Do Live Dealer Casinos Need Proximity-Based Voice Chat?

When online casinos were launched in the 90s, they offered players the chance to bring what was considered a largely taboo hobby home with them. Gone was the need to visit Las Vegas or some risqué underground casino to play blackjack or the occasional slot machine. All you had to do was join an online casino, claim your free spins offer or a new player welcome bonus and play from the comfort of your office or home.

While we gained privacy and the ability to play anywhere, we had a stable internet connection. We lost the more social part of gambling that made it fun. Having a craps table get excited by a roller on a hot streak was a thing of the past. High-fiving a stranger when you hit a progressive jackpot was a distant memory.

How Do We Elevate Live Casino Games?

This all began to change with the advent of licensed and regulated online casino games. The pastime becoming less taboo created the perfect environment for live dealer gambling to blossom.

Live casino games allowed players to see a real croupier or host dealing tactile cards and engaging with a manmade rather than digital set. Players could now interact with both the dealer and other players – the only limitation is that it takes place over text chat rather than speaking to one another.

However, implementing the exact kind of voice chat technology needed to elevate live casino gambling to the next level is far from a technical challenge—it's being used by the video game sector—and it's called proximity chat.

Will Proximity Chat Technology Do The Trick?

One of the pioneers in interactive voice chat technology is a company known as 4Players GmbH. They are the team behind the newest ODIN proximity chat, revolutionising in-game player communication in the popular first-person shooter Warzone.

The 4Players website describes ODIN as:

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“VOICE CHAT FOR YOUR APPS, GAMES AND WEBSITES: Experience unparalleled audio quality and seamless integration with our next-generation Voice Chat SDK, including proximity chat for immersive, directly integrated 3D voice experiences.”

Company CEO Phillip Schuster added:

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“ODIN represents the future of in-game communication. We combine cutting-edge technology with decades of expertise in the gaming industry to create a product that is fun and designed to improve gamers’ communication.”

In short, the technology uses game coding to determine when players are within virtual earshot of one another and allows those close enough to hear what their peers say.

The technology uses its spatial awareness to “understand” where the players are in relation to one another and uses real-time 3D spatial audio to allow you to hear where someone in the room is. This can include favouring left or right earphones and even dulling or overlapping voices and ambient sounds to create “unparalleled realistic gaming communication.”

As this technology advances, and live gambling software allows players to move around a casino or table rather than locking them into a fixed point of view, the addition of proximity-activated voice chat will take us one step closer to the dream of a real-life holodeck casino experience.