The gaming industry is one of the best examples of a market that has adapted to the inevitable change that technology has brought in. Changes ushered in by technology have been so sudden and groundbreaking that those gaming companies that were not able to move with the times have fallen behind the rest of the industry.
However, those who saw the changes on the horizon and adjusted their business models accordingly were able to spring themselves into the modern market. Many of the top names in gaming that exist today were brands that were open to this technology rather than trying to deny the systemic change that was about to happen.
The online casino blueprint
Overall, gambling was an industry that could accommodate these substantial technological changes. Online casinos have explored every possible technological development. A few factors have driven this thirst for innovation.
The primary driving force has been the global rise of online casinos, which have removed the land-based barriers that previously existed and brought in a pool of technological and gaming innovators striving to create the next smash-hit in the casino world.
There have been other considerations, and another key factor has been the easing of regulations and laws that previously hampered casinos. This has been the case across multiple states, provinces and jurisdictions globally, including in prominent markets such as the US and Canada. It has resulted in the market cultivating huge investment and innovation and becoming an experimental field for some of the most forward-thinking companies in technology and fintech.
Payment innovation in gaming
The online casino sector has also played a significant role in fintech innovation. Casinos have spearheaded some of the most substantial changes in payment innovation, including cryptocurrency, e-wallets and pay by mobile facilities.
These methods aim to make the payment systems casino gamers use a lot more efficient and easy to use. Although they’re not for every casino gamer, especially those who prefer more traditional payment systems, the best pay by mobile casino sites are beginning to establish grounding in the industry. They have gone from the niche areas of fintech to a reputable arm of a burgeoning online casino gaming world.
Broader advances in the gaming world
We can see technological changes across the broader gaming industry if we step back from the casino sector. Thanks to the changes the online gaming industry has ushered in, it’s impossible to ignore or downplay just how advanced the gaming world has become.
Twenty years ago, the idea of playing against a friend online was still a long way off. Top gaming companies knew how lucrative this technology would be if they could get ahead of their competition. However, widespread adoption was still challenging in the mid-2000s due to connectivity, cost and internet speed issues.
Within a decade, smartphones and other mobile devices gained access to ultra-fast 5G internet connectivity speed, but in the mid-2000s, smartphones could barely access the internet.
The 2010s
It wasn’t just the falling costs and higher speeds of broadband that pushed gamers toward online platforms, as innovation also pushed game designers to devise ideas that harnessed this rising technology.
In today’s market, we can do everything on our phones, including banking, investing in cryptocurrency and accessing sites where we can face off against gamers who could be playing from anywhere in the world. The early 2010s, however, was when this technology truly started to surface and showcase just how much potential it had.
League of Legends, marketed as a free to play game, shifted the whole gaming dynamic. It focussed on the importance of microtransactions rather than a one-off initial fee to purchase a game. It’s a model that was perfected on video console games, such as GTA 5, where the bulk of that game’s multibillion-pound revenue directly resulted from microtransactions.
The internet became integral to the changes in the gaming industry throughout the 2010s, and it further influenced and created the rest of the flourishing market we see today. Influencers, professional video gamers and gaming vloggers who have a passion for gaming have all been able to carve out careers for themselves because of the advances in technology and the implementation of the internet.
Without these tech advances and without companies adjusting to the changing market, there’s a strong argument that the gaming industry would be nowhere near the size it is today.
Final thoughts
Ultimately, technology has made gaming easier. It has made connecting online, finding other communities and keeping updated with the latest information and gaming releases much more straightforward.
It has also meant that the internet has become a hub and a resource for good, allowing the brightest minds in the industry to share their ideas more easily and innovate as one collective international community rather than the small, localised hubs of game designers that existed in the 1980s and 1990s.
It’s impossible to think of a modern-day gaming industry without the internet. As VR and AI play an even more critical role in developing gaming ideas, technology will continue to be integral and influential in the future trajectory of this mammoth industry.