Frederick Jace
The online bingo landscape couldn’t be further from traditional bingo halls if you tried. The once-beloved numbered paper and inked stamp has been replaced with much more vibrant digital graphics online that replicate a retro games machine. While this has transformed the bingo landscape, the aim of the game is still the same – to win a prize. With this transition from traditional bingo to online forms, came the digitization of retro games machines as well as the exploration of new forms of bingo, two things that we will explore below.
Recreating the retro-themed bingo games machine online
Online bingo sits among a plethora of other online games that are often hosted on the same site, like live casino, poker, and slot machines. While falling under the same gaming category – a digitized form of traditional entertainment created with a prize as the end goal – their methods of gameplay are extremely different. Where casino games like roulette and blackjack are played at a table-top with a games host, slot machines are played solo at a retro-looking machine that lights up the room. While their gameplay and goals could be easily distinguished in person, online games producers had their work cut out for them when ensuring they could easily be recognized on a screen.
With a lot of hard work, these distinguishable differences have been established digitally. Whereas live casino replicates the traditional games whereby players will watch a live games host at a tabletop game on screen in order to make their move, online bingo and slot machines utilize color, icons, and sounds to re-create the typical retro games machine online via motion graphics. Via a thoughtful production process, this has meant that players have been able to continue playing their beloved games, even if they aren’t in a land-based casino or arcade.
Exploring new markets with online bingo
While retro bingo has been captured online, other themes have been implemented which have diversified the options available to players. Since the online world is such a large space infiltrated by online games, creating a game that is unique, appealing, and caters to the needs of gamers became an essential aspect of online bingo development. That’s why, even though online bingo was successful in replicating the traditional retro games machine, new markets were tapped into to increase their offering.
Whereas retro bingo machines have tapped into other forms of entertainment for some time (take the Marvel characters as an example), the rise of other digital entertainment forms like television provided a further opportunity for online bingo. The popularity of game show programs like Deal or No Deal, and talent competitions like Britain’s Got Talent inspired online bingo concepts massively and can be found as themed bingo games online.
It’s evident that while traditional bingo isn’t quite the same as online bingo, the traditional concept of retro games machines, widely known as bingo online, has continued to live on digitally via the replication of similar gameplay. In doing this, online bingo has had the capacity to explore newer forms of entertainment, which is exactly why other markets have been explored.
