When I was a young lad I remember there being bingo halls in every local town and they were always packed with flocks of grandmothers that used to make a real night out of it. For many bingo became a night of social entertainment that people would look forward to all week.

Although the odd Gala Bingo hall can still be found here and there, bingo halls have been dying out for years and I’m sure it’s only time until they’re all pushed into the history books. The traditional game will always be with us and the local village pubs and clubs will always run the odd game every now and again for fun but the fact is that there is no demand for pure-play bingo halls anymore.

Online however, we know that bingo is a big thing and is taking off like a rocket to such an extent that if someone tells you they have been playing bingo it conjures up an image of them sitting in front of their PC clicking their mouse and getting excited.

So what is the link between the old game and the new Has it captured the grandmothers of today, AKA the silver surfers

Well, we know the virtual game is an exact emulation of the original game with bingo balls being called out and your tickets get daubed and there are prizes for 1 line, 2 lines or a full house. Everything has been automated though, the daubing, the winner being called out so it’s really the same game on autopilot now. The social side has an attempted emulation too through the chat facility, and this is an important ingredient in the recipe that makes it so successful online. However this is definitely not the same as being in a smoke filled room full of people.

So our conclusion is that the online game certainly has taken the roots of success from the traditional game and they have been cleverly planted for success in a new era and with some modern changes the game now hits a modern audience, while still capturing some of the traditional audience. We know this to be true from the statistics and this correlates with our analogy. While there are still plenty of senior citizens playing online there is a huge variety of younger girls and women that have wholeheartedly adopted the game that would never have shown their face in a traditional bingo hall.

To say it’s the same game is technically correct but in my opinion there are so many physical changes I would have to say online it’s something else. I think the fact that money changes hands somehow makes it less virtual than it is as the physical result can be the same. It’s clever and it attracts the same audience, but it’s no night out anymore. It’s an addictive fling with a massively multiplayer Internet game that gets the pulse racing, it’s NOT “bingo”, it IS “online bingo”!