Over the last decades, gaming and online gambling have both been completely transformed as new technology have emerged, as graphic and connectivity which has drastically improved. As a result of the improved technology, hardware and games have become more complex than ever before, attracting millions of people around the world which can play together and sometimes even with difference devices. But what are the differences on gaming and playing slot games at online casinos? In this article, Editor-in chief Johan Löfgren and the team behind Casivo, which lists the top online casinos in Canada, have based their research on years of experience within both fields.
The difference between Gaming and Gambling
Despite being similar in character, gaming and gambling are quite different. The main difference between the terms is that the outcome of gaming is achieved by skill, where gambling is a chance of luck. Many of the video games today include gambling features such as loot boxes and in-game lotteries, as well as pure playable casinos with fictional money within the video games, like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto being some of them. This raises the question: Is the correlation and similarities between gaming and gambling problematic?
Is the relationship between gaming and gambling problematic?
The National Library of Medicine made a research based on a study of a cross-sectional sample of 4000 Canadian online panelists, who regularly played video games or gambled. The study shows that most gamblers (78% of the panelists) also played video games in the past year (70%). There were however weak frequencies of involvement in gambling in opposed to the frequency of video gaming. The evidence shows that even if the similarities in the involvement of each genre, problem gamblers or video gamers did not correlate enough with each other, suggesting that involvement in either of them isn’t a strong predictor of involvement in the other.
Video games turned into casino games
Some of the most classic video games today can be seen turned into a slot game. Slot provider Microgaming is famous in Canada for their online casino presence and have made a classic slot of Lara Crofts Tomb Raider. Another one being created by PartyGaming, which features a Call of Duty Modern Warfare slot. Today there are plenty of slot creators turning all sort of genres into slots, like modern pop artists like Michael Jackson have their own slot, with classic video games and adventure games to name a few. The popularity is increasing every year and the team at Casivo believes that it will still be a popular genre, connecting the gaming world with the gambling world.
Top 4 video game slots
- Hitman by Microgaming
- Tomb Raider by Microgaming
- Street Fighter by NetEnt
- Call of Duty by PartyGaming