The beauty of iGaming as an industry is the international appeal that can be created around almost any new site.
Source: Pexels
The beauty of iGaming as an industry is the international appeal that can be created around almost any new site. No matter the country that spawns the site, the industry embraces it and trends can help indicate where, internationally, certain offerings might be picked up more than others. While the Western world would appear to digest gaming content unilaterally, certain differences do occur and identifying these differences can help iGaming developers make the best decisions both commercially and for consumer satisfaction.
Figures reveal that the way in which gaming is developing in general is changing across Europe. For example, 66% of developers admitted to working on a mobile offering (up from 39% in previous reports), while 53% were focusing on desktop (up from 40% before). By opening up the mobile/desktop market for gaming, the related iGaming industry becomes a more viable option in the mix, especially with such a marked move away from console-based play. The move seems to be a way to target millennials, who will resonate more with the technological benefits of mobile and desktop gaming, as well as the social opportunities that smartphones allow for. For example, Mr Smith Casino UK has embraced live gaming, which brings online roulette and other games closer to their offline variants by adding a dealer on webcam. With more than 30 rooms dedicated to live gaming, it’s an increasingly central aspect of Mr Smith’s offering.
Reports indicate that, in the UK, iGaming on mobile devices will surpass previous records and acquire over 40% of the total iGaming market by 2018, meaning that the number of people engaged in iGaming will grow by 100 million in the same timeframe. With such a sharp rise expected in the UK alone, developers will begin to look at popular gaming trends from the UK compared to the rest of Europe in order to appeal to their new emerging market. The rise in popularity in the online casino means that developers can begin to focus on popular iGaming facets of games for people in the UK, for example, focusing on video slots that feature content in line with UK based franchises such as Jekyll and Hyde and Sherlock Holmes.
Source: Pexels
iGaming would differ in Germany, for example, as a Flurry study into Android use found that German users enjoyed puzzles. This information could help developers choose more of a skill-based game to bring out in the German segment of the iGaming market. The study also identified word games as a favourite amongst Italians, which could further influence the iGaming offering to feature a classical twist to games that feature more text, as opposed to more video content. Meanwhile, over in Russia classical casual games with a physics element were pipped as a favourite. So developers could focus on roulette ? the spinning wheel is based on a perpetual motion machine after all.
iGaming is definitely one of the fastest growing emerging markets, especially considering the trends of how gamers interact with the offerings available to them. Developers should take the iGaming market as a whole, but keep in mind the differences across Europe and market and appeal to different segments with slightly tweaked offerings, but those general enough to have wider appeal. The strategy would enable iGaming trends across Europe to be further monitored for how effective it is to take the reported trends and turn them into conversions in terms of how many people have actually played the games based on who is expected to play them. The question still stands as to whether European segmentation is a beneficial strategy in iGaming.
