How Interactive Entertainment Is Transforming Our Lifestyles
You may have heard about Web3 being the future and how it’s going to change the entertainment industry by being fully interactive. Yet, when we look more closely at a few different areas, we can see that we can already enjoy an interactive approach that adds a new dimension to our ways of being entertained. Let’s explore a few examples!
Live-Streamed Casino Games Re-Introduce a Human Dealer
Casinos changed enormously when they went online at the turn of the century. This led to a lot of benefits, such as being able to play conveniently from home and connect with players from across the globe. The move attracted many new players who perhaps would have felt too intimidated to go to a land-based casino and play there. Yet, the potentially negative aspect is that games were now played alone at home, with no dealer or other players to interact with.
This has been addressed in the latest generation of online casino games, which are live-streamed from a studio setting to the player’s screen. Take the current selection of online roulette titles as an example of this; here, you’ll see lots of the standard version that’s just played digitally, but you’ll also see “live dealer” games in there too. Here, you’ve got an actual croupier spinning a real wheel, streamed directly to your screen. It’s almost like standing in the casino and watching it take place right in front of you. You can usually interact with the croupier, building up the atmosphere and making it massively more immersive than the standard digital version. That human touch has really bumped up the interactivity and changed online roulette for the better in a myriad of ways.
Of course, it’s not just online roulette. Other games, including blackjack and poker, have also been refreshed in this way. Having a live dealer makes a huge difference in games like this, allowing players to enjoy the benefits of a physical casino without ever having to leave their homes.
Interactive TV Shows on Streaming Platforms
Watching television shows used to be simply about sitting down in front of the screen and watching whatever was available on any of the few channels showing. The rise of streaming platforms has given us a greater level of control over our viewing experience by offering a huge amount of content to choose from and a personalized interface where our viewing habits lead to tailored recommendations appearing on the screen.
This has been taken a step further with the creation of interactive shows and movies where viewers get to choose what happens next. Netflix has been trying to make interactive content mainstream, but it hasn’t gone entirely to plan so far. At the end of 2024, the streaming giant revealed that it was canceling all but four of these shows, with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend among those that remain. We need to wait to see how this industry develops. Will they find a way to make watching interactive TV a daily habit? It might not be there yet, but it’s still an exciting example of just what we can do nowadays!
Home-Based Sports Fans Are Closer to the Action
The interactive element has undoubtedly appealed to the sports industry, as fans get the chance to feel closer to the action. Virtual reality (VR) has played a big role in this area, allowing fans to feel as though they’re really at the match in question. French soccer team Paris Saint-Germain has confirmed that it’s going to be part of a pilot program with beIN SPORTS that will beam their games in VR format through the Xtadium platform to American fans.
The NFL has also taken steps toward having a more immersive experience in the stadiums, with Extreme Networks adding cutting-edge Wi-Fi 6E technology to several football venues across the country in 2024. Fans who already use the official NFL app or one of the in-stadium apps – like the Miami Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium app – get a more complete and interactive matchday experience, but this is likely to increase over time as more of the latest tech is deployed.
Social Crypto Mining Apps
The emergence of cryptocurrencies has added a new edge to this area, with a market that’s open 24/7, offering many ways of interacting with the community via forums and social media platforms. Social mining apps have become one of the latest online sensations, thanks in part to the unexpected success of the Pi Network. This app’s Open Network was launched earlier this year. The price rapidly rose to almost $3 for each token, causing many people to sit up and take notice.
These different approaches all use interesting ideas and new technology to make parts of our lifestyle more interactive. There appear to be few areas of life that this trend won’t affect, so we should be ready to embrace a more interactive way of carrying out our daily tasks.
