Published on November 23rd, 2020 | by Bibhuranjan

How is Bingo Getting Modernized?

Bingo is perhaps one of the most popular games when it comes to the number of people that actively participate in playing it. What makes it special is that it is one of those more easy going games that can actually be enjoyed by a very wide age group, including even children. Hard to believe that? I guess it would be even harder to believe that you can play online bingo games at your leisure.

Well don’t, because some researchers in MIT have apparently created an AI based bingo game that is aimed at teaching kids about the nuances of this game. Now you might be asking, why is something like this being bought to a juvenile audience? Well the simple fact of the matter is that bingo is an extremely challenging game in its own right. People that play bingo regularly have even shown improved brain function like better memory retention, better logical problem solving and generally improved cognitive abilities. So yes, playing bingo has actual physical benefits.

This neatly brings us onto a few important questions

With the increasing pace of technological advancements across the gaming sectors, what else has affected games like Bingo?

What new innovations empower this game and how will it move forward going into the future?

Can this British past time even game even survive its image of being associated with the elderly?

These are certainly valid questions and worth asking and will be explored as you read.

Bingo and its Image problem

If you ever ask an average person about the game Bingo, chances are that they are going to associate the elderly with it. They won’t be wrong though as this classic game is famous among the elderly age group and can be seen playing inside retirement homes and other traditional bingo outlets. It’s also extremely popular in the US, but probably not to the extent of UK.

This elderly association with the game is in many ways a negative for young people and let’s just say that you won’t be the popular guy suggesting your mates to go play it. But that all might just change soon.

How is Bingo getting a new leash of life with Technology Infusion

As more and more technology is getting pumped into existing gaming technologies, no wonder that the good old Bingo was getting left out. As a matter of fact, the biggest challenge that this game faces is bringing it to a younger audience. Therefore to facilitate that there have been a slew of changes made to this game to get it a wider age group appeal.

The shift to online based game service

Mobile gaming is where the world is at. As of 2020, mobile gaming dominates the market space with a ludicrous 51% market share according to some estimates. So anyone not catching up on this bandwagon is certainly a decade or two away from generating meaningful amounts of revenue.

Source: https://www.dotcominfoway.com/blog/infographic-mobile-game-market-trends-2020/

The first and most notable change that major bingo has gone thorough is going online. Let’s face it, nobody has the time to visit a dedicated bingo center and sit for hours solving bingo. So moving services online not only attracted a lot of new audience, but also made the game portable in a manner of speaking. Online bingo games not only more convenient, but it can also played against live players, making it all the more challenging.

Introduction of Mobile Apps

Since the inception of Bingo into the online gaming market, smartphones have gotten more and more popular with the two dominating market forces – Android and iOS. Both of these platforms have billions of users and therefore billions of lucrative customers. The ease of development into both these platforms meant that online based bingo services can now develop and deploy their own customized app. This not only curates a unique experience to the user, but also makes the game a lot more fun, since apps are more optimized than web pages when it comes to mobile.

Association of meaningful monetary rewards

The online gambling market is huge and since bingo’s online shift, it nearly accounts for 15% of that gambling market as of 2020. Since there is certainly a decent market share, many online Bingo chains have started associating lucrative rewards to player of the game. These include cash rewards, big jackpots, progressive winnings, etc. Therefore due to the inherent low risk and high skill association of this game, it is finding itself a very active set of young audience who are willing to play it online.

Moving Bingo Out of its conventional hangout

Bingo-EDM-NightClub, sounds peculiar?

Well this is exactly what we felt as well when we heard that that UK based Bongo’s Bingo has taken an ancient relic of a game and turned it upside down. It started off in the UK and is now hosted in a number of countries. What it essentially did was take Bingo out of the bingo hall and into a nightclub, where DJ’s would make you rave while at the same time you play simultaneously play bingo for rewards. Sounds fun!

The Eco Friendly aspect

Eco-ISM is a very important thing to consider in today’s world and its suffice to say that traditional bingo is not very environment friendly to begin with. For starters, traditional bingo requires pens, papers and not to mention that there are expenses related to the big bingo hall. Moving bingo online not only cuts down on paper waste but that in turn saves a tree from being cut down somewhere.

More accessible world wide

Bingo used to be a very inaccessible game to a lot of people because:

People didn’t know about it.
Even if they knew about it, bingo communities are hard to come by in most regions.

Now due to it shifting online, people that previously didn’t have access to it or its associated communities can now play it with an audience that reaches worldwide. The only way that someone wouldn’t be able to access it would be due to native Geo-restriction of certain online content or other gambling laws that are native to the country.

Conclusion

If you have managed to read through this whole article, then you might be convinced of one thing by now: Bingo isn’t Boring. This British classic pass time game has evolved to crater to a very wide audience and as technology develops, we might see more iterations of it going forward.

Tags: bingo, modernized

About the Author

Bibhuranjan Editorial Officer, technofaq.org I'm an avid tech enthusiast at heart. I like to mug up on new and exciting developments on science and tech and have a deep love for PC gaming. Other hobbies include writing blog posts, music and DIY projects.