All industries are marked by progress, but nowhere is that evidenced quite as clearly as in the gaming industry. After centuries of slow development — the game of chess has evolved only slightly over the past few hundred years — the rise of digital technology allowed for the true dream of the gaming world to come to life. More than movies, music, interior design and other entertainment, technological progress has been the genesis of rapid advancement in the gaming world.
And that’s created a rich gaming landscape that appeals to more people than ever before. In this post, we’ll take a look at the huge contribution that technology has made towards the growing popularity of games.
Bringing Games to a Mass Audience
Games have always been popular, but they were not always easily accessible. For instance, you’d typically need a gaming console to play the latest and biggest games, or you’d need to live near an arcade or a casino to play popular titles. Today, that’s no longer the case — if you have a smartphone or a laptop, you can play the vast majority of new games that are released. While gamers still have the option to invest heavily in a PlayStation or Xbox, it’s not a necessity.
Reimagining Classics
Technology has also allowed for the development of old games which might, if it were not for technology, have slowly disappeared from public consciousness. Solitaire was on its way to the trash can before Windows offered it as a pre-install on their computers, which helped to give the game a new lease of life.
Other games, such as slots, were given a modern upgrade thanks to technology. Slot games you’ll find online may be based on the one-armed bandits of yesteryear, but they tend to be much richer and more ambitious in scope than traditional machines. Without the development of random number generators, upon which slots and many other games are based, it’s hard to say what may have happened to those traditional games.
Playing Old Games
Technological advancement doesn’t just allow developers to make wildly ambitious video games; it also makes it easier than ever for gamers to discover the innovative, pioneering games of days gone by. No one would realistically seek out an arcade just to see what it’s like to play Pong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, or Donkey Kong. Plus, even if they wanted to, they’d probably have a hard time finding an arcade that had those original machines anyway.
Technology allows people to dig into the history of games without having to download any special software — you’ll find all classic arcade games available for play within a browser.
Indeed, things have progressed so much that you can even play PlayStation 2 games from within a browser. This is more than just a nice nostalgia trip for people who remember playing those games; it’s a record of historic titles, which can be brought to a whole new audience.
Wider Range of Games
The widespread adoption of technology has made game development cheaper and more accessible. As a result, there are many, many games released each year — by one estimate, there are 10,000 new titles released on Steam alone every year. As a result, there has never been a wider range of games available to play than there is today. In the early days of gaming consoles, titles were generally limited to fighting games, racing games, and sports games. In the past decade, and especially in the last few years, there has been an explosion not just in the number of games but types of games. AR Collect, hypercasual, and battle royale games are just three genres that didn’t exist up until a few years ago.
As such, it’s much more likely that anyone even remotely interested in gaming will be able to find a title that interests them. When they do, they’ll probably be able to access the game within just a few clicks of a button.