If you’re a keen culture vulture who is always on the lookout for which way the winds of tastes are blowing, you might already have a few resources for gauging this. You might consult the pre-eminent bibles of good taste, whether that’s Vogue, Vanity Fair, NYT Magazine, or Pitchfork. You might check social media to see if you can parse the next big cultural thing through the proverbial tea leaves of memes and TikTok trends.
Alternatively, you can consult some of the world’s biggest entertainment industries, to see what kind of content they are creating for their audiences of millions. One such industry that can provide some surprising insights into pop culture is the online casino gaming industry, a $100 billion a year behemoth that is enjoyed by real money gamers on every continent. Here are some insights that you can glean about the popular culture just by checking out online casino sites.
Hybrid entertainment experiences are hot right now
One interesting trend that can be parsed by looking at online casinos is the rapid emergence of hybrid gaming experiences, which combine elements of different entertainment into one game. For example, by looking at the vast library of online slots at https://games.paddypower.com/c/slots, you can see games such as Live Money Drop, in which players interact with a real game show host via a live stream, who spins a wheel of fortune to deliver real cash prizes to gamers. These sorts of novel experiences are becoming increasingly common in online casinos, and could easily spread to the wider entertainment industry.
Classic themes persist
Just as online casinos are clearly embracing new and novel forms of entertainment, it is also clear that some of the classic entertainment themes that have been around for decades remain popular. For example, any online casino will feature dozens if not hundreds of slots based around the “luck of the Irish”, with Leprechauns, four-leaf clovers, and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow as far as the eye can see. Meanwhile, the old West, which has formed the central theme of IRL casinos such as https://www.goldennugget.com/las-vegas, continues to be an enduring theme in the world of online slots, with many of the most popular titles featuring cowboys, saloons and buried treasure in cacti-strewn deserts.
The power of TV
For people who are truly interested in where the winds of popular culture are blowing, it is worth examining the increasing influence of the TV industry within real-money gaming. Go to any major online casino, and you can find popular online slots that are based on some of the most widely streamed TV shows of the day. There are slots based on the hit HBO show https://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones, as well as slots based on streaming successes such as Narcos, Vikings, and The Million Pound Drop. As we enter a cultural realm where many TV show creators can launch multimedia empires based on their products, online casinos can be a good place to see those emerging empires in action.
It’s always possible to learn a lot about a popular culture very quickly, provided you know where to look. As these examples demonstrate, online casinos offer a surprising amount of insights.
