Online gaming and igaming are big business. In Canada alone, video game company revenue was estimated to be $4.3 billion in 2021. Statistica reported that in 2022, annual digital video game sales were up to $4.68 billion and that there were almost twenty million gamers.
So Canadians love playing on their computers and mobile phones in ever-increasing numbers. Video games might once have been regarded as child’s play, but sectors of the game industry are in their ascendancy, attracting bright, creative, and talented people to work on developing games and systems that keep players enthralled and coming back for more. Some games’ narratives, animations, soundtracks and visual effects are on par with what you would find in a film or small-screen series. The people who play them have sophisticated tastes and expect the same quality as they would find in any other entertainment form.
While video games might have started out as Tennis For Two (which even predates Pong), the current batch of games and game developers have to work harder to attract customer attention. There might be millions of players out there, but there are also thousands and thousands of games.
The only way to ensure that people come and play your title is to make sure it is the best that it can be. What might have been outstanding only five years ago might already seem dated and glitchy. Having said that, there is also a remarkable nostalgia for the classics, and many game companies rely on a character’s heritage or past popularity to keep players entertained. They might invent a new storyline, but the characters are familiar. Sometimes, the sequels are even better than the originals.
It is a delicate balance between presenting something new and exciting but not alienating players from a format they have come to love. The igaming sector has mastered the art of this. Essentially, there is a finite number of casino games like poker, roulette, Blackjack, craps, and slots, to name a few. However, to keep their games fresh and exciting, the developers are forever putting in new twists, themes and story ideas. Sometimes, they build a game around a popular licensed character, TV show or film. The best-rated new online casinos available have no end of new games, features, offers and odds to keep players on their toes and excited to see what will be coming out next.
Gaming is no different from any other industry. Variety is the spice of life, and while people love familiarity, they also want a new twist or storyline. After all, you would not want to watch the same movie repeatedly or only have one song to listen to all day. The same is true of gaming. With video games, people often play their way through once and then move on to another title. The developer needs to make the game hard enough to engage the players but not so hard that they give up. It also needs to be easy enough so they can complete it to buy the next one, but not so easy that they do not feel challenged.
Some of the most successful gaming companies have taken classics and spiced them up with slick graphics or current popular themes. One of the big trends at the moment is live service games, which allows users to interact with real players. They feel like they are in a living social space from the comfort of their homes. This technology has been around for a long time, but the advent of superfast internet access speeds allowed it to come into its own.
The games industry keeps people entertained by releasing new titles on a regular basis and then creating hype around them to entice people to play. One of the ways developers do this is through bonuses and promotions. So, if they want customers to play a particular game, they might offer a particularly lucrative bonus deal to bring people to their platform. Many of Canada’s gaming sites also have demo versions of the games so that people can try out the new titles and find their way around them without having to risk spending their hard-earned cash. Once players taste the action, they will be happy to pay for the product.
The business is constantly reinventing itself, picking up on the latest trends and trying to invent new ones. Like the record industry or other forms of entertainment, every developer hopes the next title will be a winner. Companies are experts at knowing what should work and developing their game portfolios to include what they think their followers will want. However, sometimes, a quirk of fate can propel a game up the rankings rather than any well-planned strategy or plan.
While strategists discuss finding what is new to excite the audience, some of the oldest and simplest games remain the most popular. Take Subway Surfers, for example; the simplest of game concepts somehow remains the most popular mobile game. Since its launch, it has been downloaded over four billion times and is the most downloaded game of all time. Who could ever have imagined that just running could keep running for so long?
