Online Gaming – It Really Is Big.

Mature is not always the first word that comes to mind when thinking about online gaming. Spotty geeks glued in front of a screen for 18 hours a day while attempting to annihilate the larger proportion of an unsuspecting population of extra-terrestrial lizards is a more common perception. So mature is rarely the first word that springs to mind.

This has to change, however, as the gaming industry has, very successfully, attained the pedestal upon which such a name comfortably sits – it actually is mature.

The first coin operated games machine appeared in a bar 43 years ago. The very first was Galaxy Game, developed at Stanford University by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck, but only one unit was ever built. Two months later Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney revealed Computer Space which was released commercially and became the first widely available video game. And the gaming world has not looked back since.

In the early days of the gaming era, playing actually involved the leaving of the house and bedroom, to go to an arcade or bar, and insert a proportion of your income directly into the machine. These electronic dark ages didn’t last too long, however, and the arrival of home computing in the 1980’s forever changed the leisure activities of a significant part of an entire generation. Games consoles soon followed, becoming ever more sophisticated through the 1990’s when the development of the internet introduced a whole new layer of sophistication that was to become, quite literally, a game changer.

The Naughties saw technology develop at an ever increasing rate, heralding the onset of the online gaming phenomenon which has, to use the word yet again, matured into the sophisticated, high definition, high bandwidth, multi-player lifestyle choice we see today. And the range of games available also shows a depth that many people overlook. As well as blowing away aliens, you can play free online jigsaw puzzles, build your own personal empires, hone your poker skills, develop your brain power with strategy and puzzle programs, even get fit with the likes of the genuinely interactive games on Nintendo’s Wii.

Computer gaming is now a $93 billion-a year entertainment business, and this figure continues to rise as the new consoles and ways of playing online across a range of devices such as tablets and mobile phones, continue to hit the market. Some analysts predict it could rise to $115 billion by 2015.

And if those numbers are not enough to impress you, consider the analysis carried out on just 1 game.

There are 11 million or so registered users of the online role-playing fantasy World of Warcraft. Since the introduction of the game in 2004 they have collectively logged – are you ready for this – around 50 billion hours of game time. That’s 5.7 million years – longer than the human race has spent evolving as a species.

You don’t get much more mature than that.

Find out more at:

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2614915
http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2013.pdf
http://www.jigfun.com