Much as we all enjoy our games, the casual players rarely pay any attention to the technology that delivers our regular fix. This is true for all facets of the online gaming world. There’s an ever-thinner line between the video and casino/slots genres, with the latter rapidly catching up on resources and technological demands. So let’s put down out joy-pads/phones/mice for a moment and take a look at the vast amount of technology and expertise required to provide sizzling hot online gaming.
Enormous Data Resources/Consumption
It’s all too easy to forget that online gaming places considerable strain not just on telecommunications networks but also servers and data centers. There is a clear correlation between a country’s technological infrastructure and exposure to online gaming. Clearly, this is partially down to economic issues – after all nations with poor communications will likely be lower down the list of smartphone markets.
However, online gaming does put considerable pressure on web traffic. Take the USA, for example. It’s believed that around 50% of all web traffic is based on streaming TV shows (NetFlix etc.). Online gaming is about 4%. This may not seem a lot, but think about it. Streaming requires much more data to be transferred between source to user, whereas gaming is just data commands/prompts – all the graphics/program is already stored on the player’s device. For what it is, that’s an enormous amount of binary communication.
As an increasing number of people take up online gaming (primarily via smartphones and ever more resource-demanding online casinos) expect that proportion of traffic only to continue to rise. Games are becoming much more complex, and it takes a huge amount of data transfers to run online virtual worlds. One wonders if the infrastructure will hold… (it’ll be fine for a good while yet!).
Why Gaming Companies Demand The Best Talent
Who wouldn’t like to make groundbreaking video games and slots for a living? Sounds fun, right? Tell that to any games developer and expect to be laughed out of the room. While games production companies pay well for the brightest talent – only the exceptionally highly qualified experts need to apply. While occasionally, a gaming app made in someone’s garage will become a worldwide hit out of the blue, fact is that games development requires the efforts of many hundreds of people – and the top titles can take years to be completed.
Slots are an excellent example of this. Take Microgaming and Playtech, for example – two of the biggest companies out there, who hoover up all the best talent and apply them towards developing increasingly groundbreaking new games. The likes of Dobra Mine and other runaway successes become so popular because they have the best programmers going. These guys are experts in their field – usually qualified to very high levels and wouldn’t look out of place at any software company or organization. Why do they make slots? Simply because the market is there and demand for their skills are so high.
So Where Next?
The global broadband network will be shuddering at the prospect of coping with the additional data that widespread adoption of Virtual Reality may bring. If the technology takes off – and it’s 70/30 in favor of it doing so – then that’s going to require some savvy streamlining in regards to data transfer, especially if the whole experience is to be based online and not accessed via already downloaded programs.
In the meantime, countries that are behind the times will catch up not just in developing the infrastructure/market for further exposure to online gaming but also with the aspiration of getting involved in the action too. There’s no sign of the demand for ever more intensive online gaming slowing down anytime soon.