The Rise of the Gaming Industry
Remember the time when as kids the DX-ball, House of the Dead, Virtual Cop meant everything to us! Controlling that silver ball, killing those deadly monsters and saving innocents in the city of goons were our ultimate mission in life. Personal computer specifications did not matter to us then, all we needed was a 256/512 megabytes of ram, windows xp, a mouse, keyboard and definitely a huge box of a monitor! That’s it, these are the beloved nostalgia for 90’s kids.
Ever wondered from how deep bottom gaming had started its journey, and now we are all here together. With the birth of the very first 1972’s arcade game ‘Pong’ to 2020’s hyped PC game ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, the video gaming revolution has reached a place that we deserve. Though our demands have changed a lot, our experience throughout these years gave us a high performance expectancy. Yet, gaming is gaming. No matter which platform you use, or how low-end, High-end PC/device you have, gamers always look for the way to accomplish their gaming passion. One thing a true gamer understands is gaming has no superiority between PC, console, mobile, tab device, nothing differentiates gaming, because our origin was all the same. Those four buttons with a joystick from our 60’s/70’s arcade era was our ground, from there gaming has evolved a lot, but its community didn’t. This gaming spirit, this unity is the only reason for the rise of the gaming industry, which will never ever gonna die, not under the gamers watch.
This industry is not just created by a bunch of gamers playing games, it stands in a strong base of the economic sector involved in development, marketing and enhancing of video games. Recently a report by Tom Wijman, a Newzoo senior market analyst, estimated the global gaming market generation will be about 159.3 Billion US dollars in 2020 itself! For the 80’s which was 35 billions, for the 90’s 4.7–20.8 billion and for the 21st century it was from 44.9–68 billion annually.
As mentioned before, the first ever video game was ‘Pong’, an arcade game which had to be played in a huge counter sized as a human with some buttons and joystick. Pong had to be played with two people at a time, so basically the very first game of the world was actually multiplayer! Later on the movement of arcade gaming continued with the famous ‘Galaxian (1979)’, ‘Rally-X (1980)’, ‘Pacman (1981)’, ‘Galaga (1981) ‘Tetris (1984)’, ‘Street Fighter (1987)’, ‘Captain Commando (1991)’, ‘Cadillacs and dinosaurs (1993)’ and many more.
Early 21st century started its journey with the legendary PC video game, The Fifa series. This annual release game eventually got a huge fan base and market share around the globe, presented by EA sports. Nobody from the gaming community could be found who has not tried fifa at least once in a lifetime. Within this all time blockbuster open-world game, The Grand Theft Auto series is just childhood emotions for every early 2000’s kids. From that GTA to today’s GTA 5, gamers have seen a lot of changes. Thus this GTA community has nostalgic bonding in open world saga. Afterwards Metal Gear series, Assassin’s Creed series, Far Cry series, Watch Dogs series, just broadened the open world games with even more different storylines and reality. These are strong evidence of how games can push us further to accomplishing impossible phantasms. Also strategy games like ‘Age of Empires’, ‘Commandos’ and ‘Dota 2’ have another fan base level in early 21st.
The first person view was just another game changer move of the gaming industry. We all can remember The famous ‘Doom (1993)’, specifically designed for the 320x200 resolution as stretched to a 4:3 physical aspect ratio, now we can play the newly released ‘Call of Duty: Black ops Cold War’, another high end video game out of 33 Call of Duty titles, at 60 frames per second within 1080 to 2160 pixels. This change, this change just happened in front of the gamers even out of their realizations! This genre of first person view/shooter has another fandom of gamers. Following with ‘Battlefield’ series, ‘Halo’ series, ‘Doom’ series, ‘Half Life’ series, ‘Borderlands’ series first person games just occupied more passionate gamers.
Yet the most exciting ones are about to be lifted up. The multiplayer Battle Royal games like ‘Pubg’, ‘COD:Warzone’, ‘Apex Legends’ etc and tactical games like ‘CS:GO’, ‘Rainbow Six Siege’, ‘Valorant’ etc are the most competitive games right now. Players are top to bottom serious about these MP games. Even visiting twitch, a game streaming platform can demonstrate the craziness about such games.
In modern days, now these things just get better and better. Every year gamers have to upgrade their PC specs to cope up with the upgrades. To play that Doom it only needed a PC with 256 MB of ram. Imagine now if anyone can play games decently except for the core i5 processor or equivalent, along with a convenient external graphics card and high performance SSD’s. Now-a-days, a good PC setup does really matter to meet your expectations. Eventually, the device-hardware industry has also gained a massive market share through gaming.
Newzoo projects also estimated that the gaming industry will surpass its revenue of 200 billion US dollars within 2023! Taking as past-time or profession, the gaming industry now consists of an estimated 2.7 billions around the globe, spending on an average of 7.11 hours weekly on video gaming.
No matter what platform you choose to play, even that may be in mobile gaming also, gaming spirit is the main and only option to the actual gamers. Anybody can play any games matched within the specs of the device, can be a mobile, PC, console, even VR kits! Rising from the 1990’s era in the hands of early 21st century gamers, the gaming industry is in the safe hands. Hope someday we will be playing games occupying some suits and kits!
