People have tried to entertain themselves by playing games for almost as long as there have been humans on our planet. And gaming has certainly gone a long way since the dawn of time.
Chess has been played for more than 2000 years, making it one of the oldest board games ever created by humans. For more than 500 years, kids have been throwing marbles. High-society players used to spend their time playing table games like roulette and craps around the start of the 20th century, and only a few decades ago, we were blowing our SNES cartridges to clean the dust off.
Since the 1970s, when more potent computers and communication techniques transformed what had previously been a totally analog medium, the history of gaming may be understood as a chronicle of advancing technology. On the other hand, traditional, non-digital gaming has never completely vanished, and advancements in the gaming industry have been impacted by a number of reasons aside from new technology.
A new gaming platform
Mobile gaming had a surge with the release of smartphones, which completely changed the market. Although we could play games on older mobile devices like the notorious Nokia bricks, where most of us spent endless hours playing Snake, smartphones fundamentally transformed how we play.
Prior to that, users had to invest in a certain piece of equipment or gadget and dedicate some time to playing a particular game, which restricted the market to people who were ready to invest both time and money.
However, with the introduction of smartphones, gaming became easily accessible from our pockets, and the market grew to include everyone with a few spare minutes.
Not only does a mobile platform exist today, but the majority of us already own one for purposes unrelated to gaming. It’s a definite gain for game developers and retailers in addition to being an amazing new gaming medium for consumers.
The long-lasting effect
Gaming firms started to recognize the ease of distributing games online as the internet became more widely used and more popular, giving us instant access to a vast amount of information from the comfort of our homes. Thus, the age of the cartridge came to an end.
Soon after, smartphones started to become popular, and mobile gaming led to significant changes in the game production market. The industry as a whole is presently on a 2-year development cycle, as opposed to the old 7-year cycle, and creativity and advancements are sought after and anticipated practically every year. And this is true for all platforms, from mobile to consoles to PCs.
New game production tools have emerged since the advent of smartphones, enabling anyone without advanced coding abilities to produce games. Finally, smaller teams could produce these games in less time.
Console makers rapidly adopted this strategy and set up online stores where independent game creators could sell their creations, disrupting the market. Additionally, the packaging and distribution processes were greatly simplified, which reduced the complexity and cost of creating and selling a game overall.
This attracted a large number of modest, creative developers who didn’t demand the kind of funding needed in the past to enter the industry. The earliest utopian concepts of the internet, such as “a free and open internet where everyone had a chance” were mirrored in this movement.
The concept of mobile gambling, which is now widely accepted and relied upon and has emerged as one of the major trends in the modern online world, was also made popular by smartphones. Recent technological developments have led developers to concentrate on mobile gaming and mobile responsiveness, enabling gamers to experience beloved activities like slots and table games on the go.
The future ahead
Developers are vying to produce the next big thing because the gaming industry is under constant pressure. Virtual reality has been a hot topic for a while, but its usability and attractiveness to all people are still up for debate. Although not many people have adopted VR, if the technology is developed and made more accessible to people of all economic levels, it has the potential to dominate its niche.
The biggest and most promising success of augmented reality to date was Pokémon Go, which was all the rage and is still making millions of dollars every week. But despite expectations, AR hasn’t yet changed how people play games. In fact, applying augmented reality to other areas like building, construction, and design may be where the technology’s future lies. Apart from that, with the advent of blockchain technologies, industry specialists expect that the emergence of crypto games will significantly impact the mobile gaming market, as gamers are increasingly looking for gaming experiences that incorporate blockchain elements such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
