Nothing in our world exists in isolation. Everything we do and see is influenced by a million different and diverse factors, and technology is no exception to this rule. Developing apace, it not only draws inspiration from the responses and feedback of the businesses and industries who use it but also sometimes from those industries themselves.
The gaming and gambling sectors are a perfect example of this. Typically at the forefront of developing technologies, the brilliant minds behind them have frequently been one step ahead of the rest of the techie world. That said, here are just a few of the tricks they’ve taught us.
Free stuff sells
The gambling industry is one built upon inducing people to take a risk and one of the best ways to do this is by making a product so appealing that it becomes an easy sell. What better method of achieving this aim than by offering said product for free (a trick that 80 percent of the gaming sector capitalizes on)? Gambling was one of the first online industries to rely on revenue earned through advertising – as opposed to product sales – and companies have gone as far as to offer not just free play, but free money and hugely attractive bonuses too, as demonstrated by this Canadian website, for example. It’s a trick adopted and assimilated into the marketing tactics of numerous apps developers in recent years, each inspired by the original progenitors of the idea: the casino sector.
It pays to monetize your tech
As we touched on above, many gaming enterprises focus on making their money through advertising as opposed to product sales, but this doesn’t mean they neglect the latter. Although many will offer their primary product for free, they still have ways of monetizing their tech, with various incentives and add-ons usually available for purchase. This same technique has been adopted many times over by generic apps developers emulating the tactic and can be seen, for example, in picture editing apps that offer a set number of basic filters and features, but charge an in-app fee for more advanced options.
All technology should be made mobile compatible
The gambling sector was also one of the very early pioneers of mobile compatible technology. Quickly realizing that a product would always be more popular if people had the option to use it on the go, they made sure that whatever offerings were available to those on laptops or tablets could be accessed by those using smartphones as well. The rest of the tech world quickly cottoned on, so that today, almost every company with an internet presence offers mobile-optimized content too.
Never limit yourself to a single platform
Last but not least, the world of gaming was quick to teach the rest of the technology industry that limiting oneself to a single platform was no good for business. While early software developers ummed and ahhed over whether to develop their products for Apple, Android, Google or Microsoft, gamers made it very obvious that they wanted to be able to play anywhere and from any device. The response of the gaming sector to this consumer appetite soon inspired others to follow in their footsteps, bringing us to our current, highly enlightened state of affairs.
