The Innovation of Online Gaming: The Right Time for the Breakthrough
5 minutes
Posted by: David
Online gaming is one of our most technological achievements in human history, for the world of entertainment, that is.
Video games and online gaming has risen in terms of popularity, which has sparked an innovative movement toward its improvement.
Even new online casinos Australia in February 2022 have benefitted from the development of new gaming hardware to make online play as seamless as ever.
With the gaming industry being one of the highest-grossing platforms for many different countries, the right time for a breakthrough has become as essential now more than ever.
The general revenue gaming makes up 12% of its overall funds in 2020, reaching between $139.9 billion. This was an increase compared to the revenue of $120.1 billion in 2019.
The average statistic is that four out of five people play video games in the United States alone, which can ring true in most modern countries. Let’s take a look at the innovations that have led to this rise in the number of gamers.
Virtual Reality
VR has become a big stepping stone into what is possible for the world of gaming, adding that extra layer of immersion we have all craved from our virtual worlds.
For the past few decades, its technology development has led to many major milestones in creating new ways of communication.
For online gaming, players can now completely immerse themselves into an environment and talk to their fellow players. This is all the while never actually being near each other in the world of reality and even being hundreds of miles away at that.
VR is still trying to break through as a popular choice of gaming, with many drawbacks that prevent players from taking part.
For starters, a lot of players can feel motion sickness from experience. In addition, the VR world is not suited for everyone’s disposition, so it helps to add further improvements to the overall experience.
VR is constantly on the edge of major breakthroughs but has yet to reach its full potential. However, its social ramifications are what make it a constant area of study.
Augmented Reality
The power of augmented reality is similar to that of virtual reality, only a lot more user-friendly and wildly more accessible.
It grants people the use of bringing virtual worlds and characters to them instead of putting themselves there in the first place.
In addition, augmented reality can be attached to smartphones through the use of apps, meaning that most people who own one are capable of playing.
While these have been implemented in the use of many different casino games, for example, poker or blackjack, there was one game in particular that caused the technology to gain a sudden burst of popularity.
Pokémon GO was a game released in 2015, and its appearance paved the way for augmented reality to be the next big craze.
The game allows you to see pocket-sized monsters in the real world by looking at them through your phone. Catch them by sliding your finger across the screen to throw poke balls.
This game led to a massive breakthrough in the use of augmented reality gaming, spawning hundreds of copycat games that wished to jump on this massive trend.
If it wasn't for the world-breaking success of this game, you probably never would have known about it.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence, or AI as some know it, has been implemented in many facets of our daily lives without us knowing it.
The common household item, Alexa, is one of them, who acts as your personal assistant or friend at home.
For the gaming purposes, however, AI has been used as a common method of creating NPCs (Non-Playable Characters). NPCs are in almost every game, acting as either innocent residents of the world or an enemy that you must fight against.
Normally, they have been nothing more than just filler to make the game feel more alive and lived-in.
In recent years, the AI behind NPCs has been programmed for more complex duties and tasks within a game. Game developers have now given them more nuance, adding problem-solving skills and difficulty in combat encounters.
For example, a boss fight in Batman Arkham City had a character learn and adapt to your moves in order to fend off your attacks.
Whilst it has not reached full awareness (thankfully, in some cases), NPCs still have continued improvements in many aspects of gaming.
One day you may find yourself interacting with a real, intuitive AI that you and your friends can have fun hanging with, that even allows you to feel like flying.
Cloud Gaming
The world of Cloud Gaming was a big innovation to improve gaming accessibility, letting you play games in the clouds. The premise of Cloud gaming is to let players play video games by streaming them online from another computer on a server far away.
This is similar to how people stream movies on Netflix or music from iTunes. The process works fine in theory, as all players need to play their favourite games is an internet connection and not the physical disk or download.
This includes the ability to play on any device they want, regardless of what platform the game was originally released on.
Unfortunately, there are some issues with this kind of gaming, as they became apparent just as the technology was about to make a breakthrough.
For starters, you must be connected to the internet at all times in order to keep playing. If you lose connection, this could lose your progress in the game.
The connection also needs to be maintained throughout, as the speed and processing power of the game is determined by how good your connection is.
These are the issues that can only be resolved through a more reliable form of internet connection.
High-Definition Graphics
Finally, what makes any form of gaming more popular is the look and design of the games.
Recently, big breakthroughs have been made in the more realistic side of things, which involves creating characters and environments to look as if they could be mistaken for reality.
There are many aspects that go into this type of design, allowing games to make it possible for the human face to be completely rendered on a computer. The aspects included are:
- Ray-tracing
- Reflections
- Lens flare
- Motion capture
- Definition
There is still a ton more included that makes graphics nowadays look so incredible. PC gaming companies such as Nvidia and AMD have been the biggest contributors to this technology level, allowing them to use advanced techniques to fabricate these worlds.
This is set to be a major game-changer, but the biggest obstacle is the lack of chips on hand.
The chip shortage has become a huge problem between 2020 and 2021 due to the sudden rise of cryptocurrency mining which uses the same hardware.
If this number ever increases, then many games are expected to have this level of detail in online gaming.
