Technology advancements influenced the entire world. Something that may seem impossible just 30 years ago is completely normal today. Technology surely helps in many fields like medicine, transportation, automatization, communication, and so on. We won’t dive too deep into this, but instead, we will check how technology has influenced the gaming industry.
History of Video Games
The whole video game industry revolves around technology. Nothing will be possible without it. The first ever video games were created in the early 1950s, but they weren’t available to broad audiences. Video games actually became popular in the 1970s, when the arcade game Pong became popular.
It was a simple 2D arcade multiplayer game that resembled on table tennis. Arcade games were popular until the 1990s when computer games came around with better graphics, better multimedia and unique storylines. People stopped going to arcades as they could play better games from home. But technology advancements didn’t stop there. Every year, there was a better computer with better graphics that supported more advanced games. In the early 2000s, the Internet became accessible and quite stable for the majority of the Western world, which brought online gaming to life. It became clear that the future of gaming is in online gaming, and that was the beginning of Esports as we know it today.
Esports Games
The first-ever Esports tournament took place on 19. October 1972. at Stanford University for the game Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics. However, it wasn’t the Esports as we know it today. FPS games like Counter-Strike and Call of Duty are the ones that changed everything. Counter-Strike was the most played online action game in Esports for over 10 years before CS:GO took over in 2012. On the other side, there is not a single gamer that didn’t play COD4 back in the day.
Back then, who could even imagine that people would be placing esports bets on regulated betting platforms on a regular basis? According to Rivalry, both games are still very popular to this day, but they are unrecognizable. With CPU and GPU advancements, both games look almost realistic.
However, Call of Duty follows technology, and they release a new game every year. Every year, they include more features and improve graphics, mechanics, and overall gaming experience. On the other side, Counter-Strike didn’t release a new title in 10 years. Of course, the game is also evolving, but there aren’t plenty developers can do at this point. The only thing they can do is to transfer it to the new Source 2 engine. Then, and only then, CS: GO would once again be able to compete with Call of Duty in terms of graphic and in-game mechanics.
Cloud Gaming
Probably the most irritating part about technology and gaming is the constant need to upgrade. Gamers constantly needed to upgrade their PCs in order to play new titles. However, today’s technology has an answer to that problem too. Cloud gaming or gaming on demand is a type of gaming that allows people to play any game with any PC. This type of gaming runs video games on online remote servers and streams them directly to the client’s device. Simply put, it is playing a game remotely from a cloud.
This way, gamers do not have to spend thousands of dollars every few years to buy a new PC. They just need to sign up for some Cloud gaming service and have a stable Internet connection. XBOX and NVIDIA are currently the pioneers of cloud gaming without any real competition. Be that as it may, more companies will see this as an opportunity, and cloud gaming subscriptions will surely become cheaper than Netflix in the following years.
VR Gaming
The latest invention in the video game industry is virtual reality. With so many AR and VR advancements, a lot of people believe VR gaming is the future of this industry. Even Facebook changed its company name to Meta to get into VR as soon as possible. Keep in mind that VR gaming is still relatively new, and it can’t compare with regular games in terms of graphics and gaming features. But give it a few years. With good enough hardware, virtual reality could become as real as it gets.
