The introduction of live streaming has had a massive impact on various industries, from sports to music. Yet, perhaps it’s gaming that has felt this new technology more than anything else, so how has it changed gaming and what can we expect in the future?
A New Type of Entertainment
To understand how big the arrival of streaming has been, we need to go back to 2014 and the first time that the Twitch platform came to widespread public attention. This was when players from all over the planet played Pokémon: Red on a collaborative basis and set a new world record for the number of participants in a single-player online game.
It ran for over two weeks and once it was finished the Twitch marketing VP, Matthew DiPietro, said that its success was an example of video games becoming a platform for entertainment that goes far beyond what the person who created the game had in mind.
This helps to explain what has happened as gaming has been converted into something completely different thanks to the chance, we now must live stream games. Playing games has gone from a solitary experience to something that can be easily shared, turning it into a social activity where the actual game is just part of the overall appeal.
We can easily see how popular this is by looking at the incredible statistics from Twitch and other streaming platforms. The number of average concurrent viewers has risen steadily throughout most of Twitch’s existence, reaching close to 2.8 million in 2021 before falling slightly in the last couple of years.
The most popular Twitch streamers include the likes of Ninja and AuronPlay, who have 18.5 million and 15.1 million subscribers, respectively. This shows that streaming video games has become a huge industry that looks set to continue growing even more in the next few years.
Live Dealer Casino Games
We can see another way of live streaming by looking at casino games. After moving online at the start of this century, casino games were typically played using virtual tables, where a computer-generated roulette wheel or deck of cards would be used to bring the game to life.
However, live streaming technology has allowed casinos to reproduce a more authentic casino atmosphere by beaming a human dealer onto the screen as the game takes place. This allows the player to feel that they’re in a luxurious casino setting and also means that real wheels and cards can be used.
This approach lets players can now choose from a much wider choice of online baccarat games, as well as other classics like roulette and blackjack. Game developers have taken this opportunity to add new features such as the option of chatting with the dealer and being able to change the camera angles.
Games Can Grow Organically
In the past, the success of video games was largely due to how positive the reviews were in magazines and on websites. An excellent game could eventually gain traction in the market through word of mouth, but it was also possible that a quality game would disappear without the success that it deserved.
With millions of gamers using streaming services to watch other people play new games, they can very quickly get a better idea of what they’re all about. This means that there’s no reason to rely solely on reviews to work out how good a game is, allowing the best new releases to grow organically over time.
A New Way to Play
The other type of game streaming is where the player doesn’t need to buy the game or even have the equipment needed to run it perfectly. Streaming services like Nvidia GeForce Now and the Xbox Game Pass give users a chance to easily hook up to any game on the current list and play it.
This gives us more flexibility in the way that we play, and the streaming service’s fast, powerful servers give us an excellent gaming experience every time. Despite some initial problems in this market, streaming services are still relatively new but should continue to grow in popularity as more people give it a try and find out how easy it is on consoles like the Xbox Series X.
The Future of Streaming in Gaming
The massive impact that streaming has had in gaming is something that would have been impossible to predict a couple of decades ago, so predicting what happens next isn’t easy. But what seems certain is that this technology will continue to progress and add more to the gaming experience.
With areas such as artificial intelligence and the metaverse expected to transform the way that we play games online, we could see how streaming fits into a completely new approach that combines all these technologies perfectly.
POKERSTARS VR LAUNCHES ON PLAYSTATION VR2
