Have you ever heard of Mancala? According to historians, it could be the oldest game in the world and was played in the Middle East over 8,000 years ago. It falls under the category of ‘count and capture’ and is still played today across many regions in its different iterations. Needless to say, the landscape of games through the years has changed and developed as time has moved. In this article, we’ll look at the evolution of different gaming sectors and what the future might look like.
Gambling
The exact advent of gambling is a little bit unclear. However, it is widely accepted that it was first played over 5,000 years ago. The current gambling landscape looks unimaginably different from what we could have expected even 30 years ago, let alone during the Paleolithic period. For example, playing online casino games offers gamblers a wide array of slots and other themed games from which to choose. This choice of themes lets players jump around time periods and makes for a more engaging experience. This is a far cry from farmers and villagers gambling on their livestock and other household wares before the creation of currency. The development of the industry continues apace with the entry of AI and VR into the market and promises to send the industry through another period of rapid change.
Console Gaming
Speaking of technology transforming industries, console gaming is another great example. Just over 30 years ago, the idea of console gaming meant moving a paddle to keep a ball in play or reforming bricks to fit perfectly into each other as they reached the bottom of the screen. In the 1990s, new ideas came to the market, but the graphics weren’t much better.
It took until the 2000s and 2010s for graphics to markedly improve, and it was during this era we saw the Nintendo Wii come onto the market. As a non-immersive VR experience, it was an innovative step in the gaming industry. However, VR technology is only becoming more impressive and is looking like it could make a huge impact moving forward. While graphics haven’t progressed too much in the last decade, new-generation hardware and software have helped games become much larger and run much smoother. The future for gaming is looking bright with tools like Unreal Engine 5 widening access to high-end game development and AI looking to influence every part of the process from graphics to non-playable characters (NPCs).
Puzzles
In the past century, puzzles like crosswords and Sudoku have found their home in broadsheet newspapers. During the 1990s and 2000s, if you walked into any convenience store, you would have been able to find a magazine or book dedicated to word searches. However, as news media and newspapers have moved online, so too have these games. This move has spawned new puzzles too. Most notably, Wordl captured the world’s imagination in January 2023 and in doing so became one of the first puzzle-type games to truly go viral.
In the past year, AI has emerged as a legitimate mainstream technology that will affect all types of gaming. We have already seen its effect on the corporate industry, most notably in its potential to replace writers. It has also been implemented to assist with customer service and analyzing trends. Based on this, it’s not a question of whether or not it can change gaming industries, but rather when.
