Lessons for UK Online Casinos from the Mobile Market
Mobile gaming, while initially dismissed as nothing more than a gimmick, has become unbelievably huge. I mean completely gigantic. It has spawned franchises, created corporations, launched movies and theme parks… “Angry Birds”, which started as nothing more than a simple mobile game in which the player launches birds at pigs, is now a global phenomenon with insane brand recognition. “Candy Crush Saga” and “Farmville” have pretty much built up empires for their creators, while games such as “Clash of Clans” and “Game of War” are consistently able to rake in roughly $10m a month! Hell, mobile games in the US alone (meaning from American customers) gross over $3 billion a year! You can easily double or even triple that when you take into account international audiences, especially since some Asian markets rival the US! Online casinos, as successful as they’ve been on a global scale, can’t even come close to that level of appeal! But why? I mean, sure, you could argue that casinos are more niche than mobile videogames, for many reasons, but honestly, the two aren’t exactly mutually exclusive. So let’s take a brief look at some of the things that make mobile gaming so successful and see how we can apply them to online casino!
There are some similarities between the way mobile games and online casinos treat their players, but for the most part, their approaches are hardly identical. Mobile games have hooking players to them down to an art form. Upon opening the game, you often get to start immediately, without requiring a registration or info of any sort. All you need to do is press play, and you’re ready to go! After you get the basics of playing, you get a whole bunch of rewards from the start to incentivize you to play, and many games (such as “Future Fight” or “Sonic Dash”) offer a log-in system that rewards you with items and characters for playing every single day. The message is simple – “Welcome, we’re glad you’re here and would be happy to see you stay!” On the other hand, online casinos send a very different message. The sign-up system is needlessly complex and convoluted, requiring tons of personal information that won’t even be necessary until profits are ready to be paid out! As a matter of fact, a huge percentage of potential players quit during the sign-up process simply because it’s too extensive and boring. And it’s true that practically every single online casino listed at http://www.bestonlinecasinos.org.uk/ gives you a first deposit bonus, most don’t give you anything after that. The message comes across as “Hey, thanks for giving us every single personal detail of your life, let us reward you with some cash. After that’s done, we don’t really need you anymore.” And that’s a very, very wrong message to send to people. Sign-up should be quick and easy (with most details filled out during first withdrawal), and players’ persistence should be incentivized.
So, barring second, third, fourth and so on deposit bonuses, how can we further incentivize players to spend? Once again, the mobile market has an answer for us. Sometimes, mobile games will run time-limited events that allow you to unlock characters that would either be unavailable later or would need to be purchased, or provide you with some other bonus. Once these events are gone they’re gone, so players need to act quickly in order to take advantage of them. I genuinely fail to see a reason why online gambling can’t have events of its own. Have a Roulette Day, in which all variations of roulette except for live roulette (that one’s a bit more complicated) pay out 2.5 times your bet upon win and return half of your bet upon loss. Announce that this is a one-time event, and that the next one of its kind for roulette won’t start for at least a year, and watch these roulette profits shoot through the roof. Want to promote a new slot, or direct more players to your mobile casino? Same principles apply. Time limited events have been proven moneymakers, to the point where some mobile games basically exist entirely off of them!
The thing is, most online casinos really wouldn’t have to change much in order to reap in the additional profits that these additions will bring them. With that in mind, we can’t really do much other than sit around and wait to see if any of the online casinos we love will ever break the status quo and evolve with the times. One can only hope.
If you are interested in online casino gaming, you have undoubtedly heard of Playtech. They are the hands-down most popular developer of casino games, and their software can be found at a huge number of reputable operators. Playtech was founded in 1999 in Estonia, and today they have over 3000 employees all around the world. Their catalogue contains more than 500 outstanding games – from slots and roulette, to blackjack, baccarat, poker, and more. They even develop and maintain live dealer casino games! Playtech have received many awards, and are among the pioneers of mobile casino gaming.
A multiple award-winning developer, NetEnt are renowned among players for creating casino games of the highest visual and gameplay quality. They are also among the leading innovators in the industry, having created many games that utilise unique gameplay, features, and rules. Compared to what other developers offer, NetEnt’s catalogue is relatively small. However, the quality they provide more than makes up for the lack of quantity. This company sells single games, rather than entire platforms – which means that you can find their software at many UK online casinos. Found in 1996, the company has enjoyed great success and employs more than 500 people across the world. 
Behaviour-driven development (or BDD for short) emerged from the process known as test-driven development (TDD). The concept behind BDD is to provide development and management teams with a shared process and shared tools, so that they can effectively collaborate while developing software. To this end, it combines the basic principles of TDD with object-oriented analysis and domain-driven design, to make the process of creating software as optimized and effective as possible. 
As we already mentioned, BDD is a branch of the test-driven development method, which also uses domain-specific language to convert natural language phrases and statements into executable tests. We are talking about sentences that start with a conditional word (should, given, when, if, etc.) and define an outcome. For example: 
Welcome to Behaviour-Driven.org – a website dedicated to the software engineering process known as ‘behaviour-driven development’, and how it is utilised at modern online gambling platforms. Casino software has been experiencing rapid development in recent years, and there are even more exciting things coming out way. In this first post, we will tell you a bit about who we are, why we decided to create this website, and what can you expect to find here.