How Streaming Has Revolutionized the Gaming Industry
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“Streaming” is the keyword in today’s media. We stream our movies and our music, we watch live streams of the latest news, and we even follow lectures and classes via video streaming over the internet. But streaming has made its way into a major branch of the entertainment industry that many wouldn’t’ve expected: gaming. Here’s how.
Gameplay videos are (still) all the rage
Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, was the man behind the YouTube channel with the most subscribers ever. He reached this position by posting gameplay videos – his “Let’s Plays” featured mostly action and horror games, and were genre-defining. His meteoric rise and massive fan base, not to mention his net worth, have proven two things: that you can indeed make a living off playing video games, and that the public wants to watch others play video games.
Today, gaming has its own video streaming service – Twitch, a part of Amazon, where you can always find a live stream or gameplay videos of the latest titles or the biggest eSports games. Last year, the average number of concurrent viewers on the platform was close to 2.9 million.
Streaming gameplay from the cloud
A gaming rig with all the bells and whistles that can run all the latest games is a major – and ongoing – investment. There’s always room for more RAM, a bigger hard drive, or a brighter LED cooler that you can incorporate into your device. Or you can simply stream your games from the cloud.
Services like Google’s now-defunct Stadia and Nvidia’s GeForce Now work like a gaming PC in the cloud. Basically, you connect to a remote gaming PC that does all the heavy lifting – it has the processor, the RAM, and the GPU to run all the latest games – while your device only needs to come with the keyboard or controller input and the screen output. I say “device” and not “PC” because the service works on a variety of devices, from smartphones and tablets to smart TVs and, of course, computers.
GeForce Now has a free tier where you can play your own games only, and for a limited time. The paid service comes with perks like remote PCs powered by the latest RTX-capable Nvidia CPUs and priority access to servers.
An early attempt to merge live video streaming and online casino games was made in the late 1990s, at a time when the internet infrastructure wasn’t ready for such an innovative service. Almost a decade later, though, the idea was turned into a product that’s successful and popular to this day.
Live dealer games are an ingenious combination of a live stream, a camera system, and a remote interface. The dealer running a game of Casino Hold’em deals the cards in a studio, recorded by multiple cameras that turn the action into data, which is then beamed to the digital interface on the player’s side. Players then remotely bet on the outcome of every round. If you’re curious about these games, you can find more details about them at https://www.legitgamblingsites.com/online-casinos/live-dealer/holdem/.
The first live dealer games were casino staples like roulette and blackjack. Today, in turn, they have expanded to cover many other games, from interactive betting games to game shows like “Deal or No Deal”.
Conclusion
The rise of streaming has revolutionized the gaming industry in ways that were previously unimaginable. The popularity of gameplay videos and live streaming services like Twitch have proven that there is a massive audience for watching others play video games. The advent of cloud gaming has made it possible for gamers to access the latest titles without investing in expensive hardware. Meanwhile, the integration of live video streaming and online casino games has resulted in innovative and exciting experiences for players. All in all, streaming has opened up new opportunities for both gamers and viewers, and it will undoubtedly continue to shape the future of the gaming industry.
