Casinos and Gaming: Reinventing the Wheel in a Good Way
By Space Coast Daily // February 19, 2020
Existing within the digital space means accepting the responsibility of change. As the digital world is one so constantly in flux, those who remain stagnant will be doomed to fall behind, and this can happen far faster than many businesses would like.
Knowing this, we want to look at the example of bingo games and the classic video game Doom, which, despite their age, have somehow managed to avoid this stagnation. What have these done to avoid the cycle of obsolescence, and what challenges have they overcome?
Making a Mark with Bingo
As a casino or simple social game, bingo has been enjoyed for generations. The downside of this longevity comes from the associations it gained in public consciousness.
People grew up with it, as did their parents and even grandparents, so for some, it carries the unfair cliché of outdatedness. However, the simplicity, fun, and social aspects of the game leave it in the public sphere, with a few changes.
In the digital realm, these changes have taken the form of new themes and increased convenience. These are cornerstones of the online casino industry, and as the games at Paddy Power Bingo have shown, they are perfectly formed for this arm of casino entertainment.
By licensing IP’s like Deal or No Deal, and creating new games based around a whole range of ideas, combined with the instant play of digital systems, these offer what traditional systems fundamentally cannot.
Taking Aim at Doom
Doom might seem an odd topic, but with a new game coming out soon it raises some similar questions to bingo. Doom was one of the first shooter games from a first-person perspective, and while this has made it a classic, it also means that many of its ideas are ones the industry as a whole has moved past.
Again, like bingo, this has necessitated evolution while still maintaining the legacy which made it one of the most influential games of all time. Perhaps the most obvious way this is visible is through the creation of what is called push-forward combat.
Arriving in 1993, Doom was an incredibly fast-paced game that emphasized speed, mobility, and aggression. Over time, this aggressive aspect of play was abandoned in games, in no small part due to what is termed regenerating health.
In simple terms, the original Doom games had players pick up health from kits on the ground.
This idea became outdated, as people disliked hunting levels for these pickups, with regenerating health making hiding and waiting the eventual default way to regain player health.
Hiding and waiting ran contrary to Doom’s philosophy, and since older health packs were too outdated, the new Doom instead created the idea of glory-kills.
In this way monsters of low health could be quickly killed in close-range, giving players a boost of health. A small aspect, but one which revolutionized modern shooter design, combining classic appeal with new sensibilities.
Taking Advantage
There is no one simple fix for updating an older property into the modern mainstream, as bingo and Doom have so clearly shown. Instead, successful adaption means looking at the core components, and taking what new opportunities are offered by new infrastructure’s improving technology.
For bingo, this meant more convenience and themes, for Doom this meant reinventing basic gameplay. However we consume digital entertainment, it’s easy to take these things for granted, but we shouldn’t.
Since we’re so engaged in the digital entertainment world it can be difficult to appreciate just how rapidly everything changes, even if base systems within this entertainment realm remain remarkably consistent.
Sometimes it can be best to step back and smell the digital roses, to gain perspective, and to not take this new world for granted.
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