Gaming technology has evolved rapidly over the last decade. The research and development that is constantly ongoing in the gaming industry are astounding. The gaming community has grown hugely in numbers and now has gamers of all age groups. Game developers push their limits to enhance the gaming experience by way of their innovation and technological developments.
Cloud Gaming
It is also known as Gaming-as-a-Service (GaaS). Games now no longer have to be limited by the memory of disks or consoles. Cloud technology is impressive in its ability to provide a significant server size. The purpose of cloud gaming is to give gamers easy and convenient access to games instead of downloading again on many devices. So, cloud gaming lets users to stream games directly on several devices and save time on download and installation.
Virtual Reality Gaming
Virtual Reality Gaming is still in its initial phases, and while it has briefly been a thing of intrigue, it is yet to pick up its pace. VR games can offer more novelty and user engagement in the future. The development is ongoing and has generally met with a good response with VR headsets like Sony’s PlayStation VR and the Oculus Quest.
For gamers, VR headsets can help create a 360-degree view of a real arcade and give them an enjoyable experience and feel of playing in a real arcade. Arcades have now even gone as far as to provide their customers AR and VR.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is paving the way for more ingenious technology in gaming. The Non-Playing Characters (NPCs) in video games are becoming more intelligent, realistic and responsive to their environment and needs. Therefore, a player can expect a better and more realistic gaming experience, especially in the very famous open-world games and sandbox games. NPCs are becoming so sophisticated that they are even reasonably making decisions for themselves in the games by way of a programmed behaviour tree, anticipating and realistically responding to the game.
AI is seeing such strides in its development that it is now also capable of generating game assets that help its designers immensely in the game making and developing process. Procedural content generation is instrumental to designers in creating the various levels of a game in such a way that no level fully resembles another and makes sure that a level isn’t a mere, clumsy repetition in different from its previous level in just a different setting. AI is not only a part of the game experience itself but will be a huge boon for the game makers as it can provide analytics and feedback to help them improve their craft.
Hyper-Immersive and Hyper-Realistic Gameplay
Game graphics are becoming so much more sophisticated, polished and refined that it may soon be hard to tell if it’s a game or a video of real places and people. With photorealistic graphics, the level of immersion will be remarkable. Ultra-realistic graphics in the game focus a great deal on the lighting, shadows and reflections. This is possible by way of an algorithm called ray tracing. With fully rendered sophisticated worlds like those seen in Grand Theft Auto V, Read Dead Redemption 2, Ghost of Tsushima and CyberPunk 2077. Hyperreality is expected to be seen in VR gaming as well.
Better security
The technological innovations and developments have led to better security mechanisms for players to enjoy a safe online gaming experience. Online gaming can be a vulnerable place in this respect. This is especially true for the online gaming world, where people can cheat, hack and commit cyber fraud. So, game makers will want to keep the best safety systems in place to retain their user base. One might soon see fingerprint and facial recognition making their way into online gaming.
Mobile Gaming
Mobile gaming is on the rise and is interestingly offering great competition to hand-held console gaming. Mobile gaming is popular because of the ease and accessibility that it provides. Users can play it in any location with internet connectivity.
The future is promising with the slow emergence of 5G. With 5G, this technology standard will eliminate lag, and mobile games will be faster than ever in their performance. This is especially great news for Augmented Reality (AR) games. AR games like Pokémon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and The Walking Dead: Our World have met great success and user engagement. With 5G entering the picture, 5g will instantly supply AR gamers data of their immediate environment with rapid speed. AR games are likely to become qualitatively much better than ever before.
Due to the recent crisis, mobile gaming was resorted to as a preferred mode of recreation. Gamers switched from real arcades to playing games on malaysia online casino and other game websites. This viral trend of mobile gaming is likely to continue and grow bigger than ever, even after the pandemic ends.
Social Gaming
Social gaming is a respected realm where people create virtual recreational spaces to communicate with one another. Games like Animal Crossing, Among Us, and Fantasy sports and Esports have made users feel connected and given them a rich unified game experience. With chat options, video calling options and so on, connectivity among players in games is likely to increase in a way that we can’t anticipate.
The gaming world is very quickly entering the mainstream media and is being widely recognized. Celebrities have more participation in the gaming world, and there are a wide acknowledgement and respect for what a gaming platform is capable of.
In Conclusion
The gaming community can surely expect surprise, shock and awe at the coming developments in gaming tech. The gaming industry is one of the most successful industries in the world. It was successful and active even in the midst of the pandemic. Video gaming has been assuming a completely new shape and form in the last few years. Millennials are the major target audience for these companies as they have a good grasp and appreciation of technology.
Of these advances, I think AI is the most interesting. Games can often be predictable, but AI gives more characteristic and charm to NPCs in any game. With games becoming more realistic, it wouldn’t be surprising to see AI also follow that realism, where you can interact with NPCs and they can behave more realistically.
I’m not too interested in cloud gaming though. It’s good that it exists for people that might be interested, but it just feels weird not owning a game, but instead only having access to a service. But one advantage I can definitely imagine is cloud gaming being highly accessible for gamers with low spec PCs, therefore not having to rely on CPU, GPU, or Internet latency.