Gaming Trends

Morten Holland
Games Design L3

Gaming Trends

The gaming industry has changed a lot over the past 10 years, which means lots of trends have appeared to either improve the gamers’ experience, or to help game creating businesses. Here are some of the trends.

Streamers and YouTubers

The amount gamers play and watch other gamers play games have drastically changed in the recent years, due to the popularity of the Twitch.tv and YouTube commentaries. 100 million people watch people play games on the Twitch.tv service a month which shows just how much time people watch people play. Game creators now have to think about if a game will be enjoyable to play and watch. Some games may even incorporate the fans in some way.

Some games such as ‘Gang Beasts’ and ‘Goat Simulator’ are aimed directly at streamers and commentators. The companies of these games provide wacky and fun content that’s entertaining to watch and play. Something that's easy to watch, that you don't have to pay attention to a story or characters.


Second Screen Experience

Studies show that a huge percentage of gamers use phones and tablets for a considerable amount of time, so it would only make sense to incorporate those devices to the gaming experience too. Many gamers can now link up their devices to gain extra content in  hundreds of video games, such as 'Assassins Creed Unity'. This game has chests placed throughout the map that require progress from the mobile game to open. These chests contain outfits and weapons that cannot be gotten any other way, which can be good and bad. It can be good because it adds more content to the game, but it could be bad because it excludes some players from content if they do not own a tablet or mobile device.

Some games such as 'Skylanders' have restricted content that can only be accessed by using toys. Some of these characters are only playable if the gamer owns the right toy.


Storage

Memory sticks and USBs aren't the only ways of storing your game saves now. With the advancement of the gaming industry, game saves can now be stored in the 'Cloud' which is a non-physical storage device that's free. It basically allows gamers to save their games and profiles right onto the internet, so they can be used elsewhere or even as a backup save.' Cloud saving isn't just for gaming, but it can be really helpful if you are going to a friend's house to play a game.

Also, the amount of space a storage device can hold is becoming ridiculous. The newly released consoles such as the 'Xbox One' come with a built in storage device that has 500GB of space. For an Xbox One, that won't hold a tonne of games. The console before that was the 'Xbox 360' and 500GB would be an unnecessary amount of space. This shows how quickly the storage devices are expanding but also how much space games are taking up. External hard drives for Xbox One can be as big as 4 TB (Terabytes/1000GBs).


Social Networking

Now in gaming, the social and communication aspects are pretty big. For example, the Xbox One has an 'Active Feed' where people can share video clips they made in-game, screenshots and statuses, similar to 'Facebook' or 'Twitter'. You can also share your clips or screenshots straight to Twitter and Facebook.


Early Access

Companies such as 'Valve' and 'Microsoft' have made early access programs that allow players to play games that are still in development or early stages, so they can help make the game better. The gamers voice their opinion on what they like and dont like, and can even report bugs. This helps both the game developers, and the fans of the games.

'Steam' has an early access feature and 'Microsoft' has 'Preview Program' which is the same, but this also lets you use apps that Microsoft have started working on.

Players as Creators

Due to the high success of the hit game 'Minecraft', companies have been implementing the 'Players as creators' feature. This is where games are highly focused on creating levels yourself, as a player. A good example is 'Mario Maker'. This game gives players the assets for a game such as sprites and images so gamers can make their own levels, and share them online for others to play which creates a huge bank of player created levels.

Another game that has this feature is 'Grand Theft Auto V'. This game also has a bank of player created races, deathmatches, capture the flags, etc.

eSports and Tournaments 

Competitive gaming has come a long way since split-screen local games. Gaming events all over the world attract huge amounts of gamers to watch people compete for thousands of dollars over games such as 'Call of Duty' or 'Counter Strike'.

I think the main reason people enjoy watching these events are that people like to follow a team that plays a game. Someone to root for. The two most famous teams in 'Call of Duty' are named 'FaZe' 'OpTic' and they compete in gaming events a lot and earn money from it too.

Very similar to the Twitch.tv services or the YouTube sevices, these events can be free or can cost money for tickets or even entrance tickets to participate in the event.