more readable on camera or stood behind large roulette wheels with no layouts, often stopping the ball between spins to get a tight shot - something that is clearly a no-no in live casino roulette - and typing in the result via manual keyboard, again deviating from real casino procedures.

Concurrent with the development of Live Dealer Casinos 1.0 was the enormous worldwide growth and acceptance that the Internet was experiencing; bandwidth was becoming cheaper and high speed Internet connections were becoming ubiquitous. In the EC, the center of regulated online gaming, over 70% of Internet users have broadband and the number continues to grow. In parallel, Web 2.0 had arrived. According to Wikipedia.com:

"'Web 2.0' refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services and applications; such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs and folksonomies."

At Visionary iGaming, we are bringing Live Dealer 2.0 to life. We are integrating the best of land-based casino procedures and gaming hardware, professional live dealers with exceptional interpersonal skills via a hosted (server based) Rich Internet application (RIA) technology and design. Gone are downloads and invasive .exes. In their place are browser-based applications with smooth live streaming video and audio with sub 2 second delay. Gone are keyboards, mice and large cards and in their place are high end casino digital card scanners and digital roulette wheels with fully integrated digital mixing and video switching. This technology, blended with highly trained dealers and a rich user interface delivers far more than a trusted gaming session - it delivers a very personal, interactive and compelling entertainment experience. And this is just the beginning.

The true value of Live Dealer 2.0 is that it offers many of the features of a land-based gaming experience and compliments those with experiences users are familiar with on the Internet. For example, while playing baccarat with a standard six-deck card shoe that the player has witnessed being shuffled and carefully tracked, using ViG sophisticated game statistics, a player can wager €1,000 on Banker with all the drama and excitement offered by Macau. If he wins, he might tip the dealer and the dealer will immediately thank him by name while performing a chip tapping ritual. Then, another player, from across town or across the world can chat, "This is a Banker shoe, keep up the good work, Veronica (the dealer)!" And so on. Players develop relationships with dealers and other players from around the world, partly as they do when they are in a live casino and partly as they do when they are on Facebook or Skype!

Visionary iGaming plans to develop the social networking element of its offering by having interactive dealer blogs and other methods of enabling 'out of the game' interaction with our staff. Dealers will develop their own following and we will use technology to make it easy for players to find their favorite dealer when they are live. We will enable private tables, much like peer-to-peer poker, to allow friends that are no longer living in the same region to play with each other, chat, joke and reconnect without the expense and logistical challenges of meeting in Las Vegas. Especially in these difficult economic times, people need diversions and entertainment. We think that ViG Live Dealer 2.0 is just the ticket for occasional gamblers who are looking for a professional, trusted and entertaining social gaming experience.