From Humble Beginnings
The online gaming industry has made tremendous strides in the past thirty years.
Taking the one-armed bandits out of Las Vegas gaming halls and into the digital domain, the first online slots appeared in the mid 1990s in their most rudimentary form. The advent of the internet allowed gamblers to try out their favourite fruit machines in a totally new and exciting realm - online.
At the outset, most new video slots mimicked their land-based counterparts, housing the same number of rows and paylines and with very few marked differences aside from how and where they were played. Coinciding with the migration online, table classics like Blackjack and Roulette also started appearing in digital form but which nowadays have been taken to a totally different dimension.
This shift opened up countless possibilities for the earliest game providers, able to lure in swathes of new audiences while scooping up those frequenting said establishments of Las Vegas.
Before long, developers began incorporating the very earliest bonus features, before the game category saw a rapid expansion aided by even further technological advances.
Live Casino's Early Days
These factors helped spawn a whole new category of casino games: Live Casino. For the first time, players at home were able to play live-streamed versions of the most popular table games from the comfort of home, in digital form. It made for a next-level, altogether more authentic online casino experience.
The games blurred the boundaries of reality and perception, allowing punters to place bets on their favourite games, dealt by a human dealer made from flesh and blood. The benefits appeared almost endless. Gone were the days of showering, dressing oneself and travelling to a brick and mortar venue, while Live Casino also took pushy waiters and unwelcome background noise out of the equation.
At the beginning, it wasn't possible to find more than one open table on most occasions, and pretty much every seat was taken in no time at all - amounting the gambling experience to nothing more than a waiting game.
That's if games could load at all, without suffering from poor internet connections at the mercy of service providers, shoddy streaming quality and the like. Fast forward several years, and the category landscape is almost unrecognisable from its infant days.
Pioneering content providers like Evolution Gaming work with online casino operators to bring table games to mass audiences live streamed from a replicated casino setting, in a purpose-built land-based studio. These studios typically have several open tables at any one time - and the integration with digital interfaces means 'tables' never fill; you're able to place bets any time you like.
While the usual casino staples are all readily available in digital form, nowadays you can also try your hand at something different, with an extensive line-up of game offerings that includes the likes of Baccarat and Ultimate Texas Hold'em. For the time-poor amongst you, you can also enjoy turbocharged variants of table games, like Speed Roulette and Lightning Baccarat.
And there are further benefits brought about by the new breed of Live Casino outfits. Fancy chatting to your dealer? Go ahead. Dealt you a good hand? Throw them a tip! Itching for a 4am game in your PJs? That's not a problem either, with games available 24/7.
Charting Evolution's Evolution
Evolution didn't stop at Live Casino table games. Leveraging start of the art technology, the provider have shook up the online casino landscape in recent years with ground-breaking creations that push the Live Casino envelope to the limit.
Built around Evolution's supersized 'Dream Catcher' wheel, they brought a whole new dimension to the category with their 2019 titular release that combined live wheel play with immersive digital gaming.
With Dream Catcher, Evolution took "...all that’s best in the Money Wheel format and created a unique online live dealer variant." The result is something truly revolutionary; something that made the entire casino world sit up and take notice.
Building on this success, Evolution then took the concept to another wildly popular release barely months later. Blending an iconic board game classic with modern gaming, Monopoly LIVE was further proof of Evolution's superiority in the Live Casino space, and served to establish the outfit as a powerhouse to be reckoned with right across the industry.
More latterly, Crazy Time incorporates four exciting bonus rounds that provide players more of what they love as Evolution continue to redefine Live Casino and bring pioneering products to a whole new audience.
Interested? Have a scan of our broad selection of Live Casino games today to find one you fancy!