How Gaming Became Social
One the biggest developments in digital communications in the past decade has been the incredible rise of social media sites. By allowing us more convenient ways to communicate with each other, it has led to the development of an entire industry that barely existed just twenty years ago.
But it’s not just communication that has benefited from the social media explosion, as the rapidly-growing gaming industry has also enjoyed many of the fruits of the innovation brought by the new social technologies.
[Tweet “”…games became more complex in a bid to offer more realistic playing environments.””]
Rather than being a solitary activity of a bedroom bound teenager, the new trend for social games has meant that gaming has increasingly become a communal activity that can be enjoyed in disparate locations around the world.
Although multiplayer gaming has long been enjoyed from the primitive likes of Pong in the 1970s to the hugely enjoyable Mario Kart games offered by Nintendo in the 1990s, it wasn’t until the introduction of broadband internet in many homes that the full potential of multi-player gaming was revealed.
One of the first notable instances of true multiplayer gaming was World of Warcraft. This immense role-playing game was introduced in 2004 and soon led gamers into an incredibly complex fantasy where they could compete against just about anybody from all over the world in real-time.
The increasingly open-world formats offered by new technologies meant that games became more complex in a bid to offer more realistic playing environments. However, the mobile revolution caused other gaming trends to form in order to facilitate a more convenient and fun style of multiplayer gaming.
The rise of simple yet addictive games such as Minecraft drew massive success from the way in which players could wreak havoc with their real-life opponents’ block building plans. And similarly, the competitive element offered by leading online blackjack sites such as Lucky Nugget Casino have further illustrated how the social aspect of traditional card games has been facilitated by new technologies to allow gamers to play with ease at their own convenience.
Other traditional games that have greatly benefited from the multiplayer aspect include sporting games such as FIFA 16. Such games have drawn much of their appeal through expanding their multiplayer options such as the Ultimate Team mode, whilst barely updating the single player aspects as software publishers rush to take advantage of the social gaming boom. And with communicative technologies developing at an incredible rate, it will soon be the case that solitary gaming is seen as something of a curiosity.
