Video games have exploded in popularity over the last decade, cementing themselves as one of the most popular forms of entertainment, and becoming accepted by the mainstream as akin to mediums like film, television, music, and books.
As a result, the gaming industry has ballooned in size. The global market rose to $227.06 billion in 2022 and will rise to $282.3 billion by the end of 2024. This growth is projected to continue, rising at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.76% that will see it reach $363.2 billion by 2027.
There are a range of factors that contribute to this growth, including cultural shifts that are making gaming appealing to a wider audience, shifts in demographics that has seen previous younger generations grow into middle-aged gamers, and changing business models.
Another contributor has been technology, which has helped to change every element of the gaming industry from development to distribution.
Random Number Generators
Computers are great at many things but they struggle to create anything truly random. This is because they can only do what their programming has told them to do, making it possible to reverse-engineer the patterns in their supposed randomness.
Sometimes, pseudo-randomness is enough, but other times, it’s not. One of the occasions where only true randomness is acceptable is with online casino games as this is how players can be sure they’re being treated fairly.
In card games like blackjack, physical casinos ensure fairness by having dealers shuffle their cards. But in more recent years, online casinos like PokerStars Casino have exploded in popularity as players have looked to play blackjack online and gain access to the different variants that these sites offer, such as classic, premium, and high roller. Since there is no physical deck to shuffle, these casinos use a random number generator to ensure games are fair.
The order in which cards are drawn is determined by the outputs of the random number generator. These outputs are derived by taking truly random inputs, such as atmospheric static, the movements of lava lamps, and the path of photons through a semi-transparent mirror, and running them through an algorithm.
Randomness like this has helped reputable online casinos to become highly trusted amongst players and grow into a multi-billion dollar industry on its own.
Cloud Infrastructure
Games used to be shipped exclusively on physical media. Today, even if you buy a Switch cartridge or PlayStation disc, the game will still download content from the internet. Additionally, many of the features included in most games are online-based, allowing you to compete against other players or interact with them in an open world.
This is all thanks to the cloud. Publishers can continue to develop new content for their titles, keeping players entertained for longer without the need to keep churning out entirely new games, a process that is incredibly resource-intensive and expensive.
Grand Theft Auto is one of the best examples of this. From the release of the first game in 1997, Rockstar Games churned out a new title every one or two years until GTA V. After its launch in 2013, Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two Interactive have focused on online updates to the game with a sequel only scheduled for late 2025, 12 whole years after the release of the current game.
The reason for much of this is economic. Modern games cost much more to develop, so the opportunities afforded by cloud infrastructure allows publishers to recover the costs and increase the returns on their investments by extending the life of their games.
This isn’t all we see cloud infrastructure doing, either. Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Sony have all been trialling game streaming services where players can use practically any device to play games on, rather than being tied to expensive hardware.
In the case of Google, it has since closed its Stadia service, but the other companies continue to develop their platforms. This is helping to make gaming more accessible and these brands to reach even more customers with their content.