Bye bye mouse
The online bet of the future could be placed by touching the screen or even gesturing in the air, rather than with a mouse, reports Barnaby Page. Plus: fine-tuning Poker, and licensing without headaches
T
ouchscreens are ubiquitous on the casino floor and, increasingly, the mobile phone, but until now they have not played a role in PC-based gambling. That could change next
year with the release of Windows 8, the latest incarnation of Microsoft’s operating system, with built-in support for multitouch. Expect manufacturers to bring out touch-enabled home displays to take advantage of this new capability; it is, after all, the way interfaces are going. Some believe, however, that the way we
interact with our intelligent devices in future may even lie beyond touch, in gesture. Products like the Nintendo Wii and
Microsoft Kinect brought to home gaming a whole-body experience, but because they involved relatively expensive hardware purchases they were never going to become as standard as a mouse and keyboard. But now Endemol Games UK is offering consumers the same thing via Facebook, using technology that requires them to have only a PC and Webcam. Total Wipeout: Big Ball Run employs technology from OmniMotion to engage players in a virtual obstacle course. This is a play-for-fun game, not play-for-
money – users get three free attempts each day, after which they can purchase more tries through Facebook credits. But it’s worth thinking about how these new kinds of interfaces can be deployed in the virtual casino, and how you get there from your present product. Don’t tear up your existing interface just yet, but do contemplate what might be done with a combination of gesture and glasses-free 3D or home holography…
Down the pan? More mundanely but perhaps as importantly,
Windows 8 will also bring about another setback for Adobe’s Flash technology, the basis of much
74 OCTOBER 2011
multimedia and interactivity on the Web. The Microsoft operating system will ship with
two versions of the company’s Internet Explorer browser, and only one of them will support Flash, whose critics argue that other technologies like HTML 5 now achieve the same purposes more effectively. So you can bet it won’t be very long before Flash compatibility disappears from Internet Explorer altogether. The Adobe technology has already suffered a
blow to its credibility from Apple, which declined to build Flash support into its iOS operating system for the iPhone and iPad, although Adobe has recently introduced a workaround for that by releasing a verison of the Flash Media Server which translates content into an iOS-compatible format on the fly.
Licensing for dummies
Licensing characters and themes from other media is a tried and tested way of tempting players to your games, but it’s not easy for smaller developers. Many of the intellectual property (IP) owners are mega-corporations which prefer to deal with their own kind, and use of the IP is commonly governed by so many terms, conditions and stipulations that trying to incorporate it into your games can be frustrating. Now, however, Hamburg startup Iconicfuture
says it can help producers of online games source licensed characters and brands for use in their content. “Our platform allows for game companies to
easily integrate premium virtual items into their games,” said Iconicfuture CEO Ze’ev Rozov. “To date, licensing and managing of premium rights has been a very complicated process, which has made it impossible for most game companies to include premium rights from the world of sport and entertainment into their games.”
A slightly better mousetrap What exactly do online Poker players want
from their game? Microgaming asked them, and has built a raft of user-suggested changes into the latest release of its Poker Network. They include larger cards, a reduction in the size of cash-game tables from ten to nine seats, better configurability of the bet slider, and addition of players’ Multi-Table Tournament schedules to the My Calendar feature. Unibet took some of the features live in August, though the full update won’t roll out to all Microgaming Poker operators until October. What’s interesting here is that regular players – the best kind, of course – evidently do pay close attention to the details of site design and usability. Getting those details right may be a big part of retaining them, as important as the higher-profile lollipops like tournaments and super-jackpots.
A win-win situation Another way to retain players, Playtech
believes, is to let them win on non-winning slot lines. Though that sounds contradictory, it’s achieved by – in effect – giving them a free bet on how long a losing streak will last. Dubbed Mr. Cashback, the new feature pays out whenever a particular payline has not won for 50 spins. The payout is 50 times the bet on that line. The psychology here is neat. Fifty consecutive
non-wins aren’t, of course, going to happen very often, so the overall payout level by the operator shouldn’t be dramatically affected. Yet in the player’s perception, the feature could turn a non-win into “one step closer to a win”, reducing the chance that they’ll give up on the game. If they do win on that payline before the 50 non-wins are achieved, they’re going to be happy – not regretting missing a Mr. Cashback payout.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78