The video game industry didn't become a cultural force gradually, it detonated. In 1994, Sony released the PlayStation using CD-ROMs instead of cartridges, allowing developers to make larger, more cinematic worlds instead of smaller arcade loops. That console became the first to cross the 100 million units sold threshold. In 2002, the launch of Xbox Live effectively made consoles a social network for the first time in history. Players could now communicate, trade, and challenge other players across the world in real time. By 2012, gaming revenue globally had overtaken the movie industry. By 2024, the gaming industry was valued at around $184 billion, more than the global box office and the recorded music industry combined. The entertainment industry, and every allied industry, had to take notice when gaming redefined itself as a core part of entertainment.
Online casinos were watching the same shift. Following the release of the first functional online casino software by Microgaming in 1994, the same year the PlayStation launched, the first digital tables ran on software that processed random numbers and computer graphics that displayed the tables. While the software worked, many players were not fully satisfied, because they were not able to see the mechanics first-hand. This created tension, and it pushed online casino service providers to follow the lead of the gaming industry by offering more presence, personality and interaction.
One example is Xbox Live in 2002, which changed expectations around how players interacted with a game. It included the ability to chat with other players, see game-related statistics and experience the unpredictability of human behavior. Similarly, popular games such as Call of Duty and FIFA made real-time play with other people part of the product itself. Online casino service providers were watching closely. Playtech streamed live dealer baccarat from the Philippines in 2003, and Evolution Gaming built its first studio in Latvia in 2006. Evolution then went on to win the Live Casino Supplier of the Year award for twelve consecutive years from 2010. As time progressed, online casinos borrowed design ideas from gaming, such as progress systems, achievement systems and seasonal systems.
iLogos Game Studios shows that using gamification in online casinos can increase user retention to 75%, compared to 50% retention with non-gamified casinos. The online casino industry learned that player engagement mechanics that worked in one digital world could work almost the same way in another.
Europe developed the live-dealer revolution. Evolution Gaming set up its first studio in Riga in 2006. Europe had rules and systems that helped the live-dealer format develop from a single roulette stream to a global industry standard. Licensing frameworks in Malta, through the Malta Gaming Authority, attracted many serious operators. Most European markets modernized their regulations in ways that made operators improve the quality of their products to retain players, rather than only attract new ones. Operators were pushed to create better products and services under stricter advertising and marketing rules. The result was a series of live-dealer providers across various locations, better suited to meet European demand. Don.ro Online Casino, along with other live-dealer operators in Europe, now competes with this established high-quality player-retention standard. Now, twenty years later, the next industry innovation is focused on something different: meeting the expectation of a real dealer experience without always needing a traditional studio.
From joysticks to felt: what gaming taught the casino
The video game industry has taken off and has become extraordinarily tech-intensive. Games like Grand Theft Auto, The Last of Us and Fortnite forced game studios to build solutions to problems that once sounded like science fiction. Examples include synthetic voice processing, dynamically generated worlds and character AI that can adapt to player behavior. Studios invested heavily in developing systems that make virtual characters feel present and responsive.
Online gambling companies took note and realized what many gamers did not: the tech developed to serve the gaming market could become very useful and commercially valuable in other areas of digital entertainment. If a studio's NPC, or non-player character, feels like a fully immersive character, then it is only a matter of time before a virtual dealer is developed as a dynamic and adaptable service provider that responds to the needs and behavior of players. Casinos, like game studios, make use of reward systems shaped by games like Candy Crush and Clash of Clans. Casinos built dynamic systems taken from online platforms to serve their players. The relationship was more interdependent and less about simple imitation, with game studios and casino platforms constantly enriching one another's innovation.
The real cost of a human dealer
Live dealer tables have hidden costs associated with running them. Each table requires at least one dealer per shift, with staffing across the full 24 hours of the day. A casino with tables for English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Japanese blackjack is not just offering six tables. It is running six managed, filmed and produced environments with scheduling, quality control and staffing challenges. The cost escalates with each new language offered.
