ICEi 2008 has officially begun and we’re off to a roaring start. What a difference a year makes. Last year’s show came on the heels the UIGEA, so the atmosphere was serious, even somber. A year later, we’ve collectively embraced the challenges and regained our enthusiasm.

If optimism were contagious, you’d catch it here at ICEi '08. The stands are bigger, the promises bolder and atmosphere more intense. In fact, the whole show has grown by 25% since last year. Organizer Anthony Medica tells me there was so much interest from i-gaming exhibitors that the show had to be enlarged three times. ICEi ended up infringing on the footprint of its big brother ICE, the land-based casino show.

Speaking of which, if there’s one thing that hasn’t changed it’s that the world of land-based gaming and the world of online gaming remain largely segregated. The real-world casino guys stay on their side of the fence, and we stay on ours. It’s a shame really, because the software used in land-based video gaming terminals is in many ways similar to online gaming software. You’d think the two worlds would integrate at some point, but no sign of that yet.

What else is new at ICEi this year? All the regular suspects are here (many with bigger, sexier exhibits) but where the show has really grown is in the number of peripheral businesses serving the industry. Lawyers, consultants, recruiters, managed service providers – you name it – they all want a piece of our booming business.

Parlay has been exhibiting at ICEi for seven years, and we’ve long been prophesising the explosive growth of bingo. Now it seems everyone’s caught the bingo bug. The likes of Microgaming, Boss, Betson and NYX Interactive are all touting their bingo solutions. (And many of them look surprisingly familiar!)

With everyone jumping on the proverbial bandwagon, it’s important to remember the delicate intricacies of developing online bingo. These new kids on the block may look slick, but that’s the easy part. How do their bingo platforms perform? Do they give operators the freedom to produce a wide range of intelligence reports? Are they flexible? Reliable? Scalable? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, back at Parlay’s stand 5225, we’ve been talking up the coming release of Parlay 5. It’s online bingo gone global and we’re pretty proud of its ability to simplify multilingual and multicurrency operations.

If you’re at the show, drop by and check us out!

More from ICEi tomorrow.