Developers must recreate the physical casino experience in the comfort of players’ homes to immerse a new generation in iGaming, according to Yaroslav Soloshenko, Senior Business Development Manager at ELA Games.
Soloshenko offered these insights during the recent SBC Digital Casino Day, as panellists examined the future roadmap of live casino evolution for the next generation of players.
The panel, titled ‘Boosting the appeal of live casino to next-gen players’, also featured Silvia Tavella, Global SEO Onsite Lead at Betsson Group, and was moderated by SBC’s Craig Davies.
When Davies asked if live casino had failed to implement the type of interaction and immersion that players crave, Soloshenko responded that engagement and entertainment should be an integral part of any live casino experience.
Soloshenko stated: “The entire point of live casino is to deliver a level of immersion and interaction. The player can chat with dealers, build relationships with other players and feel like they’re actually in a land-based casino.
“However, like all innovation, players have grown used to the novelty of the live casino and now gamification features that encourage interaction with games in special ways to unlock achievements, gain rewards and foster community, help to boost acquisition, retention and engagement metrics.
“Gamification is a very important thing, because as we see players get used to a typical live casino, the next big move will be implementing gamification to live casino games as much as possible in terms of keeping players engaged and entertained.”
Another topic discussed during the panel session was key technology advancements that can help grow live casino platforms.
Both Tavella and Soloshenko were in agreement that anything linked to an operator’s offerings, whether it be websites or the games themselves, must be fast to meet the demands of the new generation of players.
Particularly, Tavella highlighted how utilising technology and SEO to make sure webpages run smoothly for mobile, in addition to helping to provide a good user experience for an operator’s players, is crucial.
Tavella said: “It has been crucial, but now more than ever. Why? To keep it in a nutshell, tech can be useful for a website in order to be crawlable first of all, which is quite obvious, but it might happen that Google and other search engines are not able to crawl the game pages properly.
“On top of that, the tech SEO also is helpful in order to improve the user experience overall of the website because if a website, or also some specific pages where live casino games are hosted, are not passing forward vitals which are metrics for understanding and managing the real world user experience of the website, it might be an issue.”
Tavella noted that this can impact all player generations, while also spotlighting the SEO importance of “sticking to the basics” for all operators.
“Even from a content point of view, we are keeping on evolving, keeping on adapting, keeping on looking at new SOPs [standard operating procedures] and adapting our content strategy accordingly,” added Tavella.
“From a tech point of view, we are seeking to make sure that those websites are strong enough to survive the new generations. That said, websites must be fast loading, especially from a mobile point of view, and SEO has a lot to do with that.”
According to Soloshenko, operators need to shift away from classic live casino solutions and towards faster titles that incorporate gamification features when focusing on games for Gen-Z.
“There should be a shift from the classic solution that we currently have in lobbies… the younger generation is looking for fast games,” said Soloshenko.
“The games should be faster with gamification features because all the games currently built specifically for that generation include different sorts of gamification tools, for example, earning some points to buy a new character or a skin for your character. All of this combined, I believe this will bring a new audience to live casino.”
Other topics covered during the panel at the SBC Digital – Casino event include player engagement strategies, inspiration that can be taken from other products and industries, the role of artificial intelligence, future live casino developments and more.
