Mobile Gambling vs Mobile Gaming

I spend a whooooole lot of time with my tablet. And how could I not? The thing is GREAT! I can read comic books and manga on it, I can watch Netflix, I can browse social media, I can play videogames, I can spin slots, hell, I even have the Kindle app installed on it for when I’m too lazy to get up and get my actual Kindle! Yeah, that’s how much I’ve grown to rely on this silly little gadget for all of my daily needs! Still, out of all of the things I’ve been doing on my tablet, I’ve probably dedicated by far the most time on online gambling and mobile gaming. With that said, it’s only natural that I’d spend a lot of time comparing the two. Not in a “which is better” kind of way, because that’s unfair, more in a “how are they similar and how are they different” kind of way. So… How about we do it together, just for fun?

Keep in mind, there’s a whoooole lot of different mobile game types, but for now, I’m going to be focusing on the ones which are free to download and play, but allow you to purchase different in-game items through microtransactions. There’s lots of mobile games that you simply buy once and that’s that (such as the absolutely and utterly excellent “Adventures of Mana”, which you should absolutely buy if you’re even remotely interested in RPGs), as well as plenty of games that you can download and play for completely free which make their money through ads (or not at all, if they’re smaller student projects). While I do love those, for the moment I want to focus on games that resemble mobile casino in structure.

So, what are the similarities? Well, first and foremost, both allow you to play for completely free, if you’re willing to skip certain features. “Avengers Academy”, while one of the more pay-to-win mobile games out there, still allows you to recruit numerous Marvel characters to your Academy completely for free, with only holding a couple of characters and items behind a paywall. Similarly, most online casinos give you access to their entire catalogue of titles for free by taking away the gambling element – if you want to play for real money, you need to invest real money. Another similarity is, very obviously, the chance and randomness that are very prevalent in both circles. “Candy Crush Saga”, for example, allows you to spin a wheel every once in a while in order to determine which bonus item you’ll get, if any – the outcome of that spin sometimes decides whether or not you’ll be able to complete your level. Similarly, in mobile casino, chance is a huge deciding factor on whether you’ll win or lose. Last, but not least, both mobile gaming and mobile gambling, while initially only restricted to several regions, are quickly spreading – Google’s Play Store is officially available in over 135 countries, while, according to the leading casino site bestukcasino.org.uk, mobile casino is available in almost every single country that also supports regular gambling, including Kenya.

Surprisingly, there’s a lot more similarities than differences between mobile gambling and mobile gaming. The primary one is, of course, that mobile gaming doesn’t allow you to win real money. A lot of mobile games allow you to win in-game currency – for example, in “Future Fight” you’re able to purchase shards with real money and spend them on stuff, but if you do really well in certain aspects of the game you can win free shards, and lots of them. But with that said, you can’t really exchange these shards back for money – you can only use them for in-game items, which is a huge difference from online casino, where you can use the money you win on both games and in real life. Additionally, most mobile games are also rather skill-based, while most gambling games are very luck-based, but honestly, with gambling laws changing rapidly, that distinction might be a thing of the past within 5-10 years. We should really stop and think about why so many mobile games have gambling elements in them, or, hell, why there are so many non-gambling mobile games based on stuff like slots. It’s because mobile gaming and mobile gambling really aren’t that different, and as time goes on, they’ll become even closer to each other.