As you know, on this blog my goal is to examine the various means of online communication, and the ways in which people can communicate with each other over the Internet. However, I do believe that it’s equally as important to understand the ways in which they can’t communicate over the Internet, even if logic dictates that they should be able to. What am I droning about? Well, in order to fully understand the points that I’m about to make, I need to give you a wee bit of backstory. First and foremost, you have to know that I LOVE online gambling. Love, love, love it! Not in a “my preeeeecioouuuus!” creepy sort of way, but I’ve been playing semi-regularly for a couple of years now, and it’s been pretty fun! I’ve mostly been playing high stakes blackjack here, because I’m an idiot with too much money to spend (no offense to high rollers – I’m just bad at it), and there’s something odd I couldn’t help but notice in my years online – there’s really very few ways for gamblers to actually communicate.

Now, let me take you, mentally, to a real casino. A physical location that you can enter dressed in a nice, fancy suit, walk up to a bartender, ask for a martini (shaken, not stirred) before sitting down at the blackjack table and nonchalantly throwing your chips down while talking to the cute girl next to you who’s winning a lot more often than she ought to. Okay, sure, that’s a bit more in the realm of fantasy… Let’s keep it a bit more realistic. You and a bunch of your friends decide to have a fun night in a casino, maybe after watching “The Hangover” or something. You go in, have a laugh, maybe eat some pizza or something because that’s just how you roll, and decide to basically hog the roulette table for yourselves because you’re terrible and you love it. On the way, you befriend another group of gamblers who are doing the exact same thing as you, cheering for each other’s wins and consoling each other over the big losses. By the end of the night, all of you have had a wonderful time!

And what did these two examples have in common? That’s right – communication. Casino gaming is inherently a social activity. Most people who prefer to sit by themselves and mindlessly spin their slots over and over again without a word tend to suffer from gambling addiction. The majority of people who visit casino do it for fun, first and foremost. So, if that’s the case, why is communication so ignored when it comes to online casino? Let’s say I decide to go online and play online blackjack – if I do that, there’s absolutely no way for me to communicate with the other gamblers on the site unless I’m playing live casino. I can’t send friend requests to people to see when they’re online. I can’t send them a message to see how they’re doing. Hell, for all intents and purposes, I might as well be the site’s only user… Which kind of sucks. It’s a rather lonely experience which could be fixed so easily with the addition of some basic social features. And yet most online casinos lack them completely. Why is that? I suppose it’s a matter of money. These kinds of features would be expensive to code in and wouldn’t lead to a direct profit, so they’re often ignored… Which is an absolute shame if you ask me.