Biggest Gaming Trends of 2021
The gaming industry witnessed a great expansion in 2020. Although many other industries were struggling in this challenging year, video games moved to a sheltered place as people turned to try all kinds of entertainment in their mandatory isolation. With a revenue of $56.9 billion, the worldwide PC gaming market topped the movie and music markets combined. In the same year, the fledgling mobile gaming sector generated an income of over 77 billion U.S. dollars. For many years, video games maintained their position as the biggest industry in the entertainment realm. The only other sector that can compete with the video gaming industry is TV entertainment, which is also on its way to fading away due to low viewership rates.
This solid trend indicates, whether there is a pandemic or not, the gaming industry has more growth potentials that haven’t yet appeared.
Despite the growth spurt that the industry had in 2020 and completed in 2021, all of us still don’t know much about what the gaming industry hides for the future. For instance, virtual reality games were the mainstream trend in 2020 as their popularity has skyrocketed. However, this technology is still in the very early stage and doesn’t become mature yet. In addition, multiplayer and social games have soared in popularity. Nintendo has also come back from the past with the Nintendo Switch console that was so in demand that it ran out of stores within a few months. Even the classic social tabletop was brought to the foreground. People were actively searching for black jack tips online, sharing their poker hands photos on social media, and asking about the best card games strategies.
But was the gaming industry scene after vaccines have brought people out of their homes in 2021? That’s what we will discover in this article.
1. eSports
The soaring popularity of multiplayer games, market growth, and the accessibility of the video live streaming services have created intense competition between teams and individual players from all over the world who spend as much time training and gaining experience, just as real athletes do. The generous sponsorship of game manufacturers, computer companies, and even real-life sportswear companies added more thrill to these competitions. Thus, multiplayer games got all the attributes of regular sports. So, they acquired the title “eSports”. Despite the fact, they aren’t as beneficial for health as their real counterparts! However, they may have the same social effects, both real sports and eSports, which can quickly turn the lives of thousands of poor players into millionaires regardless of their educational background or work experience.
The most significant trend in the gaming scene during 2020 and 2021 is the popularity of eSports. After the pandemic sent the sports world into darkness and shut it down for 8 months or more, spectators and players hunger for competitions led them to eSports.
Although many experts expected the live sport to return to its place and abolish the fledging eSports sector, especially as the 2021 year saw some major events like the UEFA and Copa America Championships, eSports got a 69% rise over 2020! That proves that even with real-life sports existence, the demand for eSports has not receded.
2. Social Gaming
Social gaming is taking more and more interest year by year. Players want to enjoy social intimacy and the accompanying feelings of challenge, competition, and self-affirmation while enjoying the events of the game. Spectators like to watch other players’ skills and strategies to imitate them.
Although social gaming was available before the pandemic, this trend boomed during restrictions whether the social interaction occurs across platforms like Twitch and YouTube or within the game itself like Roblox and Fortnite.
3. Roguelike Gaming
If you didn’t know them, roguelike games are a sub-category of role-playing games inspired by fairy tales. These games have been around for a while, but they became manic in 2019 and 2020. Even though these games have random elements and high difficulty curves that lead to quick deaths, they urge players to try repeatedly. In 2020, Hades was the most popular game for many critics, while in 2021, Loop Hero was the best. With the growing demand for video games and the increasing popularity of this type of game, in particular, it is strongly expected that they will continue in the same direction in 2022.
4. Cloud-based Games
In recent years, cloud-based games have gained booming momentum in the online gamer community. Although console and PC sales are showing no signs of abating, the future is entirely in the hands of cloud-based gaming. Evidence of this is the rapid growth in edge computing, the incorporation of 5G networks, and increased Internet speeds. Of course, all these features have created considerable opportunities in the cloud-based gaming industry that gamers can enjoy on their smartphones or mobile devices alike. In other words, these games will be the Netflix of the industry!
Although Google Stadia is languishing in Google’s graveyard of dead experiences, Amazon Luna is promising. In addition, Microsoft entered the scene but is still less advanced than Amazon.
5. Virtual Reality
Virtual reality technology has been progressing slowly over the past years, and most of its milestones are still in the experimental stage. However, Facebook revealed its integrated project, Metaverse, which will turn the world into a virtual space. Let’s remember Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial sentence: “If you die in the Metaverse, you really die!” Facebook released one VR product so far, in 2019, the all-in-one Oculus Quest headset, but it looks like they will release more in 2022.
Practically speaking, virtual reality technology can provide immersion and interaction, but it completely cancels out reality, it does not integrate with the lived reality, but it cancels it! It allows the user to fulfil all his desires, even the darkest, but in a virtual space without a physical presence. Although the world has not yet integrated into virtual reality, we can feel the extent of the psychological pain and emptiness associated with stopping Virtual Reality addiction; Decide to quit the game for several days, and you will find powerless against the temptation. If this temptation happens to us with regular video games, what would happen with virtual reality games?!
Although virtual reality technology is still an emerging market, it has a great future, especially in the post-2020 world, which has experienced home isolation and found its love in video games!
About the Author
Welcome folks! My name is Daniel Klink, and I’m the Marketing Director and Content Manager at Arab Casino HEX. My primary objective is to provide readers with accurate and inclusive information about the gaming world, unbiased reviews for iGaming sites, and educate everyone about the gaming industry. My main values are impartiality, objectivity and the love of sharing valuable information. For more info about me and my role, go to: arabcasinohex.com/author/danielklink/