Over the past thirty years, iGaming has steadily grown to become one of the internet’s foremost digital entertainment industries. They achieved this by bringing classic casino experiences online, where a wider audience of homebound hopefuls could try their luck. These games varied from themed slots to more competitive games, like poker.
These online casino games have taken two distinct forms – virtual simulations that use random number generation (RNG) and table games that get live-streamed over the internet. Below, you’ll find the pros and cons of those virtual casino games.
What Are Virtual Casino Games
Virtual casino games rely on digital assets to simulate the game’s action. No physical location, table, reels, or other real-world components exist. Instead, they function as software that accurately recreates gameplay. They use RNG to remain unpredictable to human players.
Pro: There’s a Larger Selection of Digital Casino Games
You will always find a more extensive virtual casino game than live-streamed table games. This is because streaming a table 24/7 takes a lot more resources. Virtual games also span more than table games – they include slots and other cabinet games.
Online slots have become very popular because they play with different themes and settings you rarely see. While themed casino cabinets have been around for a while, online slots have made finding fantasy, horror, and sci-fi variants much easier.
Video poker is another cabinet game that has made it to the internet. Like solitaire, it uses a digitally simulated deck of cards. These games often have many different variants and rulesets, depending on who or where the game was played. The internet has made it easy to archive and display each of them, so players usually have a selection when playing video poker online.
The most common ways to play video poker are:
- Jacks or Better, where any hand higher than a pair of jacks can pay out.
- Deuces Wild, where deuces can substitute for any other card.
- Joker Poker, where the wild is the Joker card instead.
- Bonus Poker, where kicker cards come with extra payouts for four-of-a-kind hands.
- Aces and Faces, where four-of-a-kind hands pay out more if they involve ace/face cards.
It’s much easier to host different game versions online instead of organizing a streamed experience for each one. This also applies to playing cards, which have many regional variations due to their long history linked to tarot and travelling games that spread far across Europe and beyond.
Pro: Digital Games Can Be More Accommodating
Along with variety, digital games can also be more accommodating to individual players. With streamed games, the idea is that thousands of unconnected players can use the same table without needing to be there. However, they’re still bound by a schedule, so they can be rushed during the betting round or bored from waiting for others to do the same.
This isn’t a factor with digital games. They aren’t just single-player games – they’re loaded on your browser window or played through a downloadable service, so you remain in complete control of the action. This means you won’t progress until you press the spin or deal button, depending on the game. You can take all the time you need or storm through each round as fast as you like without ever needing to worry about anyone else.
Con: Immersion and Graphics Vary With Each Game
With so much variety, the main downside to virtual games is that each one is built to different standards. For example, you could play two very similar roulette games and find that one looks better and is much more immersive. We prefer good-looking graphics, so developers try to give players an aesthetically pleasing experience.
Unlike streamed table games, the average virtual game is less immersive and fails to offer the traditional, sociable casino experience. This is because a real human dealer hosts those games, and while you may not be in the same room, they can communicate with the audience through the camera and other chat functions. You don’t get this level of interactivity with virtual games – you play them yourself.
In virtual games, graphical inconsistency happens because a different team makes each. Some have more experience and a bigger budget, so the result naturally looks better than those who worked on a shoestring budget. Games that didn’t have that luxury tend to have poorer graphics and lack animations for small, subtle details that are missed when they are gone. For example – reshuffling a deck in a card game. It’s more exciting and immersive to see the cards shuffle instead of instantly pressing a button and auto-shuffling them.
The internet is also filled with older games, so sometimes a game with ‘bad graphics’ had cutting-edge graphics when it was first released! Some of those legacy games still have an audience because of their nostalgic appeal or their barebones simplicity. Meanwhile, newer games generally have better graphics, and some even explore newer ways of playing online, like virtual reality technology.
Those are the main pros and cons you should expect when playing virtual casino games online. They can give you an unparalleled selection of games, including game modes and regional variations that were once obscure before the internet highlighted them. They also let you play at your own pace. But, if immersion and graphics are essential to you, you’ll need to find the most visually impressive games. As technology like edge computing improves, we can expect online casino games to look even better and become easier to run.
Conclusion
Virtual casino games offer unparalleled variety, flexibility, and accessibility compared to live-streamed table games. They provide players with a vast selection of game modes and regional variations while allowing them to play at their own pace. However, they may fall short regarding immersion, graphics, and social interaction.
As technology advances with edge computing, virtual reality, and enhanced graphics capabilities, we can expect virtual casino games to become even more immersive and visually impressive. Players must weigh the pros and cons to find the experience that best suits their preferences, whether it’s the convenience of virtual games or the authenticity of live-streamed table games.