3D slots – gimmick or exciting development?

It may be hard to imagine now, but the first ever ‘slot’ machine was created not in the last century but in the century before – in 1895 to be precise. It featured just three physical reels and symbols based on playing cards, and players set the reels spinning by pulling on a mechanical handle. In the decades and centuries since, the developers of slot machines have utilised new technologies as they become available in order to create online slots that combine gambling with entertainment, game play and theming, based on everything from Hollywood Films to ancient history. Throughout all of this, however, the basic principles of slots have always remained in place – the player places a bet, the symbols shift and move and the order in which they finally come to rest determines whether the bet wins or not.

It’s important to bear these basic principles in mind when considering technological advancements like 3D slots. The rise of 3D technology, better graphics and enhanced game play has been used to create slots which are able to appeal to a much wider demographic than the original ‘three reels and one pay line’ versions, but the heart of the experience remains the same. What 3D graphics are able to do is graft on a whole new set of features, but before examining them it’s probably useful to examine what 3D slots actually consist of.

3D slots

Remember 3D films? They were very big in the 1950s and then enjoyed something of a re-emergence from around 2003 onward. For a brief period it seemed as if every major film release came with a 3D version which meant that viewers had to wear those glasses with different coloured lenses, and several scenes would include a member of the cast pointing something straight at the camera or a flock of birds flying out over the heads of the audience. It was fun for a while but audiences soon started to get bored and the demand for 3D films began to drop. You can still attend 3D viewings, of course, but predictions that 3D was the future of cinema now look to have been fairly wide of the mark. The story of 3D slots is completely different. For a start, players don’t have to wear novelty glasses to play them - 3D slots work on all the devices which standard slots work on, and the name is probably something of a misnomer in that the technology needed is simply the standard technology.

The phrase ‘standard technology’ of course refers to the kind of technology which most players are able to access in the present day. In the early days of online casinos, when most sites were accessed via desktop computers and the connections were based on modems and phone lines, the amount of data that could be transmitted and processed meant that developers were only able to offer relatively primitive graphics to go along with the game play of slots. There is still very much a market for traditional 2D slots such as Blazing Star of course, but the point is that players opt for the simple graphics and limited game play on purpose – the point of classic 2D slots is simply to chase the winnings however you can get to them, whereas 3D slots offer a whole other level of entertainment.

The rise of smart devices capable of processing massive amounts of data has meant that it is now possible for the developers of games to go far beyond the basic graphics needed to animate spinning reels and win lines, and to introduce the kind of 3D elements more commonly associated with the world of video games.

This mean that players can now enjoy games with animations, characters, cut scenes and levels through which they move, all of them rendered with the kind of sharply detailed graphic quality that modern devices are capable of delivering. One key example is the way in which bonus rounds and special features are offered. A 2D slot will feature bonus rounds on the same interface as the rest of the game, whereas a 3D slot can create entirely separate environments when a special feature or bonus round is triggered. A leading 3D slot like Foxin’ Wins illustrates this perfectly, with bonus rounds triggering high quality animation features and shifting the entire look of the game for a brief period.

There are some who claim that 3D slot innovations of this kind amount to little more than gimmicks crudely bolted onto traditional slot mechanics, but this misses the point of the way in which online slots have developed. At every stage of their development, the teams behind online slots have made a point of utilising the very latest technology in order to establish the appeal of their products in wider and wider markets. 3D animation is just the latest example of this, and the care, attention to detail and sheer investment behind 3D slots means that developers, as well as packing them with dazzling graphic treats, are bound to make sure that their leading 3D slots also offer the best in game-play, RTP and sheer entertainment value. The assumption may be that players first sample 2D slots and from then graduate to the more complex and feature-packed 3D slots, but the reality is more likely to be the other way around. New players – particularly those who have never visited online casinos for games such as poker or roulette – are more likely to be attracted by the character driven nature of 3D slots, relating them to video games which have already been played. Having sampled the mechanics of actually playing slots via a 3D game they are then more likely to ‘graduate’ to more traditional 2D games on the basis of the stripped down game play they offer.

Virtually every major online casino now offers a huge selection of 3D slots, and some of the most popular currently available include the following:

• Jungle Jim El Dorado

• EggOMatic

• Johnny Octopus

• Dead Or Alive

• Drive: Multiplayer Mayhem