Many years ago, when I was a fresh-faced kid right out of college, like most of my student colleagues I was looking for a first job. I was a Linguistics major, so the typical jobs I was looking for included editorial and journalist positions. While I was looking, however, a particular job caught my eye. The ad said that a gaming company was looking for an English-speaking content writer. At that time, online gambling websites were still in their relative infancy and becoming more popular. I thought it would be amusing if my first job right out of college with a Masters degree would be writing content for one of the best Australian Online Casino websites, or something of that nature, but I was nonetheless intrigued.
Throughout the interview process it seemed very surreal that I could potentially end up working on the industry side of the burgeoning online gaming field. I eventually got accepted for the position and I’ll never forget my first few days working in the office, because they were unlike any other job I’ve ever had since.
I had expected to get thrown into the deep end and have to begin writing lots of content for the various websites that the company owned. I couldn’t have been more off the mark. I showed up in the morning and my new manager said, “log into our site, and start playing the games.” I couldn’t believe my ears! Here I was, new on the job, and he was telling me to sit and play games? I figured maybe he was just being nice or joking, but I did what he said and one hour later went back to him and said “OK, what’s my first real assignment?”
He said, “That IS your assignment! I want you to sit and try every single game we offer in our online casino.” I couldn’t understand why he wanted me to do this. He told me very quickly: “If you’re going to be writing about all of these games and explaining them to people on our website, you really ought to know how to play them and what these games are all about, right?”
Then it clicked. I understood. So, my first exposure to playing online casino games was actually while I was working at a company that offered them to people for real money gaming. I obviously didn’t play for real money, but I did indeed try every single one of the hundreds of slot games table games and other gambling offerings they had.
So, What Was the Online Game Play Like?
I quite literally came to work every day for one week straight and just played games online. The overwhelming majority of the games I played were online slots. to be quite frank, it was a little bit repetitive. After all a slot machine is just a slot machine, the only difference being the theme. I had to trigger each games bonus round and extra features so that I would know how to write about them as well, so a lot of button clicking was done just in order to try and trigger those games. That got a little bit boring after a while. There wasn’t really any strategic component, like mastering poker statistics.
The table games were more interesting. I had always been a fan of roulette, blackjack, and casino hold’em, and I had the opportunity to learn how to play craps and baccarat online. I have to admit that even though it was play money, I took pride in building up my ”bankroll” while playing the various different versions of each of those table games.
The games that I enjoyed most, however, were the live dealer games. These, too, were table games, but the difference was that I had the opportunity to interact with genuine people who were acting as the dealers. The ladies and gentlemen were dressed up nice and fancy and they were located in a studio in a different country, looking into webcams. They were only too happy to chat it up with me as I was placing my bets. I think the reason that I enjoyed these games the most was that I wasn’t just clicking buttons anymore, but rather enjoying the nice conversation with someone. Of course I was just typing in chat, but they were speaking to me directly via the camera.
I have to admit that I’ve never really played any online casino games for real money. That’s not for me. I’ve always been much more of a poker fan, and even that game I haven’t really played too much online for well over 10 years now. I’ve always enjoyed the social aspects of gambling, which is something you really can’t get when playing games online. Those live dealer games, however, were the exception.
And that, in a nutshell, is the story of my first time playing online casino games.
