By Mashum Mollah
The technology for iGaming has been moving at a fast rate, and we should expect to see more of that, but also some behind-the-scenes movements, too. Let’s take a look at some trends that have been brewing, and may finally boil over in 2019, along with some others that might just be getting started.
The Year of the Bot:
Bots are nothing new, from the old-school chatbot SmarterChild who would converse with you on AOL Instant Messenger, to pieces of software meant to automate tasks of various complexities. You can think of a bot as a robot, but without a physical form because it exists digitally. Bots can help with all sorts of things, and between chatbots gaining popularity for customer support, and personal assistants like Siri and Alexa, we’re anticipating that 2019 could see bots becoming even more mainstream.
Home automation and smart assistants have already been a part of pop culture and the mainstream world for many years, but it still doesn’t quite feel like it’s hit that fever point, a lot of people are still lukewarm to the idea of inviting one of these bots into their living rooms. Eventually, convenience always seems to win over privacy concerns, so we’re expecting to see a lot more people adopting these devices as their feature lists continue to grow.
There was a time when people were weary to shop online at all, and as time passed they became more comfortable with it. People might be weary of letting bots handle their customer service issues, but if iGaming and other sites can add a level of self-serve, it could make it faster to resolve support issues.
The Year of the Bet:
While machine learning and leaps in AI can help you find what you’re looking for, or get you some advice from a digital assistant, there’s more that can be done with the extra computational power we’re unlocking. One example is for things like odds, and predictions. What if AI could start to more accurately predict the outcomes of sporting events? What if it could factor in things like the mood of the team in the week leading up to the game based on their tweets, media coverage, and other variables like weather, how the team (collectively and individually) has been playing in recent games, and even how players on both teams have compared to one another in recent matchups?
A lot of this is already possible in one degree or another, but as the code improves, we anticipate that it’ll become more accurate as it’s able to take more and more factors into consideration. Of course, you can’t 100% accurately predict the outcome of a sporting event, you never know what’s going to happen, but technology will lead to some interesting new strategies, both on the side of the players and also the odds makers.
Smart Contracts:
Regardless of the ups and downs of the speculated values of cryptocurrencies, there are some very interesting projects that could change the way we do business online. Smart contracts offer countless useful features for just about any industry, and many of those are already being used to some degree or being developed.
One area that stands to benefit a lot from the power of the blockchain is iGaming. For starters, it makes it possible to verify the honesty of a game. There are already sites for betting in crypto, but we could see more mainstream iGaming companies and casino affiliates promoting or using blockchain to verify that their games are fair. This extra level of transparency could be a massive catalyst for whichever brands adopt it the most strongly. In an industry based on trust, the ability to 100% proves fairness is huge.
Right now, players more or less have to take the word of the sites they’re playing on. With the blockchain, there’s no longer a veil of secrecy.
It also helps for things like instantly being able to verify the ID of players to ensure they are who they say they are, and a lot more.
The potential for iGaming with the blockchain could be huge if it becomes widely adopted, however that’s still a big “IF”.
As development continues for exciting new coins, tokens, and uses for them, we’ll be keeping a close eye on what the future golds for iGaming.
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