INTRODUCTION
In this article I will write about the impact the current and emerging technologies have,
I will cover social and technological trends, gaming technologies, and how this has affected
gaming. I will also talk about emerging technologies, and lastly, I will evaluate the impact of
current and emerging technologies on the design and development of computer games to
meet the requirements of the users and the computer games industry.
SOCIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL TRENDS
“There are 3.24 billion gamers in the world, Gaming has become the mainstream form of
entertainment.” (Data prot, 2023)The demographics has changed over the years, Because
of technology and online gaming advanced research has shown that 50% of people who
play games on most days are female and 50% male. Men and women have different gaming
habits, but women are now more likely participating regularly playing in games.
This image chart shows that females prefer console gaming compared to their male
counterparts. Console gaming demographics changed since the playstation 1 additionally
now more female audience is playing on their PS4 AND PS5 consoles. This implies that
access to different platforms has contributed to the rise of the female population in gaming.
The social and technical trends include genres, players, gaming production, multiplayer,
artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, payment, and multiplayer services. There have
been several views that have significantly increased for its players
Furthermore, the average gamers 34 years old, between the ages of 18-34 is the majority of
the gamers. But the platforms they play on are different for every age group.
, The chart above shows that the platform is different for every age group the main reason is
due to the way certain platforms categorise games according to their content, at times the
age rating for one game may not be the same across all platforms.Such as while 18-22
years preferred platform is PC where the age group 33-42 prefers console gaming. As I
mentioned before the average gamer age is 34 so this is the most important age group out
of all this.
On the other hand, the gaming genre has changed over the years such as in 2015 the
Shooter games were popular such as Destiny 2, Far cry 5, Golden eye and Call of Duty:
Black Ops 4, between the 2015-2018 these were at their absolute peak in sales.
Some of the gaming popularity has changed due to gamers' tastes and advanced
technology. Now we can see more games like RPGs and fewer shooters. The main reason
RPGs are more popular now is because of the change in technology, they are creating
unique characters, giving the player freedom of choice, which makes the gamer more
attached to the game, meaning that they are more likely to keep playing or come back to the
game over time.
Modern games also borrow elements from different genres. And then creates sub genres of
their own for example “Battle Royale” genre, which mashes up characteristics of RPGs and
Shooters. Battle Royale is free to play, available on mobile devices, and can be played
online. This has driven the popularity of this genre.
GAMING TECHNOLOGIES
At the start it was an arcade game, later on it was multiplayer game to home game then
move to online gaming on consoles and then move toward mobile. These have all brought
games into the mainstream.
With the release of next gen consoles it's also capable of displaying game graphics in 4K
resolution. The higher resolution makes the game immersive, producing detailed images.
Games are now able to render incredibly realistic environments and characters because of
GPUs and other rendering technology. Today’s games look incredibly realistic because of
advanced hardware and software such as they are using more powerful processors and
GPUs can render more detailed environments and characters. Power of hardware
components can affect the gaming performance, The type and quality of a hardware in a
computer have a major impact on the frame rate and overall smoothness of a game.
Graphics card (GPU) is responsible for rendering the graphics that make up the game, a
powerful GPU can render more detailed and complex graphics which direct them to better
