What does the future of gaming look like?

For decades, video games have been an ever-growing market for gamers around the world. The video games first released in the 1970s and 1980s are very different from today’s fare, with eight-pixel graphics being traded in for increasingly realistic video games bordering on uncanny valley territory.

However, video game design is not the only part of the industry that is changing rapidly. It turns out that just like the games they enjoy, today’s players are a diverse group, and the way they consume their favorite video game titles has been changing for the past few years.

What do today’s consumers want, and how are online game developers adapting? Let’s take a look.

For a long time, enjoying video games was largely a solo endeavor. Without the easy access to the internet that billions of people enjoy today, gamers either played entirely on their own or had to move their equipment into the same room to play with other people. When they had questions about the game or their strategy, they had to either figure it out on their own, hope their friends were playing the same game and knew the answer, or try and subscribe to a monthly video game magazine subscription on the off chance it reviewed the title.

Today, of course, all of that is largely in the past. Not only are players able to connect with each other with little difficulty — whether they are in the next room or across the globe — but they are also able to find information about their games with ease. What is the best way to win at CS:GO? What are flat betting systems, and how do they impact the way one plays live card games? The answers to these questions are just a quick trip to YouTube or Reddit away.

Gamers tend to spend a lot of their time interacting with their fellow players and building tight-knit communities around their favorite titles. Even when the game is single player, it tends to have a group of loyal players who collaborate with each other and enjoy the game together.

A decade or two ago, gaming developers were the most popular names in the video game industry. Blizzard, for example, has long been a popular name thanks to their long-running massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft, which has been a well-loved title for two decades.

When one thinks of Blizzard, chances are good their games immediately come to mind because that is what the company does — it develops and publishes games. As games become more and more popular, however, and the market begins to shift from avid videogame fans to casual, everyday users happy to use their phone as their exclusive console, that is poised to change.

Today, giants in the tech industry are slowly navigating into the gaming industry. Google, Apple, and Meta, for example, are entering the field cautiously with their proprietary streaming services designed to make playing and broadcasting games as easy as playing a music video on YouTube. In fact, YouTube’s budding streaming service is an excellent example. YouTube Gaming Live was launched in 2015 and serves as the brand’s premiere live-streaming service. In 2018, users streamed roughly 50 billion hours of video gaming content. By 2020, that number was up to 100 billion.

For the past few decades, gaming has evolved, and so has the way in which players want to consume their favorite video game titles. Consumers are increasingly turning their attention to live streaming and watching live streamers play, rather than disconnecting from the internet and playing solo games. The kind of games they want to watch has also been shifting and has even led to the rise of casino gaming, with the number of players around the world increasing nearly every year.

Of course, as online casinos continue to grow in popularity, the number of operators around the world is poised to increase dramatically to meet the increased demand. Moreover, as the call for live streaming services and the communities of players they foster grows, so too will the attention that nontraditional gaming organizations give the industry. How do you think the gaming industry will change in the future? We’re excited to see where the future of gaming takes us!