Wow! That question certainly is a mouthful for Slots Play Casinos to swallow in one gulp! First of all, we have gaming at online casinos versus at land-based casinos. Secondly, we have to add on the impact of mobile casino gaming. We have to factor in the effect of the proliferation of land-based casinos to Native American lands and to many other jurisdictions. Last but certainly not least, we have to consider the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on casino gaming!
Once There Were But a Few
At one time there were only land-based casinos and then only in Las Vegas and other places in the state of Nevada. Then Atlantic City was given the okay to allow casinos to open. The next area to develop land-based casino gaming was the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
To get to either of these land-based casino areas, players usually had to fly in. The casinos gave players some incentives to come to play there such as package deals that included the flight, a room at the hotel, a ticket to a show and other amenities and the player agreed to buy a given dollar amount of chips.
This led to a great deal of competition among land-based casinos. The casinos grew to the extent that they could hold conventions and conferences there. The cities and regional areas also built large convention centers and many organizations arranged yearly or semi-yearly conventions at these three gambling areas.
How Did Native American Tribes Get Involved?
When the Europeans expanded into the North American continent, especially the British, they defeated Native American tribes in many small skirmishes that taken together were the battlefields of the protracted war with the Indians. After defeating the Native Americans, the government of the United States enacted treaties with the various tribes. The treaties awarded the Native Americans land where they would have wide autonomy to live as they wished and to do as they pleased.
In the latter part of the last century a few Native American tribes sought to establish casinos on their lands and eventually they succeeded in court and established many casinos on their lands.
The first big challenge that the smaller more local casinos on Native American lands posed was the reality that players no longer had to travel long distances to get to a casino. In many areas, a casino was no more than a few hours’ drive at most!
The Revolution would Continue Online
At this time, online casinos were still a fantasy and a dream since the technology was not yet in place for online casinos. The first online casino opened in 1994 which may seem like a long time ago to Generation Z but was just a few years ago to older gamers!
As advanced as online technology is today, we have to acknowledge that in 1994 and for some years after that, online casino technology was poor at best. Many players, especially those players who had entered adulthood by going to a land-based casino area, stayed loyal to the brick-and-mortar casino.
Brick and mortar casinos did offer a lot more excitement than online casinos did! Of that, there is no doubt. But what about today?
The Challenge of Online Casinos
The first big challenge that online casinos posed was thus not technology but the revolutionary notion that gamers didn’t have to travel to land-based casinos at all. This simple change had an enormous impact on the entire concept of casino gambling.
While Las Vegas sought to use the term “gaming” instead of gambling, it was the ready availability of online casinos that made the idea of gaming more popular and more reasonable.
Online gamers realized that they could play every day for a few minutes or as long as they wished or as often as they wished. This contrasted dramatically with the land-based reality that had gamblers come perhaps twice a year.
Online casinos proliferated but there was one technological development yet to come and one drawback of online casinos that has now been resolved.
The Need to Download the Casino
In the early days of online casino gaming, players had to download the casino to their desktop computer’s hard drive. This often made the hard drive obsolete and forced players to either upgrade their computer or forego playing at an online casino.
In just the last two decades, Instant Play has arrived where gamers play directly on their internet server. This has had an amazing effect. Gamers can play at many online casinos rather than at the one downloaded casino gamers played at before Instant Play came around.
This enables gamers to play games from many different game providers! This has added a massive amount of simple gaming enjoyment to the online gaming experience of many players.
The Technology that Revolutionized the Online Casino Revolution
This was mobile gaming, of course! Mobile gaming has been around for a while but the technology was just not very good. Today’s tech is light years better than the tech for mobile gaming that was obtained about twenty years ago!
Today, most online casino gaming takes place on a mobile device! This has had the one effect of allowing gamers to play while relaxing on the sofa or in bed! Mobile has made online gaming accessible to couples in a way that land-based casinos could never do!
Mobile has become so popular as a way to play casino games that some land-based casinos now offer an in-house mobile gaming platform! We find this an amazing acknowledgment by land-based casinos that their product, once the royalty of casino gaming, is becoming obsolete in real-time!
The Corona Virus Showed Just How Obsolete Land-based Casinos Are
Keep in mind that we here at Slots Play Casinos also support land-based casino gaming but our main focus is on the online gaming market. So, when we say that land-based casinos are becoming obsolete, we are not entirely at one with that idea.
Land-based casinos do offer excitement that online casinos cannot touch. But the pandemic showed gamers that online gaming was a fine alternative to the excitement of a land-based casino. The brick and mortar casinos closed during the corona virus crisis and many thousands, or perhaps millions, of gamers suddenly came to online casinos!
Many new online casino gamers found that they could play for a lot less time than they were used to playing for at land-based casinos. They also came to see that online casino gaming put the fun directly in the gaming experience whereas at land-based casinos the fun was in the atmosphere rather than in the gaming itself!
We could probably write a book about the historical changes that have taken place in casino gaming in the last hundred years! Suffice it to say that Slots Play Casinos is a casino watchdog that strives to bring you the most up-to-date information about all areas of casino gaming.
The bottom line for us then is: COME TO SLOTS PLAY CASINOS OFTEN!
