Evolution of gaming from a niche community to a multi-billion dollar industry

Gaming has evolved from being a niche community restricted to LAN parties and solo adventures to a global phenomenon that connects players from different parts of the globe. It has now outgrown Hollywood in the entertainment sector, accounting for $140 billion in revenue.

Moreover, the difference between gaming and sports is starting to fade away slowly. Competitions like Intel Extreme Masters and ESL One see packed stadiums and millions of viewers all around the world. The accelerated growth of the gaming industry can be primarily attributed to online gaming and smartphones.

Cyber cafes dedicated to gaming were once the highlight of every gamers’ life. However, the growing popularity of online gaming soon replaced local LAN gaming sessions by creating a virtual destination to not only meet up with friends but discover new ones as well.

Online gaming services like Steam, Battle.net, and Origin to name a few, have replaced the need for physical games stores, giving average gamers instant access to a game.

Online multiplayer games also use different methodologies like recording statistics, offering players a better loot through progression and introducing new updates and patches to add greater value to the game.

This not only keeps players coming back for more but also urges some to use money beyond what they spend for the game to skip through the progression phase and get the best loot.

Free-to-play has become just another strategy in the online gaming community. With many games offering several advantages to enhance their in-game characters both physically and visually through microtransactions within the game.

Microtransactions are seen across all gaming platforms including PCs, mobiles, consoles, etc. They are well hidden within free-to-play games and serve as the primary source of revenue in the gaming industry. And, while some games use these transactions for simple visual enhancements, others use them to help players skip the progression phase.

Smartphones have made gaming far more accessible and affordable than ever before, while assembling a gaming PC would cost little over Rs 50,000, a good smartphone capable of running every game would come in at under Rs 20,000. And, there’s the added benefit of mobility and convenience, which a PC simply cannot offer.

Telecom service providers, in comparison to the last decade, are offering excellent data plans, ensuring smartphone users are always connected to the Internet at marginal costs.

And, as smartphone users continue to grow so does the amount invested in the development of mobile games.

The battle royale genre’s popularity seeped into the smartphone market with games like PUBG and Fortnite. Today, PUBG is standing toe-to-toe with Fortnite because of its increasing number of mobile players. The game has over 200 million users in total with 30 million active users.

Cloud gaming is set to become the next evolution in gaming. With big names like Google, Microsoft and Nvidia investing billions of dollars to developing cloud gaming platforms that are capable of streaming games from serves on data centres to a screen in front of you, running solely on an Internet connection without the need of gaming hardware.