Developers need to bring the atmosphere of a traditional casino into the players’ home environment in order to attract the new generation to the world of iGaming, says Yaroslav Soloshenko, Senior Business Development Manager at ELA Games.

Soloshenko shared his opinion at the recent SBC Digital Casino Day conference, where experts discussed the future development prospects of live casinos for future generations of players.

The panel discussion, titled “Boosting the Appeal of Live Casinos for the Next Generation of Players,” also featured Silvia Tavella, Head of Global SEO at Betsson Group, and was moderated by Craig Davies from SBC.

In response to Davies’ question about whether live casinos have achieved the desired level of interaction and engagement, Soloshenko emphasized that entertainment and engagement elements must be an integral part of any live casino experience.

Soloshenko noted: “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 raised during the panel session was the key technological advancements that contribute to the development of live casino platforms.

Both Tavella and Soloshenko agreed that all elements related to the operator’s offerings—whether websites or games—must work quickly to meet the demands of the new generation of players.

Tavella emphasized that technology and SEO play a key role in ensuring the smooth operation of mobile webpages, which, in turn, helps create a positive user experience for the operator’s players.

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 emphasized that this could impact all player generations, also noting that it is important for operators to adhere to the fundamental principles of SEO.

“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.”

Soloshenko, for his part, believes that operators need to move away from traditional live casino solutions and transition to faster games with gamification features that are targeted at Generation 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 the live casino.”

Additionally, at the SBC Digital – Casino panels, topics such as player engagement strategies, inspiration from other industries, the role of artificial intelligence, the future of live casinos, and much more were discussed.

Source