The gaming industry has been quietly taking over the world in recent years. This is a sector that’s very much going through a boom period — did you know, for instance, that the gaming industry is worth more than the movie and music industries put together? It has a creative past, solid present, and extremely bright future, and part of that is because of how the industry has gone global over the past decade. So, just how did it happen? We’ll talk about that here and run through some of the reasons why.
Translated Titles
The gaming industry has a major advantage over others when it comes to shipping titles to different regions as developers are able to easily translate games into other languages without any deterioration of the gameplay. There’s minimal dialogue in most games anyway — the visual aspect does all the work — and even if there is some language, it’s usually a pretty straightforward one that doesn’t take long to translate.
Easy to Ship
Even if you did have a console that was capable of playing international titles back in the 1990s, the chances of easily obtaining that international game were pretty slim. The biggest titles were available in the biggest gaming markets, but if you lived elsewhere, then you’d have to wait a long time for that title to arrive where you were. This meant that only hardcore fans bought the games. Today, gaming companies can sell their products in all corners of the globe because, in most cases, you don’t need to ship anything at all, you just download a game.
Global Access
Those who grew up with the internet will find it odd that, in the olden days, people didn’t always have access to games that were available elsewhere. If you didn’t live in a place that experienced the arcade game boom in the 1980s, for example, then you’d probably only get a chance to play Pac-Man et al. when traveling. But that’s all changed now. Today, people in Poland can play at a kasyno internetowe, while PS5 gamers in Australia can get the latest titles on the first day of release. This wasn’t always the case, but it’s helped to make gaming a more global pastime.
Smartphone and Internet Use
The western world seems to think that we’ve been living with high-end technology for decades. But that’s not true across the whole world — it’s only true in certain corners of the globe. In the past, the gaming industry couldn’t “go global” because, by and large, people in certain places didn’t have the technology that would allow them to play games. The past few years have seen a massive jump in the number of people who have a smartphone and/or access to the internet — the number increases by around eight percentage points each year — and that has opened up the option for many more people to play games.
A Local Touch
As the gaming industry grows, it’s putting a greater emphasis on developing a more local gaming experience for players in different corners of the world. Rather than playing a slightly-adapted American game, players in, say, Korea can play a game that is more culturally relevant to their local life. This occurs in both the gameplay (which may include subtle local flavors), and the marketing. The end result is that gamers can play a widely-available global title yet still feel like it has been made with their specific culture in mind.
Part of the reason why the gaming industry has such a bright future is because of how global it has become. With more plans to increase ‘the local experience’ in the works, we should expect the industry to grow even further in the future.
