Few areas of life have been untouched by technology and every week there seems to be something new changing the way our lives work. Entertainment industries have been impacted a lot, and billions of dollars are pumped into gaming every year, which means the giants (NVidia, Microsoft, etc.) of the industry are looking to evolve.

Even YouTube didn’t exist at the turn of the 21st century, which shows how we’ve seen the gaming industry become unrecognizable from the consoles of the 90s and early 00s.

Research and Strategy

It may not be the first thing that pops into your mind, but the research and strategy elements of gaming have definitely changed. Some of us can remember the days when we’d get stuck on a game and have no idea how to get through the level. Now, you can Google it or check YouTube out.

Games exist with a massive online community, forums, and even social networks that can be a way for people to find information. Working on skills can make all the difference in games where strategy is involved, like Poker.

Poker is one of the top examples of a game where there is a large community of people chatting about the game. Tournament play and individual techniques can be the subject of a lot of chat, but so are the basics, and people who want to play Texas Holdem online can find a load of information pretty easily. Holdem combines luck and skill, but knowing things like card rankings and betting strategies can make some difference for players. Immersing in the game can lead to people becoming much more serious about their hobby, too.

Superstars like Dan Negreanu have also contributed to the online scene with a Masterclass course allowing people to learn more about the game even at an elite level. Negreanu is a boss of tournament play and has had a long and illustrious relationship with the game.

Technology means people can share their reactions to tournaments or make tutorials and chat with their buddies about the world of poker. Strategy is part of this. Other games have the same sort of communities, especially needed when you think some modern games are changing with new updates all the time, so people are quick to take to their laptops and take recordings to show others how to do things.

Cloud Gaming Revolution

Remember when you had to buy a physical copy of a game and wait for it to install, sitting there for hours while the data was transferred? Those days are fading fast thanks to cloud gaming. Services like Xbox Cloud Gaming (formerly known as xCloud), plus NVIDIA GeForce Now solve some problems for gamers – the same sort of evolution is happening that we saw in movies and TV shows with Netflix revolutionizing things – with cloud gaming, you can play the latest titles on almost any device.

You need a decent internet connection, but besides that – you’re good to go. Powerful servers in the cloud run the game and you stream it to your device. This means you can pick up where you left off, no matter where you are. iPhone users can even connect via an app.

More Realism

Some games don’t need realism. Playing a card game on a console or app, or playing something that is more “surreal” than real can provide a unique gaming experience, but some games are about trying to put you in a character’s shoes, and realism is needed.

Blocky characters and simple backgrounds? Those days are long gone, well, unless it is done as a stylistic choice of the game itself. With the power of modern consoles and PCs, games now boast incredibly realistic visuals that make you feel like you’re part of the action.

Graphics cards have become beasts of their own, with ray tracing technology leading the charge and changing the way things work – without getting too technical, ray tracing simulates how light interacts with objects so it is more true to life. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 have made use of these graphics, making the virtual worlds more immersive than ever.

Huge AAA games have a lot of people working on them and the games where people want to be in the thick of the action often spend extra time making everything as realistic as possible.

Conclusion

We could pick out other areas, like e-sports and game streaming. Platforms like Twitch, turn gaming into a different proposition and some are making a career out of their passion. E-sports tournaments for games like League of Legends get massive audiences.

Some people want to play online and take on others while some still just prefer to play through the story modes, but games are still evolving at a quicker rate than most media due to the huge demand and financial backing for gaming companies.