The gaming industry is thriving, and perhaps the biggest reason for that is the ambiguity behind the term: ‘gaming industry’.
Twenty years ago, if someone were to mention the gaming industry, you’d know exactly what they’re talking about: video games played on consoles and PCs, perhaps with a few arcade games thrown into the mix.
The boundaries were very clear, and so was the business model, but today, those boundaries are considerably harder to define. Gaming has expanded far beyond the traditional sphere, with it now encompassing everything from mobile gaming apps to regulated social gaming sites, cloud gaming platforms to live-service experiences, blockchain gaming to competitive eSports.
That variety has become a major part of the industry’s appeal, but why exactly is ‘alternative gaming’ so captivating for modern consumers, and what does it mean for the future of this industry we know and love?
Finding New Ways to Play
Perhaps the simplest explanation for the rise of alternative gaming models is that consumers themselves have changed. The modern player is no longer necessarily someone who sits down in front of a console for two hours, modern gaming now fits around a variety of lifestyles, meaning there’s a huge variety of ways to play.
Consider mobile gaming for a second. This has removed one of the biggest barriers to gaming altogether: the need for dedicated hardware. Almost everyone already carries a powerful gaming device in their pocket, meaning a game can be downloaded and played almost instantly.
Cloud gaming, too, takes that accessibility a step further. Rather than requiring consumers to own hardware capable of running the latest releases, these platforms allow games to be streamed to devices, putting less emphasis on ownership and more emphasis on simply getting access.
With the ways in which we play evolving, so too has the space for different gaming models. Developers are unburdened by the traditional limitations of boxed releases, so there’s now far more room to experiment with different, effective business strategies and player experiences, with social gaming, in particular, having emerged from this willingness to move beyond the conventional model.
In short, there are millions of new gamers compared to what there was twenty years ago, and as such, a huge variety of ways to play. No one wants to feel stuck in a box, of course, and gamers have always looked for the next best thing. Some players want a sprawling single-player adventure, others want an app that prioritizes multiplayer interaction. The point is, gamers are open to new things, and indeed, it’s this kind of innovation and diversification that the industry was built on in the first place.
Innovation and Disruption
There’s also an important distinction between innovation and disruption. Gamers will not automatically embrace something simply because it’s new – the industry has seen plenty of new ideas that have tried and failed to gain traction. What tends to succeed is innovation that genuinely creates a better, or at least equally interesting experience.
Mobile gaming works because it makes games dramatically more convenient, cloud gaming attempts to reduce the importance of hardware, live-service games provide a constantly evolving experience, social gaming makes the experience more accessible, Web3 games introduce new forms of ownership – and that’s just naming a few examples.
All of these models have been accepted because users have immediately understood what it gives them that another model doesn’t, and have thus been willing to embrace them. In other words, they’re captivating and successful because they’re offering something genuinely valuable, and that’s what has made the gaming industry so enthralling – and difficult to pin down – over the last few years.
