The Technology that Made Gambling So Big
Gambling was always a profitable thing. People love the thrill of risking your hard earned cash to get some cash by virtue of chance. This is why Vegas is even a thing.
But the world of gambling would not be the way it is now if it wasn’t for technology. Here are 5 pieces of technology that made gambling such a profitable business.
Resistors
Resistors are boring. They’re inside every piece of tech we produce, but no one cares how they work except the select few, the tech geeks.
The people who created the first video slots were definitely tech geeks. They made it possible to create new opportunities for games and make better games en masse.
Before electricity was a thing, all slot machines were powered by gears. You would pull a lever of a one-armed bandit, and the complex machinery would physically spin the wheel to give you a set of symbols.
The problem with it was that the reels had to be actually made in the form of a wheel. It was hard to make a lot of symbols and introduce more than three wheels.
The creation of a video slot changed that. And that was largely due to the invention of resistors and other electronics.
Surveillance cameras
How do you beat a casino? Some say you have to bet in a specific pattern in the game of Roulette. The others are much more blunt about it. Just scam the casino, they say!
There were always people who wanted to profit from a casino by thinking outside of the box. Some created teams of mathematicians who counted cards in order to calculate the odds at blackjack. Others looked for casinos with old roulette tables or slightly steep floors, a feature that made the outcome of the game a bit less random.
These guys were quite successful right until good surveillance cameras came into the game. Now casino owners can single out people who are counting cards or looking around the casino to find its weak spots.
While this is not illegal, no casino welcomes it, and these people will likely be asked to leave. This is how casinos were able to cut down on payout costs.
The Internet
The invention of the Internet changed a lot of things, gambling included. The rise of Internet connectedness and private computer ownership enables millions of people to access interact together in the virtual.
Soon, the gambling companies understood that this interaction can include gambling. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many gambling software manufactures added online games to their list of services.
Now, you can play virtually any slot online (try CasinoHEX’s collection of slots and casino games).
HTML5 & smartphones
Right until recently, you could only play a casino game on your computer. The reason behind this was Adobe Flash.
All the web people used it. Even YouTube started out with Adobe Flash as the software behind running video.
However, there were problems with Flash. One of the main problems was the fact that it’s hard to make it run on mobile.
Since not all casinos had their mobile applications, it was difficult to play from your mobile. The mobile technology wasn’t helping either.
Now that the technology is so good, half of the internet users access it via a phone, it’s possible to make this happen from the hardware side. From the software side, HTML5 is here to help.
With the new standard, you can stream online slots without Flash, and gamble right on the website.
The future of VR
These are the technologies that created the milestones of gambling. The technology that can change it once again is VR.
The full potential of VR is yet to be seen, but it’s already being explored. NetEnt made their hit slot, Gonzo Quest, a VR game, and we’re waiting to see what happens next.
