With the advent of Smartphone and the spread of Internet the popularity of gaming is increasing to a great extent. People, mainly the young generation are getting addicted to the Smartphone with every passing day. People once upon a time, used to go to physical casinos for playing games. Now most people prefer playing it in their Smartphone. Casinos like white lion casino offer an excellent gaming platform which is greatly enjoyed by the players. In fact, last year Netflix CEO said that their biggest threat to domination in online entertainment is the video gaming industry.
Online technical product sellers are saying that instead of a TV remote, people nowadays are looking for game controller. Figures show that in the year 2019, the revenue generated by the gaming industry touched $120 billion and experts are of the view that the revenue can touch $200 billion in the next two years. Experts have also predicted that by the end of the year 2021, around 2.7 billion, i.e. one third of the world population will be gamers.
The figures estimated in the gaming industry for the year 2019 has been stated as follows –
Mobile gaming: $64.4 billion
VR and AR gaming: $6.3 billion
Game-related videos: $6.5 billion
Console gaming: $15.4 billion
PC gaming: $29.6 billion
Going with the trend, big companies like Amazon, Google and Apple are all in the process of developing products on gaming. Actually, many technologies have come up in the field of gaming which is really entertaining the gamers and attracting them to the games. Google has launched Stadia where the players can play the game titles from the Cloud and there is no need to download them for playing. Amazon is also planning to launch its game streaming service. Games with comparatively new technology like augmented reality and virtual reality is also seeing a climb in revenue.
Now the question is what are the technical innovations which are helping to attract so many gamers to the new world? What are those innovations which have helped video gaming to break all niches and continue to become the mainstream in online entertainment?
Application of artificial intelligence in video games
Artificial intelligence is not only found in the books of science fiction. It has been integrated into our daily life fabric starting from Smart Compose of Gmail to facial recognition software to self driving cars. The latest addition to them is the video games.
Artificial Intelligence is being used most commonly in non-player characters, popularly known as NPC. Some examples of it are colourful ghosts in the series Pac-Man or the bystanders looking innocent in the series Grand Theft Auto. The game developers are using more sophisticated approach to the use of NPC. Some of the examples include use of a behaviour tree which is powered to complex decision making process. Another classic example is the enemy aliens used in Halo 2 where they can work together and                                                                                     coordinate different attacks. NPC’s can do anything what has been mentioned in the code.
People are debating whether the developers will give a mind to the NPC’s so that they keep on doing whatever they think once the game is on. But the doubt is that may reduce the fun experience of the gamer in the long run. What will happen if the NPC starts behaving in a way not anticipated by the gamer or the game developer and if that reduces the fun in the gaming process? There is one point which can develop more is the use of variety of designs which can attract the gamers more to the gaming world. AI can also provide valuable feedback to the designers of the game, and it can fine tune their creations to the next level. Some experts are of the belief that down the line after 10 years, it may be seen that a person is communicating with an NPC and may remember their past communication when they come online.
Use of AI helps the game developer to generate assets of the game and it gives relief to the designers from drawing an individual tree in the forest or making the formation of the rock in a canyon. AI has a technique named procedural content generation which is widely used for these purposes. The above is also used to make different levels of the game as it helps to get the player a fresh new level of experience every time.
Virtual Reality
After its discovery Virtual Reality has been attracting the gamers to a great extent. Expert game developers still consider VR to be a new niche in the field of gaming. Game developers are of the opinion that not much has been done on the VR front after it started becoming popular in the market since 2016. Many companies have even tried to bring in VR supportive devices, but many of them are not working in all the games.
The problem with the VR enabled headsets is that they are quite heavy as most of them weigh more than one pound. It has been reported that after playing for more than half player the player starts sweating.
Gaming developers are working round the clock to make VR friendlier to the consumer and once those supporting gadgets become user-friendly, companies are expecting VR to become more popular to the gamers at large.
Hyper reality
People have to become friendlier to the concept of hyper reality, which can be stated as a combination of virtual reality and physical reality. It is a peculiar combination of when AR meets VR. The player will be able to feel the objects of the game and can start playing the characters of the game. In VR, the player has to feel everything through the goggles and in hyper reality the use of goggles is not compulsory and players may find it more realistic.
Conclusion
Development of these technologies are making the video games look smarter and increasing the fun involved in the games. As a result, more people are getting addicted to the world of gaming with each passing day.