There are economic reasons behind the options players can access. A player from Canada who wants to play in Tagalog, Hindi or a smaller European language has, in the past, had very limited options. This is not due to a lack of demand, but due to the high cost of having a human dealer seated in front of a camera for that language. Studios in areas like Malta and Riga cater to the most prominent demographic segments first and offer English, or nothing at all.
AI dealer technology is designed to eliminate this constraint.
The dealer who never clocks out
In April 2026, Playgon Games, based in Vancouver, signed an agreement with Digital Nation Entertainment to co-develop what is claimed to be the world's first AI Dealer platform - emotionally intelligent, multilingual, real-time and capable of operating at any scale without scheduling constraints. The goal is to provide live-feel gameplay in more than 30 languages around the clock, without the cost of a studio.
This technology is not a looping animation with predetermined responses. The AI dealers that are being built are real-time responsive hosts. They have the ability to read the tempo of a session and adjust accordingly. They understand what the player says and are able to keep a conversation along the same lines throughout a single hand, shoe or playing session as a whole. The Japanese gaming company Baricata, which started operations in 2023, has built technology that creates facial expressions and responds in a customized manner to players. It can adapt to a player's style of play. Baricata has built what Playgon's offering will likely commercialize: an AI dealer who can learn how to adapt and improve as a dealer over the course of an entire gaming session.
Of the features offered by AI dealers, the ability to deal around the clock is arguably the least surprising. Care must be taken, however, to appreciate what such an offering means. For a human dealer, Sunday night and Saturday night have very different boundaries. A system using AI dealers does not have boundaries of that type. A high-demand Saturday night in Ontario can be just as manageable as a player in Vancouver playing at 4 AM or a player joining from a time zone twelve hours away from where the server is. This system runs 24/7, and the dealer is always on.
Thirty languages at the same time
Active operator interest in one area is simultaneous multilingual management at the same table. As things stand, AI dealer systems in development can engage an English player and a Japanese player at the same time, treating language as just another configurable variable of the session rather than requiring a distinct process or dealer.
This capability has become the main selling point of BetConstruct's KISS AI Live Casino platform. Rather than offering separate live dealer tables in different languages, BetConstruct's system provides dealer interaction in the language of the players. This significantly reduces cost and expands reach. A small operator previously able to host tables in three or four languages may now be able to operate in a dozen.
For players, the effect of being able to play and interact with the dealer in their own language goes beyond simple communication. Interaction with a dealer in the player's language, with the dealer capable of understanding the linguistic nuances of that language, changes the experience. Early AI dealer systems were rather mechanical, and current systems have improved considerably. Operators are now building commercial systems to close this gap completely.
What this means for the next decade
A new market trend could further alter the live dealer game format. New design elements, taken from the success of live dealer games, are being built into artificial intelligence dealer formats. The underlying technology and language coverage for AI formats have progressed quickly, which may make the format move faster than similar live dealer technologies did at the beginning.
The format will likely be additive for the next few years, keeping both human and AI dealers on most platforms. Many players still enjoy the assurance of seeing a human dealer. Others will prefer an AI dealer who speaks the player's language automatically, adapts to the player's pace and is available at any hour. There is a preference for both formats, and the market is large enough for both.
Regarding the technology, the convenience for a player in Montreal who plays in a language other than English or French, or a player in a smaller Canadian city who wants a different game format when the last human-staffed tables close, may be the largest change. The technology can become truly player-centric, allowing players to control the pace of their sessions without feeling that they are either rushing the dealer or holding up other players.
That technology now exists. North American and Japanese studios are using it to create social and cash-based gaming offerings that meet the industry standard established by two decades of live dealer platforms. These platforms can offer a dealer who speaks 27, 30 or even more languages; a dealer who remembers how you play and whose shift never ends. That concept is not just in some product roadmap. It is a real engineering challenge being actively worked on.
The PlayStation changed what a console could be, and Xbox Live changed who it connected. The introduction of AI dealers is likely to change not just how live dealer casinos might be staffed, but also who they cater to. That market is much larger than any studio in Riga was ever built to accommodate.