The future of igaming: industry tech trends to keep an eye on

The world has evolved at an extraordinary pace – placing digital platforms at the heart of consumers’ habits. The tech world has never been more advanced – from cloud computing, Xaas to AI and the creation of virtual currencies and digital ledgers.

With these cutting-edge innovations adopted by many industries, there is a sense of urgency for igaming to catch up. From the lack of user journey tracking to basic entertainment experience recommendation systems (such as what Netflix or Amazon Prime have been doing for a few years now), and AI analysis systems on customer behaviour still in their infancy, there is a great deal for igaming to focus on and invest in to deliver truly immersive experiences that the new generation of digital players are demanding.

Igaming is heavily regulated but it is also an industry that is slow moving compared to emerging technologies that have, so far, been out of this regulatory scope. We also have to remember that today’s players are younger, well-educated, often affluent and digitally savvy with profiles that match that of early cryptocurrency adopters.

Therefore, they often also have higher expectations in terms of speed to-market and innovation and, as a result, igaming must learn to adopt fresher technologies faster and more effectively.

Changing behaviours

It is understood that player behaviour has dramatically shifted in the past year due to the ongoing global pandemic, highlighting just how important technology and digital access will be from now on.

One scenario would be to feed billions of data points into models that continually learn and adapt. This would allow game providers such as iSoftBet to predict future behaviours and enable their platform to evolve and deliver the best service possible to global networks.

Potential use cases would include enabling the gaming industry to build recommendation engines in a similar way to Amazon and Netflix, which is already taking place; predicting customer lifetime values to measure the return on investment of engagement campaigns; deploying attribution models to understand and further refine marketing efficiencies; or even improving CRM and player-related activities by predicting churn levels to enable companies to optimise returns.

Machine learning might

Large grocery stores have developed ‘Digital Twins’ – highly sophisticated and heavily automated data warehouses that enable machine learning models to explore and optimise digital worlds to find solutions and test systems that are beyond human scale. In igaming, for example, this could mean stress testing systems by subjecting them to maximum capacity player volumes or adding ‘exceptions’ such as a series of large jackpots being won simultaneously to name a few settings.

With enough data points, it is possible to create a Digital Twin that stress tests different Return to Player (RTP) percentages, introduces new gamification ideas, and understands how that affects gameplay and people’s attention spans. Any number of different approaches can be optimised to deliver immersive gaming experiences.

Additionally, with machine learning it will be possible to monitor seasonality with a real-time understanding of specific times of the year, times of day, and applying weather conditions anywhere in the world to create degrees of prediction that drive different gamification scenarios for segmented players, for example, all within a hyper-automated environment.

Blockchain future

One cannot ignore blockchain as this is one of many technologies that will increasingly become accepted into mainstream society. It has traditionally been used as a payment method, however its potential within digital contracts is arguably more exciting.

In ethereum, for example, one can define a macro within a blockchain which means that if an event has taken place it can be proven using a digital record.

Another area to consider and keep an eye on are non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a new but related phenomenon within the blockchain. NFTs are noninterchangeable units of data or digital files such as art, audio, videos, items in video games and other forms of creative work within a digital ledger that represent a unique digital item.

Igaming experiences have a key role to play in the entertainment industry – and its tech and digitalisation cannot be the limitations to its wider adoption. New technologies and platform evolution need to be seriously ingrained within software companies’ long-term strategies.

To read the full iSoftBet white paper, Seven Years in the Making, please click here.