The Gamble of Augmented Reality Technology: Microgaming to Raise the Stakes

Ever wanted to flip an asteroid to outer space? Or be dealt a lucky hand by a bubbly robot croupier spinning the cosmic wheel to reward your karmic input? What about materializing the dashing Jungle Jim from his screen-plastered 2D version to eye boggling augmented reality?

 

An AR gambling experience is no longer a shot in the dark. On the contrary, Microgaming took all the limelight of VR and AR technology when their CRYO laboratory equipped the users with a Oculus Rift DK2 headset, a Leap Motion 3D Controller, and the best odds 3D can offer at the moment.

Microgaming AR Poker and VR Roulette

The world of gambling has been taken for a merry-go-round ride by Microgaming when the Isle of Man based software development company first brandished its royal flush during the ICE London in 2016- AR poker and VR roulette. 

The games are designed to thrust the user into a make-believe virtual casino populated by fairy-tale characters and space invaders.

Being pioneers in high-tech online gaming, Microgaming imagined a simple and elegant solution to create the prototype of future immersive gambling experiences.

To access a poker game in augmented reality, the player only needs to download an app, then point the smartphone’s camera at the set of aces.

The pride and glory of Microgaming slot characters, like Captain Bronzebeard from the Great Galaxy Grab or the two knights from Avalon II will rise Terminator-wise in your field of vision.

As long as you get over the initial WOWs and LOLs (it’s only human if you get a bit high on the game in the beginning and lose a few hands), you might just make it out of the game with wallet intact and an acute appetite for AR.

Las Vegas Bets on the Zombie Apocalypse

Millennials are the biggest fans of the undead, that’s a given. And the Strip plans to cash in on the next generation’s zombiphilia.

Brick-and-mortar casinos may strive to sew the newest digital wonders into the old fabric of an ancient custom, but unless they can manufacture the sensation of loss of physicality or AR’s anime apparitions to pop up on the green felt table, the gambling dens of yesteryear will host museum-visitors instead of button-pushers.

“This peculiar sandy strip in the middle of the desert- what kind of brainiac chose the location, anyway?- used to be called Las Vegas, kids. It’s where your parents gambled away your college funds!”, future guides will explain.

To be fair, the Strip knows it needs to step up its act. Why else would MGM Resorts unleash a hoarde of ravenous dead upon downtown Las Vegas if not to please the younger thrill-seekers of its audience?

Long gone are the days when the thrill of a high stakes, life-and-death baccarat session between James Bond and Le Chiffre was enough to nail you to your seat.

The post-apocalyptic zombie invasion fiesta- going under the name “Fear the Walking Dead”- aims at a sensory overload of fear, panic, survival madness, and horror Disneyland unfolding from behind the bars of an increasingly delusory world.

AR Gaming and Lotteries Cash in on ICO

ICO (Initial Coin Offering) has been hailed as the next big bet for cryptocurrency investors. And the sectors to first make use of this crowdfunding Holy Grail are the gambling and gaming industries.

Blockchain eGaming platform Wild Crypto takes its product to market through a marketing gimmick that will have many ICO contenders cry “Why didn’t we think of this first?”

Their masterful move is to develop a revolutionary international cryptocurrency-based lottery that will turn the tide in favor of online lottery- as it is, only 4% of the $260 Billion global lottery industry happens online.

By initiating a $5million ICO -alternatively, 15,000 Ether Tokens- Wild Crypto plans to raise the additional funds to put the finishing touches on the future of lottery gambling.

In the casino world of cryptocurrency, bitcoin, ethereum or Wild Crypto tokens will become the virtual counterparts of casino chips.

In the field of augmented reality gaming, Reality Gaming Group also bet on ICO to finance “the world's first augmented reality combat game for iPhone and Android”. It’s called Reality Clash and it will most probably spark a worldwide mania to bury Pokemon Go into the ashes of “so 2016”.

Is There a Downside to Augmented Reality Gambling?

AR technology boasts blending graphics, sounds, and smell into the experience. But it will prove a challenge to sip a complimentary cocktail while wearing an otherwise fashionable Cyclops headset or engage in a tad of cheating to spice up the game. 

An augmented reality world will introduce a highly controlled environment, an overlay of endless digital posibilities- as widening as the imagination allows- on the limitations of the physical territory in which we breath, move, and work.

Products will most likely lose their shape and shift into becoming the interface while our touch-and-feel senses will be somewhere suspended into an alternate, multi-dimensional world.

But are you ready to be part of a Minority Report scenario? In the words of William Gibson: “The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.” 

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