Here at Slots Play Casinos, we find that it is an amazing fact that mobile casino gaming went from a cumbersome afterthought to being the number one format for playing online casino games in less than 20 years! The early mobile devices were not even very smart! They were giant and cumbersome. They wouldn’t have fit even in the Jolly Green Giant’s pockets!
Technology is a wondrous thing, indeed! As the technology for mobile advanced in general, making mobile devices sleek and smart, technology for mobile casino gaming also advanced dramatically. It became a lot more convenient, comfortable, and fun to play casino games on mobile.
Mobile Casinos Have Become the Ultimate in Convenience
When mobile started to be as popular as desktop as a format for playing casino games, people spoke about how convenient it is to play while waiting in line somewhere or at an office or on the commute to or from work.
The idea of mobile facilitating much more comfortable gaming had not yet caught on but it did catch on soon.
Convenience Turned to Comfort to Create a Marriage Made in Heaven
The Covid 19 pandemic pushed mobile gaming to the forefront. There was kind of perfect storm for mobile casino gaming as land-based casinos were shuttered and people spent most of their time at home.
People found mobile to be as comfortable as it was convenient. Gamers no longer spoke about playing on their mobile device in line, in a waiting room, or on the commute since all of those places to play have become mute.
Suddenly, people by the millions registered to play at online casinos, made a cup of coffee, and curled up on the sofa to play some online casino games at home.
Mobile Casino Gaming Facilitates Romance
Suddenly, couples discovered the pleasure of playing some online casino games all curled up on the sofa or in bed! Online casinos became a format for short, fun gaming sessions that led to a kind of longer, more fun “gaming session”.
Land-based Casinos Lose Some of Their Appeal
As a casino watchdog, Slots Play Casinos follows the developments in land-based casinos as well as in online casinos. We have seen how mobile combined with the pandemic have changed gamers’ attitudes both toward mobile gaming and to land-based casinos in general.
While we say that land-based casinos have lost some of their appeal, we cannot say that they have lost all of their appeal. Players still go to land-based casinos for a long weekend or even just for s few weekend hours if the casino is within easy driving distance from their home.
Gamers have found out that they can have as much fun at home playing on their mobile device! The convenience of not travelling to a land-based casino is not lost on the average casino gamer! People hear from others that flying has become a kind of nightmare full of discomforts and inconveniences. Plus, the cost of flying and staying at the hotel is no small matter.
The Idea of Convenience Merges with Vacations
Many gamers have found that they can have a few long weekend vacations by not going to a land-based and earmarking the money saved to what we refer to as “real vacations”.
We said when mobile was just becoming popular, long before it became most gamer’s default way to play, that mobile turned the tables on land-based casinos: instead of going to a casino on land, mobile allowed gamers to take the casino with them!
A Great Irony Arrives at Land-based Casinos
It may be the single greatest irony of all in the entire world of casino gaming that some land-based casinos, and a growing number of them, now offer in-house mobile casino gaming to players staying at the hotel!
We can think of no more self-contradictory example of the sense that land-based casinos realize that they no longer have the same appeal they had before online casinos, before mobile became dominant, and before the shutdowns opened players’ eyes to the value of online casino gaming.
Marshall McLuhan on Mobile Communication
Marshall McLuhan was a sociologist who wrote a landmark text called Understanding Media”. In that book, McLuhan introduced his by-now famous term: “the medium is the message”. Let’s take a short look at what Mr. McLuhan had in mind and how it affects mobile both in general and as a conduit for casino gaming.
The general idea of this term is that a medium of communication is more important than the communication itself. This has become on the one hand, a very influential insight into how societies work and concomitantly a highly controversial one.
Let’s look at how the term the medium is the message may apply to mobile casinos. We will bypass any controversies!
Mobile Devices Constitute a Class of Communication Tools
This is as clear as day!
Mobile devices have also become tools of entertainment. This is where online casino gaming on mobile has found its niche. If the medium is the message as Marshal McLuhan said, then we might look ahead to developments in mobile casino gaming that may already be in their infancy or have not developed yet.
In McLuhan’s own terms, any medium has personal and social consequences.
The Explosion of Apps Demonstrates McLuhan’s Insight
Before smart mobile devices, there were no apps. Now there are thousands of apps. The single motivating factor for this volcanic explosion of apps is the social and personal influence of smart mobile devices.
Mobile casinos are but one of thousands of apps. Many people with powerful smartphones or tablets have hundreds of apps! Where these same people at one time had no apps at all, and didn’t know what an app was, now they seemingly cannot live without apps.
The Wild Symbol in Slots is a Medium
The early slots were static mechanical devices. Modern slots are digital. Technology has made it possible for game providers to find new and exciting ways to use the wild symbol in slots.
When gamers play mobile slots, they want the images to be as life-like as possible. The demand of gamers and everyone else for ever-more technological mobile devices, has made these devices amenable to ever-more realistic and fantastical slot characters and wild symbols. In other words, mobile facilitates both the realistic and the fantastical!
Here are just a few ways game providers have discovered to make wild symbols ever-wilder:
- Stacked wilds.
- Sticky wilds.
- Growing wilds.
- Moving wilds.
- Expanding wilds.
- Exploding wilds.
We can expect game developers to find more ways to use the wild symbol in slots!
Slots Play Casinos is a Medium
Believe us when we say that we never thought of ourselves in this way before but we are, truly, a medium. We are a medium for the dissemination of information on casino gaming, primarily online casino gaming. As online casino gaming more and more becomes mobile casino gaming, we report on developments in that niche of casino gaming.
We expect that mobile casino gaming will develop in areas we cannot yet imagine! To find out as soon as we hear about new developments in mobile casino gaming,
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