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Beyond the buzz
Social media and cloud computing are two of the hottest tech concepts. But are they useful for online gaming? Barnaby Page reports on some recent launches
Online gaming isn’t just about gambling, and free-to-play products aren’t just about killing time either: for the casinos sector, they can be a valuable way to develop consumers’ familiarity with the idea of an Internet gaming experience, and inevitably some of those customers will eventually graduate to pay-to-play offers.
One company that seems to appreciate this acutely is Spiral Solutions, which as well as providing the systems that drive several French online Poker rooms also sees itself having a broader remit “to promote consumer understanding and appreciation of online games and entertainment in France”. It’s just partnered with social games marketing agency Virtuadz to launch Larueeverslor.fr, a free-to-play portal.
(And yes, we had to pause awhile before we could translate the name, too. Turns out it breaks down as “la ruee vers l’or”, which translates as “the gold rush”.)
The site opens its virtual doors with four Flash games aimed at young adults, and a Facebook link to post scores on users’ profiles. There are prizes for high scorers, too, so though it’s free-to-play it does have real rewards for the consumer – and, Spiral will be hoping, it will eventually push some players toward the French online Poker market too.
Members only
Social media again: should you add a social element to your own Website, or rely on the well-known names? London Clubs International, part of Caesars (previously Harrah’s), uses Facebook and Twitter, but also decided to take the former route by adding a members’ area to its Thecasinolsq.com site.
Developed by social media specialist Digital Visitor, the members’ area allowed Poker enthusiasts to receive timely updates on the World Series of Poker 2010 – and to create individual profiles, providing London Clubs with an invaluable source of customer information.
Hard cash
Paying out prizes has always been a slightly tricky aspect of online gaming to get right. Yes, bank transfers or credits back to payment cards can be quick nowadays, but they still lack the excitement of cashing in at the casino.
Genting Poker, however, has seen an opportunity to link virtual gaming with land-based money. It’s launched what it calls a “cash-in-cash-out” service, allowing Poker players to both deposit cash into their online accounts, and withdraw winnings, at its 46 Circus, Mint, Maxims and Palm Beach casino sites.
Ahead in the cloud
More social media…but US firm GigaSpaces Technologies is going a step better and using not one but two tech buzzwords in the description of its new online casino, Yazino.
For Yazino isn’t only social (encouraging play among friends, for example) but is also based on a system that employs the so-called “cloud computing” model. The cloud is more than an IT term du jour, however: it’s actually a smart idea that can substantially reduce costs and increase flexibility for online operators (and other businesses).
The idea’s quite simple. Instead of running all the systems that power your online gaming service on your own servers – which you have to house, cool, maintain and upgrade at never-ending expense – you run them on a service provider’s computers.
But we’re not talking here about the kind of online gaming service provider that lets you brand its white-label gaming platform with your own identity, and to a large extent restricts your choice of games, interface design and so on. We’re talking about merely about letting someone else do the detailed techie work of keeping the hardware and software running, while you continue to have absolute control over what it delivers. And, even better, because the cloud service provider generally has far, far more computing power at its disposal than your operation will require, you can buy more as soon as you need it on a pay-as-you-use basis.
This scalability is key to online gaming, according to Yazino founder and CEO Hussein Chahine. Because many of Yazino’s computing processes are running on effectively infinite cloud systems rather than being limited to the firm’s own servers, his operation – which has already registered more than half a million players – can theoretically support all of them playing concurrently.
Cloud computing isn’t quite as simple for gaming companies as for many businesses, because regulations may still require that some elements of software are run on your own machines, and there may well be restrictions on transferring data across national borders. (A cloud provider can often be in a different country.)
But if you’d like to know more about this technology in general, and explore the potential it has to support rapid rollout of very large online operations, drop me a line at casinointernational@barnabypage.com and I’ll send you a guide to the business implications of cloud computing that I wrote in early 2010 – letting you cover all the main points in a single read. (And no, I don’t sell clouds, or anything else. This is that rare thing, a free offer with no strings attached.)
