It’s just a truism that technology has impacted every aspect of modern life. In fact, there aren’t too many arenas that have not yet been touched extensively by technology — even National Parks are embracing technology these days.
In some aspects of life, technology has had an ‘evolution, not revolution’ impact. In others, it has basically changed the game. One of those areas is the gaming industry, which prior to the development of the computer was essentially limited to boards, dice, and cards. Today, video games have been brought to life by technology, which has had a revolutionary impact on what game developers can achieve. In this article, we’ll dive a little deeper into the many profound ways that technology has helped the gaming industry reach its full potential.
More Realistic Experiences
Think back to the consoles that you used to play in the 1980s and 1990s. While they were deemed exceptional at the game, today they look primitive, and that’s mostly to do with the 8-bit graphics of the consoles. To be fair to the consoles, it was all that was available at the time. Today, gamers get to enjoy high-definition displays that help to create a much more immersive experience. The photorealism of the graphics exists in another stratosphere to the graphics of yesteryear, and the most exciting part of that story is this: there’s every chance that future gamers look at the graphics of today and think, wow, that is a primitive experience, in much the same way we look back at the SEGA Megadrive.
Reimagining Traditional Games
The quality of gaming titles released in the past decade has been exceptional. They are, in effect, works of art. But modern technology hasn’t just allowed for the development of ambitious new games. It’s also allowed for traditional games to be brought into the modern era. Chess, for example, can easily be played from any device, without the need for a board or pieces.
Slot machines can be redesigned for the modern, online world, all thanks to technology that replicates the functionality of traditional one-armed bandits. While the modern gaming climate is marked by the release of groundbreaking games, its biggest impact might just be ensuring that historical games have as much a place in the future as they do in the past.
Mainstream Accessibility
It’s easy to romanticize the gaming culture of yesteryear (actually, it’s easy to romanticize most things from yesteryear), but the truth is that while gaming back might have been fun, it was also pretty exclusive. You needed to have a console to play any game, not just the best games, and that’s something that most people just didn’t have. What technology has been good at is helping to expand the number of people who get to enjoy games. The vast majority of people in the United States — and increasingly, across the world — own a smartphone, which means they’ll have access to more than one million games, many of which will be free to play.
You don’t even need to have an Xbox or PlayStation to play great modern games, either. Most laptops are powerful enough to run games, and with platforms like Steam routinely offering deals and discounts, it’s never been more affordable to get into gaming.
How Technology Will Impact the Future of Gaming
OK, so that’s the state of modern gaming: pretty awesome, thanks to technology. What, then, of the future? The video gaming industry has been marked by innovation since the beginning, and there’s no reason to think that will change anytime soon.
In fact, we might be on the cusp of the next great leap forward in video gaming. With the dreams of technology such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and 5G all beginning to come true, there’s little doubt that the forthcoming decade will be interesting for gamers. Nobody thirty years ago could have imagined that gaming would reach today’s level, and we probably imagine where it’ll be in ten years’ time.
