Did you know that online casino gaming and online gambling have developed into a gigantic global industry in the 21st Century? According to Statista reports, the global revenue of the online gambling market in 2017 was recorded to be worth $45.8 billion. However, by 2020 the market size will increase by 13% to reach $59.79 billion compared to 2017. By 2024, analysts predict that the total revenues will expect to make $94.4 billion, specifying that despite its exponential progress over the past four years, there’s still many more evolution on the horizon.
True Blue Casino describes that such industry expansion is led by:
- Massive advancement in technology
- Operating costs and lower transaction than traditional gambling
- Approach to a much generous audience
- Quickly fascinate clients from around the globe
- The probability of providing a more prosperous status of services
Such staggering factors have triggered online casino gaming development and make it quite clear why casino game developers pursue to invest in producing online casino games. As a result of the enlargement of the market, gaming software companies have enhanced more competitive, investing in advanced technology, and placing new trends in an aim to stand out in a growingly saturated marketplace.
The development process of building a successful online casino game is no less complexed or time-consuming compared to developing a website or designing a video game. Moreover, development terms will also vary from game to game. Some of them take just a few months to accomplish while others need years for complicated projects.
Almost every online casino games possess the same development lifecycle. You might be looking for the development of a gambling game, right? This post seeks to provide software developers with help and enhance their development procedures. It will cover:
- Development stages of online casino game
- Tools and methods used to attain superior results at each stage
Development Stages of Online Casino Gaming
Casino game application development proceeds through a sequence of stages. Thus, the whole lifecycle from the planning to release the game includes:
- Conceptualization
- Creating a prototype
- Coding
- Testing
- Finalizing and Releasing the Game
Conceptualization
As with any developing project, the first step in producing a casino game is to generate a significant and unique idea. It requires industry analysis, market research, planning, and in-depth perception of industry trends. Top software development companies use mind maps to form their ideas. The starting point is creating a central concept that is referred to as your topic of interest. Then, adding keywords, images and comments, which help to express the ideas and arrange them properly.
Virtual reality and cryptocurrency have come to casinos over the last years. Such trends will help improve the chatting options in the game and give better bonus systems that may help your product become well-liked among a vast audience.
Tools for gambling Market Research
For more productive market research, apply the following essential tools:
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1. FreeLunch
This tool collects global statistical data, economic, and it’s financial-based on the location. It can also help discover the casino game development cost. This platform could be convenient in the market analysis stage as well.
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2. SurveyMonkey
It helps you recognize market preferences through surveys and design surveys for market research analysis. Moreover, you can use this tool to work with built-in templates. It helps obtain awareness of your product and analyze market segmentation.
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3. Questback
It’s a market research software that helps to collect data from online platforms, social media, analyze gambler’s trends, attitudes, and tracking product adoption. Questback is very applicable even during conceptualization. However, it’s possible to obtain audience feedback during the production phase.
Create a Prototype
After conducting market research to keep up a good idea, the next stage is to create a prototype of an online social game. Software development companies will construct a skeletal structure first to display an idea of how the game will look on paper and build the primary version of the prototype.
The prototype’s objective is to make it quite easy to understand the functional working of the prototype. It can be modified in the early stages if it requires any necessary changes.
Tools for a Gambling Software Prototype
The following tools will help casino game developers during the prototype phase:
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1. InVision
It’s a web-based service for building interactive mockups both for web and mobile projects. It allows adding mobile gestures, Photoshop files, controlling and previewing versions, special animation, commenting, and synchronizing sketches.
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2. Proto.io
Proto.io is another web-based service for creating a prototype of a game interface for both mobile and web projects. The tool targets UX professionals and game designer. The comfort of this tool is that it is accessible to everyone, and it requires no coding.
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3. Unity
It’s a complete tool for designing all kinds of casino games, including social, AR and VR, mobile, and others. Most of the slot game developers and designers use the Unity game engine for attractive UI, game character design, mobile development, 2D, 3D games, and further maintenance.
Coding
Coding is the most crucial and essential phase of slot game development. During the coding stage, the team of casino game developers and programmers, designers, and project manager’s work together to make a playable and well-functioning game. This phase is one the time consuming compared to the other stages described above.
Tools for Online Gambling Software Coding
Generally, game developers use casino game development technologies such as HTML5, Vert.x and JavaScript frameworks which are the following:
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1. Currently, around 70% of online slots games are developed based on HTML5 since 97% of most active devices support this format instead of outdated adobe flash. These language-based games are quicker than instant ones.
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2. Node JS is an open-source, server-side JS, a run time environment that operates on multiple platforms. It’s best for the slot game development, betting software and lottery platform.
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3. Vert.x is very similar to Node JS, and it is a multi-language. Game software development companies can apply it along with Python, Java, JavaScript or Ruby. It uses Hazelcast, which is the most flexible in-memory grid system.
Testing
The final phase before finalizing and releasing the game may be testing to discover whether the software is ready to be launched. The testing phase ensures that the game is finished before production and discovers all inconsistencies.
Tools for Game Testing
The testing stage is quite a time consuming and complicated. It consists of many methods in connection with automation tools. Here are some types of online casino game testing:
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1. Functionality
Functionality testing helps game developers detect the problems with the online poker game, including inaccuracies in the gameplay, bugs, etc. It assures that the game is developed according to specifications, and the game properly works in a minimized mode etc.
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2. Compatibility
This testing ensures that the online gambling games work correctly with its intended hardware, software and graphics configs of devices. It checks whether the mobile game is well supported, and screen size matches each type of device.
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3. Regression
Regression testing is also termed as re-testing. Testers recheck to ensure that the up to date modification to other parts of the game does not affect the rest of functionality. This testing is mostly used in previous stages and they compare the previous and current outcomes of testing.
Finalize: Release of the Game
Eventually, it’s time to release the game after it has gone through all the phases. However, once the game is launched, the lifecycle isn’t completely finished. Most of the online casino game projects require further maintenance, as well as fresh updates and testing. After all, gaming companies have to proceed with analyzing the market and research to perceive better opportunities.