The gaming industry has come on leaps and bounds since the days of 8-bit gaming with an extremely limited range of games. Nowadays, we’re spoiled for choice – from staggeringly good new games such as Overwatch 2 and the Call of Duty franchise to crazy indie games that rose to a cult-like status like Stardew Valley and Hades. Video games even have lifelike casinos built into the game worlds. In these in-game casinos, you’ll be able to play the same games as you can find on the best online casino Canada has to offer – although you won’t be able to win real money!

But why do video games put online casinos in their games at all? Is there any real point or are they just there for show? Let’s take a look at some of the reasons:

Increase Immersion

The main reason a game will include some sort of casino is purely to add immersion into the worldbuilding. Worldbuilding itself is an incredibly important part of any game, as designers want players to get lost in the game and feel as if they’re actually there. 

Whilst video games will never be able to recreate the actual feeling of playing in a real-life casino, one of the best casinos seen in a video game up until that point was in Fallout New Vegas by Bethesda game studio.

If you haven’t played New Vegas, then it’s a game set in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas – with the Las Vegas strip included – or what’s left of it. The casino setting in the game is one of the best- the attention to detail, the colourful character, the fact that the casino games are all functional and the whole atmosphere of the place is just all-around brilliant.

The small touches of the casino being added are a great example of why adding these gambling venues can be beneficial to the overall immersion and world-building of video games.

Casinos help add fresh content to the game & add game time

Another reason some games in playable casinos is to give players more content to enjoy and keep players entertained. These often eye-catching mini-games give players almost a sort of ‘side mission’, as they try to win some in-game money, complete achievements or progress through the levels and face harder opponents.

One of the most enjoyed types of gambling mini-games to be released was in The Witcher 3, called Gwent. This delightful little card game is fun, competitive and slightly addictive, and will see you facing off against other players with a deck of cards.

At any point in the game, you can simply stop by one of the taverns and enjoy a few games. The min game became so popular that the developers of the game – CD Projekt Red – even released it as a stand-alone game in itself!

The Grand Theft Auto Online Diamond Casino Controversy

This brings us to one of the biggest gaming controversies since Mortal Kombat in the 90s and Loot Boxes back in 2015 – the Diamond Casino being added to Grand theft Auto Online.

GTA online is one of the most popular games of all time and Rockstar routinely adds updates to keep things new. One of the biggest updates that Rockstar added was the Diamond Casino. This added a whole heap of new things such as missions, a heist, housing, vehicles and more.

But one thing that caused a lot of contention is the fact that players could play and gamble in this casino – but with chips bought with real money. This caused many countries to ban the game where there are prohibitive gambling laws – such as South Africa, South Korea and Luxemburg.

The decision to add a casino where players could actually buy chips to play games with their own money was a bold one – and it was the first mainstream video game to do that. But who knows what the future holds? As technology evolves, we may see video games with fully functional casinos built in where you can win real money!