Recently, Facebook launched its first-ever real-money online gambling game. While it is only an online bingo game, it has opened the floodgates – and brought to light the trend of social gambling. It is a new craze in the online gaming world, and since Facebook is now involved, we don’t think it will be disappearing anytime soon.
Social gaming – before casino operators got involved – referred to online games that require players to interact with friends to make progress and experience success. If you remember Farmville, you had to send players items so that their digital livestock and crops could thrive.
A number of games were released on this premise, and you’ll likely remember due to the sheer number of notifications you received about ‘lost cows’ and requests for garden tools. Soon, casino games got involved in the scene and the first social gambling game was Zynga Poker.
While the game differed greatly from titles like Farmville, the same concept applied. Players could purchase digital gifts for other players, invite their friends to join them in games and share their progress on their Facebook walls.
It was a revolutionary concept, merging social games and the gambling market – and it saw huge success.
The draw to social gambling on sites like Facebook is that you are already regular user of the social network. This is a great advantage over other gaming sites, where additional logins are required. For many users, games are simply a bonus or a way to pass the time; over time, they develop into hobbies.
So, the audience is already there – and the marketing does itself, as players invite their own friends to join. Today, there are a number of social casinos out there. Most of them are free, such as Lucky Slots or Double Down Casino.
They don’t require players to spend any money in order to play, but they have paved the way for real-money Facebook games like Bingo Friendzy – and this market is likely to expand into something very large very quickly.
Companies that deal exclusively in real-money gambling have caught wind of the trend, and are even getting involved. For example, IGT has recently acquired Double Down Interactive and now runs the company’s popular Facebook casino.
While this may present some concerns, parents will be happy to know that there are a number of safeguards in place to prevent underage gambling.
First of all, players must adhere to strict identification procedures in order to prove that they are of the legal gambling age.
Additionally, all content is blocked from players that are not of age or in jurisdictions where real-money Facebook games are not permitted.
These sophisticated systems aim to make the social gambling market safe and encourage responsibility among players.
