PC Game Developers and Online Casino Providers: Different Goals, Different Roads

Video games can take years of development and major investment before a title hits the market. It’s a massive $200 billion global industry, with the UK share of around £7 billion. Leading game developers like Microsoft Gaming and Tencent are always looking for innovative new features that keep players coming back for more with new titles.

These are the games which you can play after funding your gaming account at an online casino with debit card or e-wallet options, as well as other payment methods you are comfortable with. These games are also designed by specialised teams. For example, developers like NetEnt and Microgaming can license out their popular titles to different operators.

The two industries share many similarities, including the development, up-front investments, creativity, and the use of thematic tools to give the titles plenty of appeal. But they are also very separate, as they have to take very different paths to get to their end products.

Career Paths

It’s estimated that an entry-level video game developer’s salary can range from £35,000 - £50,000 per year. With experience, it’s not uncommon for that to go up to somewhere around £75,000 per year. A lot depends on the size of the developer studio, its geographic location and the specialisation of the role, whether that’s a programmer, artist or designer, for example.

The same goes for someone working in casino game development. Salaries can reach up to around £75,000 per year at the senior side, with the average mid-range salary being between £35,000 and £50,000 per annum. There are other variables when it comes to salary as well, including things like bonuses, benefits and profit sharing.

Company Size

It’s very typical for leading AAA video game developers like Tencent, Rockstar and Sony Entertainment, to have more than 100 people involved in the creation of a game. This is not the case for all games, however, because indie studios working on much smaller games require less manpower, perhaps having no more than ten on the team.

It all depends on the complexity and the budget and it’s not uncommon for skilled video game workers to be released after completing a project. Therefore, employment in the online casino game market is seen as being more stable. NetEnt, one of the world’s biggest online high-quality slots developers, has around 600 employees in total.

Cost of Development

The latest major release from a leading game developer like Valve Corporation, Larian Studios or Blizzard Entertainment has likely been in the works for a good five years or more. Diablo IV for example took six years to develop, while Baldur’s Gate 3 took around the same time. With slots, it can be faster, from a few months to a year. It all depends on the complexity of the title.

Anything that length of time is going to be complex as well as expensive, with massive overheads involved. So, video games in general tend to have higher costs of development than online casino slots games.

There is also a difference in the way that the software is developed. Because slot machines at their core are fairly repetitive, previous elements can be used as a building block for future ones. Changes to theme and mechanics of course have to happen, but there are a lot of ready-made templates that can be re-used. The technologies used to build the different styles of games vary greatly as well, with online casino game developers often focusing on less complex web-based technologies.

Video games in contrast are built from the ground up each time, largely because graphics and processing power changes rapidly and designing and coding for new games adds to the development time. Video games also have many extra elements like voice and character actors and script writing that don’t feature in online casino slots.

A lot of video games also develop future add-ons and games like Fortnite have different seasons, all of which means continuous investment in development costs. But once a casino slot has been developed and has received the rubber stamp of approval by the regulating body which oversees game fairness, the slot just stays as it is.

Video games, while they have to pass age rating checks for content, don’t have as many regulatory hurdles to get over as online slots, however. Casino games are continuously checked for fairness before and after launch.

In Summary

The target audiences are very different between video game and online casino game developers. Casino slots have to be engaging, but simple to play so that they appeal to everyone and creative expression is fairly muted. Video games on the other hand can be highly complex and realistic, and this complexity comes with greater time and cost.