The idea of a bingo hall running bingo games without a caller is a bit mad isn’t it? These are the people who create the atmosphere, tell us jokes, inject the fun between games and generally create the human element we all love about bingo.
But when we play online this human element is completely removed. Not only that, it is replaced by a robotic voice or unnatural sounding recording from a voice over type person. They usually sound like the same guy who talks to you when you are on hold to British Gas, or some other big company.
Online and real life bingo and clearly two very different experiences, but why did online bingo companies make the decision to replace the charismatic bingo caller with the characterless digital voice?
Perhaps a more important question, is whether or not there is in fact anywhere out there on the world wide web that does offer a real bingo caller?
Well this is the very topic we will be exploring here!
Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?
What is the Role of a Bingo Caller?
The good old bingo caller can be male or female and young or old, there are no restrictions on who could do the job really.
The only thing they absolutely must have is charisma.
The bingo caller sets the tone of the game, so they need to be able to read a room and adapt their approach depending on what is going on.
A well timed joke can defuse a bit of rivalry that is getting out of hand, and a witty comment from a caller who is alert to what is going on can stop issues arising before they even start.
A bingo caller is all at once the person running the game, setting the pace and managing winning calls, as well as being a friend of all the players and an all round entertainer too.
How they do this can be as unique as each caller – some dress up in suits, others come in character and even in fancy dress sometimes, with jokes, anecdotes, songs and even magic tricks up their sleeve – but they all use their skills to enhance the enjoyment of the people playing.
Oh, and they have to call out the numbers too of course!
Why Don’t Online Bingo Games Use Real Callers?
With this in mind, it begs the question why these essential people have been cut from online games. After all, live casino games have real dealers and game hosts.
The thing is, online bingo games go at such a speed that there is no time for interjections from a bingo caller.
Even if a company decided to make time, it would be incredibly difficult for the caller to create any sort of atmosphere or rapport with the audience because they can’t see them – the poor guy or girl would be performing to an empty room.
What’s more, thinking about the way online bingo works, with a network providing the service to the bingo website and people from lots of different bingo brands playing on the same network, it would be a bit of a nightmare.
It might feel simply like a cost saving exercise from the operators, but more realistically it is just not practical.
The other thing of course, is that many people who play bingo online don’t give it their full attention. They might play while watching the TV, or for just a few minutes while waiting in the car, or whatever.
A bingo caller would have no chance of keeping the attention of everyone since people come and go all the time. In a real bingo hall it would be like someone new sitting at the table next to you every 15 seconds – it would be impossible to concentrate.
What About Chat Hosts?
These are the closest we get to bingo callers in the online bingo world, and although they don’t run the bingo games they can initiate chat games on the side for small prizes.
They also try to start conversations (usually quite badly it has to be said!) but anyone who has played at a couple of different bingo sites will know that their attempts are usually met with silence.
This is the operator trying to replace an element of the atmosphere a good bingo caller can create, but it doesn’t work anywhere near as well because, again, they are talking to faceless people via a keyboard so it’s just not the same thing.
If anything, chat hosts are a perfect example of why a real life bingo caller just wouldn’t work online.
You will occasionally find the bigger bingo brands inviting minor celebrities to ‘run’ the bingo on special occasions, but all this really amounts to is handing over the keyboard to the celeb in question and letting them be the chat host.
It’s a marketing tactic that does usually draw a bigger crowd, and more activity in the chat room, but it’s a very different environment than a bingo caller would create.
Live Play Bingo
With all of that said, we can contradict ourselves a bit and tell you that online bingo does exist with live callers… sort of.
Live Play Bingo uses 75 ball as its’ basis and 300 people can win per game, so there are 300 ‘bingos’ available, if you like. The quicker you get one the bigger your prize (more on that shortly), and when they are all gone the game resets.
You can play up to 4 tickets at a time and you have to daub them yourself, with false calls wasting your bingo card, so careful with those long nails or fat thumbs! You can also play a slot game while you are waiting for games to begin.
The whole thing is a bit like facetiming the bingo caller, except they can’t see you and their image is overlayed with chat comments, the balls being drawn, and little animations etc. that people can buy and set off.
It’s not the same thing as having a bingo caller because you still can’t build a true relationship with them (and they don’t call all of the balls because of chatting), but the video hosts are certainly full of energy and it’s a much better experience than simply having a chat room host behind a keyboard.
People from all over the world can join in, and there is plenty of chatting with the host often struggling to keep up with all of the comments.
The down side here is that you can’t actually buy tickets and play for money. The game is free to play and the winners are paid using in-game currency, with the company earning their money from in-app purchases like game boosts and coins to spend on animation ‘gifts’.
So there is nothing to win that you can use in the real world, no money or vouchers or anything like that, but then again it is totally free to play and it still feels good to win.
We bagged a jackpot and came 3rd, winning within 5 numbers on our first go, and we were only sad that no one could see us gloating!
Conclusion
So the simple answer is that bingo callers don’t exist at all online, not in the true sense, but many alternatives are available.
Some of these alternatives come quite close to doing the job of a bingo caller, but at the end of the day, the very fact that the game is being played online makes it impossible for a bingo caller to do their job.
Being a bingo caller is all about real in person human interaction, so the bingo caller is a casualty of the online bingo industry, despite how much we appreciate the ability to be able to play online.
A chat host may be able to create a bit of hype, live on screen via a stream or from beyond a keyboard, but they will never take the place of our beloved bingo callers, so we will have to keep heading to a bingo hall if we want the real deal.