Funny enough, many innovative technologies start their way in the entertainment industries such as video games or online casino games, and get boosted quickly exactly because these industries can invest in them and expose them to people who are willing to test them.
Other industries often struggle to finance necessary technological innovations or do not get enough feedback from users but not the entertainment niche. People will always find money for entertainment, that is for sure, and are more open to trying out new forms of it.
This is why such niches like video games, mobile gaming apps, and online and land-based casinos often use the most innovative technologies that other services start using later.
However, if you are an actual user of online casinos you should probably learn more about the most recent improvements and innovations
Location and Access: New and Still Problematic
There are two aspects that go hand in hand – access to certain services and access depending on location.
As more and more countries stop turning a blind eye to their online gambling industries and allow operators to leave the gray zone, players in these countries start facing certain access rules. For example, some jurisdictions like most Canadian provinces allow access to all types of games and all types of in-game promotions. Any licensed $10 minimum deposit casino Canada can offer several types of promotions and all are legally available.
Others, like Finland or Sweden, limit access to casino bonuses like welcome bonuses, no deposit bonuses, free spins, or even certain types of games like online slots with buy features. That depends on the legislation and therefore, different mechanisms are activated to prevent players from getting the promotions they are not eligible for. The most widespread method is to prohibit the casino site from providing these bonuses to players from certain regions. Since online casinos get full information about each customer, they can do so.
Access based on location is a little bit more complicated. The newest issue that many players face is when their location is not only indicated in their customer profiles but their actual location is tracked by the casino site. This is done to prevent players who are not eligible from participating in the casino’s promotions or activities.
Currently, the most popular place for using this approach is Canada. Most provinces here allow access to whatever licensed online casinos are out there targeting Canadian players. However, Ontario and Quebec have their own licenses for online casino sites, and platforms licensed by other entities are not allowed to target players in these provinces. The other way around, players from other Canadian provinces are not allowed to play at fully licensed and supervised online casinos that function in Ontario and Quebec.
As a result, local and international websites that target Ontario and Quebec apply geolocation technologies to track and identify the player’s actual location. If the player is within the province’s borders, they can play at online casinos licensed by the province. If not, they are not allowed to access, even if they actually have accounts with these casino sites.
This is an innovation as before, such services were not needed. The problem is that they are still very imperfect. On the one hand, even though most players are happy to play at licensed and safe casinos, they are reluctant to allow these platforms to actually track their location. There is always a risk of data breach or any other type of malfunction and people are concerned for the safety of their data.
On the other hand, online casino’s geolocation services are still not very good, and they can give false signals, especially if the player is located close to the province’s border. As a result, some players complain about being banned from access even if they are actually in the province.
So there are still some problems to solve but this geolocation nuance is likely to stay, and more and more jurisdictions are likely to apply it as their online gambling industries start going out of the shadows. Also, as more and more players prefer to access their favorite gambling platforms via smartphones or use specialized mobile applications for gambling, using geolocation and access limits will become more widespread.
Personalized User Experience
Tracking down customers’ activities and preferences when gambling at online casinos is another aspect that many players do not fully grasp. Many feel uncomfortable or outright suspicious when they get personalized game suggestions or promotional offers from online casinos. The thought of their gambling patterns being tracked and used for promotion is anything but comfortable for the majority of users.
However, the truth is that no person actually tracks players’ activities as this is done by AI technology. The AI tracks the patterns and defines preferred games, and then offers what it believes is the next best match, to the best of its (still limited) abilities. Therefore, this process is automatic and it works pretty much as social media algorithms do.
The point of using these AI preference-tracking technologies is to find out what people really enjoy when gambling, and improve online casino services by offering each customer things they will really use. Instead of hypothetical suggestions based on marketing research that can be biased, dated, or simply irrelevant, each casino operator can use AI to make its product better. While some users tend to freak out about it, the harsh truth is that AI is going to stay and get integrated into everything we do online, so the best option is to learn more about this technology, get used to it, and get the best of it.
