“Online Console Gaming will continue to grow at a healthy pace.”- Trip Hawkins, Electronic Arts.
Two decades ago, the prophecy about the future of the digital gaming world was laid by Trip Hawkins. It was online gaming. When many were still contemplating the future of online gaming, Electronic Arts had already started pioneering the way forward in the arena. And the rest is now history.
Currently, almost every game on your laptop, Xbox or PlayStation, even to the ones on your phone, provides an online community. In-game interaction has become a crucial part since it has opened the room to play in teams or just in one-on-one versus battles with our friends while chatting.
One of the most significant phenomena of the modern-day with in-game communication and battle strategy is PUBG. Not only did in-game communication enable drawing up a battle strategy/survival plan, but it also functioned as an online community/social media platform in the process.
Introduction to Social Media & Online Gaming
In an age where social media and online gaming were two different industries, in-game communication fostered a new lovechild in the process of making themselves enhanced. And today, it has become the minimum requirement for a multiplayer and online gaming arena.
In the present scenario, almost 65% of baby boomers and 92% of GenZ and millennials prefer playing games on any device. Added to the effects of the pandemic lockdowns, the number of people who have started to seek solace in games has increased from 4% to 9.13% in FY20.
“I foresee online gaming changing when there are good audio-visual links connecting the participants, thus approximating play in a face-to-face group”- Gary Gygax, Dungeons and Dragons (DnD).
As the creator of DnD had forecasted before his demise, online gaming platforms are nurturing social media as an essential facet to make the game more immersive and interactive. With even the critical board games like snakes and ladders going online with multiplayer modes, the industry is growing by the minute.
Thanks to this, people have started streaming their gaming streaks on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and even Facebook or Instagram Live. It is because it empowers them to expand their personal brand and the particular gaming community even more. By metrics alone, gaming platforms are now far more prominent than social media platforms.
Fortnite has more than 350 million registered users by the numbers, while Candy Crush has over 500 million actively engaged users. It makes Fortnite much more significant than Snapchat (265 million users) and Candy Crush a lot bigger than Twitter (331 million users).
Candy Crush had even led the charts in opening up the revenue arena for gaming when it became the first game to draw in $1 billion in revenue alone. It includes revenue both from in-game purchases and ad revenue. What started as a Facebook game is today a full-fledged IPO on the NYSE.
6 Ways Online Gaming has become the New Social Media
Now, let’s find out some of the biggest reasons why these games have become much larger community giants than the social media platforms ever could be:
Entertainment
In the humdrum of daily life, where jobs are getting more challenging by the day and deadlines are being pushed to unrealistic norms, online games provide gamers with a sense of entertainment and escape. The game gives them a place where they can forget the troubles of daily life and just explore the fantasy world where they can be anything and everything.
Today, different games offer different kinds of entertainment and learning. Some of us draw pleasures in building and fostering a clan, like in Clash on Clans or Age of Empires. Others like first-person shooter games like Call of Duty. With every game achievement, the gamers get to experience that hit of dopamine which gets them addicted to the game and draws their daily dose of entertainment.
Streaming
Forget the old ways to screen record your gameplay and upload it on YouTube to generate revenue. If you have already earned some reputation in the community of the game you’re playing, like Nova Sports in PUBG Mobile, then you can try streaming.
It allows you to grow your brand and your credibility. Plus, streaming gives you the chance to interact with other higher-ups in your community. It adds the benefits of automatically generating more revenue and results in your word carrying more weight in your gaming community. Today, online game streaming has become a full-blown job where people stream their gameplay online and have achieved the “influencer” status.
Communication
In the older days, team play had to happen with everyone sitting in close vicinity to call out patterns and gameplan. Thanks to text, and audio, the gameplay scene has exploded to new levels. Games like Counter-Strike, which are enjoyed even today, have thrived on text communication.
With the addition of audio gameplay and the comfort of our couch, gamers are diminishing the borders and coming together on a whole new level. This communication has even fostered camaraderie among people of different countries, hence driving up respect and credibility and turning them into social media in the process.
Media Sharing
While communication is a crucial part of the gameplay, human beings are creatures of hope and habit and always want a little more than they get. And the gaming companies heard it. Games like Minecraft, Call of Duty Online, Fortnite, and Pokemon Go incorporated social media features into the game itself.
Besides communication, players choose to share media, content, and other relevant stuff like they do on Facebook or Whatsapp. Hence, making it more convenient to make the gameplay immersive.
Competitiveness
Competitiveness is at the very core of the gameplay and even in daily life. And with the increased difficulty levels, this trait has only grown to dominate the daily lives of human beings. Well, online games are precisely made for that purpose, from doing that headshot on Fortnite to beating the Pokemon master on Pokemon Go while you are on a stroll to show them who’s the boss.
It is being done because like every person on Instagram competes to have more followers, the same principle applies to online gaming. People are becoming more competitive to gain more credibility, fandom, and the oh-so-coveted Influencer status.
Community Formation/Joining
One of the most significant factors that any online game wants to do is build a community, like a social media platform. Just like Facebook or Twitter fostered communities before becoming social media giants, every gaming platform with a multiplayer side strives for that.
Most of the successful games of today have managed to do just that while staying true to the original ethos of entertaining the masses. There have even been instances where the online gaming communities even led to marriage.
Conclusion
Like every facet of life, there are two sides to a coin. While online gaming communities are diminishing borders and bringing people together through online coverage, it also reduces real-world interactions. People are increasingly getting addicted to online ways of interaction.
Even social media platforms are realizing that gaming might be a part of the future for better engagement and interaction. Hence, they are increasingly going out of their way to partner with gaming platforms to increase their user base and usability to draw in more revenue. Therefore, the question stands answered, what seems like an online gaming platform today will be tomorrow’s social media.
Author Bio
Bhavik Soni is a Creative Writer at Auto Monkey. We provide an original analysis of the latest happenings in the social media industry. Connect with Latest Social Media Trends and News plus tips on Twitter, Facebook and other social tools on the web.
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