Love them or hate them but you all must have played atleast one game in your life. Didn’t you?
Games have been transformed into staggeringly beautiful works of art.
Today gaming is recognized as a part of the cultural landscape.
The gaming industry is as old as history. Egyptian artifacts have proven that our ancestors enjoyed playing board games thousands of years ago. But it is more popular today than it has ever been.
With games going from just a pastime activity to becoming an outright job and investment opportunity, they have come a long way.
The earliest computers were very slow, failure-prone that took over the entire room and had less power.
After World War II, electronic computers moved out of the realm of cutting edge laboratories and into large corporations.
University students were the first gaming programmers who transformed their fantasy and imagination into a digital adventure.
Since the first game ever developed in the 1950’s gaming has come a long way.
The Early Years of Gaming
Arthur Wynne, who was the creator of crossword was thinking of developing a new yet unique game that had to be featured in the Christmas edition in 1913.
He then came up with an interesting game that was initially called “word-cross” having ‘across’ and ‘down’ words.
This game became an overnight success as many people bought the New York City-based newspaper-“The New York World” dated December 21, 1913 (Sunday).
However, Wynee’s puzzle was very different from today’s crossword as it had a diamond shape having no internal black squares.
As it was immensely loved by the audience, the editor of the newspaper requested Wynne to create a new game weekly for the Sunday entertainment section every week.
The Introduction of Video Games
Dr. Edward Uhler Condon at the New York World’s fair in 1940 introduced the first-ever successful video game.
More than 50000 were reported to have been playing the game within 6 months. Unsurprisingly, this becomes a major runway success in no time.
Almost a decade later, Ralph Baer, a German born American, also called the father of video games launched the first commercial game successfully called, “Brown Box” in 1967.
With the concept of hooking up an electronic gaming system to a television set, he created the game. This further resulted in a generation of gamers addicted to their TV sets.
In addition to this, there are also various online forums for players, and in their communities, they discuss games they love and post reviews regarding the newly launched games.
You can also enjoy the game of slots with an individual person sitting in another corner of the world using sites like ‘All Slots Casino’ that you thought to be an impossible thing a few decades back.
Arcade Gaming Craze
‘Tennis for Two’ was created by an American physicist, William Higinbotham in 1958. Then came the most popular, Spacewar is among the first successful computer-based games created in the 1960s.
With the coming of Atari which was developed by Nolan Bushnell in 1972, the gaming industry saw a huge transition and it set a benchmark in the gaming industry managed to set a benchmark.
Players got engaged in the tournament to score the highest in games. This game not only brought about a change in the gaming community but also in the gaming industry.
Between 1972 and 1985, more than 15 companies started developing video games in order to expand the target audience.
The Crucial Development in Gaming
To support the hot craze of Atari competitions, many restaurant chains in the US, started to install games.
But gamers didn’t know about multiplayer gaming where they could compete directly with other players on the same screen.
The very first example was “Empire” in 1973 – a strategic turn-based game for up to eight players.
This was developed by PLATO i.e. Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operation, one of the first generalized computer-based teaching systems.
As per the data collected from PLATO, it was reported that the users have spent 300,000 hours playing Empire between 1978 and 1985.
The real revolution in multiplayer gaming was seen with the introduction of LAN and the Internet.
The gaming community achieved the next level of engagement, this allowed players to complete and interact with various computers resulting in improved social aspects.
In 1977 when Atari 2600 was released, the players got the experience of home consoles. This was a development that opened the gaming industry to a wider community and not the younger generation.
But the older generation got addicted to the game as well. With the help of home, the console had opened doors to a wider gaming community but because of the high cost, it was not affordable.
In this phase, the play station was in use but home consoles became convenient to the target audience.
In 1989, Nintendo was brought in the gaming market; video games became more portable in nature. This was handheld and loved by a lot of gamers.
Even today, Nintendo has sold more than 400 million portables. The demand for this particular game started to increase in the market as it has attracted both the new and older generation.
Video Gaming vs App Gaming
In 1993, Arcades was viewed as the forefront of the gaming industry. A few console games like “Street Fighter II”, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Time”, started as arcade games.
At that time, the computer started becoming common, and also with the advent of the Internet, video games started becoming obsolete. The major reason was that it was costly.
What are you thinking, did players stop playing? No
This demand for games from the gaming community gave rise to the app gaming in the early 2000s’.
App gaming diversified the gaming community and games were easily accessible as well as portable.
With the introduction of the App store, games like Angry Birds and Farmville became more familiar with the gaming community.
With the help of social media channels, the games started becoming viral and also enhanced the reach.
The World of Online Gaming
This was the most popular gaming genre.
Way back in 1993, gaming was more of a ‘solitary activity.’ With the help of multiplayer gaming, it wasn’t easy to compete with millions of players at one time.
But today, it is possible to compete with many players at the same time from the comfort of the living room.
With the evolution of MMORPG i.e. Massively Online Role Playing Game, online gaming has become a totally different experience today.
Players can compete with other players irrespective of the geographical location. The “World of Warcraft”, an unrivaled champion in this particular field has 8 billion subscribers.
This clearly means all 8 million people are connected to one another through an online camaraderie.
Not only this, but there are also many online forums for gamers and in their communities, they discuss games they love while posting reviews regarding the recently released games.
You can also enjoy a game of slots with a person sitting in another corner of the world using sites like ‘All Slots Casino’ that was an impossible thing a few decades back.
Augmented Reality Gaming
With the rapid advancement in technology, this is an era where AR gaming is a reality.
With a game like ‘Pokemon Go’, it is quite clear what AR gaming looks like. Since AR gaming has been introduced, the complete process has become interactive as well as lively. You will feel the character of the games is in reality and they are talking to you.
Playstation consoles and Wii offer exciting augmented games where a player can participate in the game and physically get involved by performing actions while playing.
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) games have been loved by game developers as they are thoroughly enjoying the development of every game.
A few types of research have claimed that AR/VR games are the true future of the gaming industry.
Closing Thoughts
The gaming industry has changed a lot within the last two decades. With the change in technology, gaming has changed.
And with every change, there have been ‘wow’ factors that have always surprised hardcore players.
With the introduction of online gaming, the gaming community has become a social world.
Mobile gamers and online gamers have bought a big leap in the industry. And with the help of AR and VR, the gaming industry is expected to soar.
There are unlimited possibilities for games in various sectors like education, research, as well as entertainment.
And even if they change their physical shapes and technologies, games will continue to remain an interactive entertainment system.
