Hey, all! I’m going to take a brief break from reviewing books to talk about a little topic that I’ve been thinking about lately. As some of you might know, E3 – the biggest expo in gaming – happened once again just now, for the 21st year in a row. For those of you who don’t know, the biggest announcements in gaming are typically made at expos, such as Tokyo Game Show, PAX or, of course, E3, which features press conferences from pretty much every major player in gaming. We’re talking Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft, even a specialized PC gaming show! Now, I’m not the biggest gamer in the world, but I always enjoy watching these press conferences live (even if my connection, while upgraded since my first post on this blog, still leaves a lot to be desired). There’s just something awfully intriguing about watching all of these promises, all of these potential games and new technologies which are coming in the near future from the biggest names in gaming. Suffice to say, the hype is real!
But the truth is, I’m a bigger iGaming player than I am a gaming player. I’ve played more slots than videogames in the last year… And keep in mind, I’m not even the biggest gambler you’ll ever meet! So that got me thinking – why don’t we have an event like E3, but for iGaming? Now, don’t get me wrong, iGaming has TONS of conventions and shows, like, a whole bunch, all over the world. A simple Google search can tell you that much. But pretty much all of them are aimed at businesses. When you watch E3, you watch it to see all of the new and exciting games that are coming out soon. When you go to, say, the London Affiliate Conference, you go to make connections and push your business. It’s not the same thing at all.
What I would LOVE to see is a press conference where top developers from NetEnt, Microgaming, Playtech and more step on stage, show off their new slots, brag about their new licensing deals and tell us why we, the players, should be trying out their new slots. I want to be invested in the showbiz, I want to get hyped for all the new games coming out, and I want to learn about, say, a “Wonder Woman” slot coming out from a big press conference rather than from a news site, or by randomly stumbling upon it. And it’s not like the audience for online casino is small, there’s tons of people who care about it and follow the news, and I’m sure they’d be highly interested in watching such an event! Even if it wasn’t a press conference, but just a pre-recorded video (the way Nintendo is doing at E3), it’d still be phenomenal! Make it happen, iGaming! I’m counting on ya!