Types of technology that has influenced the development of gaming

Since electronic games made their tentative debut in the 1950s, technology has made extraordinary gains to take us to the present.  

And right there we have our first major innovation, electricity. Before then, most games were manual, in so far as they required human physicality for them to function at all.  

Take a game of cards, or the roulette wheel, as an example. These don’t require electricity to work, and it’s a testament to how good these games actually are that we still play them today.  

Mechanics of gaming 

That said, it wasn’t electricity that changed the game, it was one device, that used mechanics to make it work: Charles Fey is credited with inventing the first pokie in 1894 and it was an instant hit. 

Despite becoming an overnight sensation, it soon faced a raft of prohibitive legislation, which only made it more popular. Indeed, the reason we associated fruits with slot machines was down to their being temporarily converted to dispense gum. 

The fruits in question we there to identify the flavours of gum. The bar, incidentally, was indicative of the gum packet. 

Pokies machines didn’t need electricity to serve their purpose, so the first fully electronic fruit machine didn’t arrive until the 1960s. The only real difference was flashing lights and sound, the fundamental principles of the original mechanical slot were still intact. 

The 1970s saw the emergence of video slots alongside the dawn of the modern video arcade. Games like Space Invaders and Pacman transformed the gaming climate, now everyone could play, irrespective of age.  

Home video gaming 

However, the real revolution in gaming was taking place in the family home. The Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video was created by Ralph Baer and released in 1972. 

Baer wanted to create a device that would allow people to play games on their home TV and the concept was an instant hit. In 1975 the Atari Pong went on the market and completely changed the way games were seen and used by the wider public: the console had been born. 

It all changed again with the launch of microprocessors in the 1980s. Nintendo used the now semi-legendary Ricoh 2A03 on its ground-breaking NES system, allowing for the debut of Super Mario Bros and Zelda. 

Meanwhile, in the casino world, slots were given a definitive shot in the arm with the advent of Random Number Generators (RNG). Truly random outcomes from slots inspired gamers to play, and slots continued to grow in popularity.   

By the end of the 1980s gamers could play in casinos, licensed betting establishments, pubs, clubs and in video arcades. But the real revolution was still taking place at home as game consoles developed at breakneck pace. 

Online and mobile gaming 

Everything changed again in the early 1990s. It wasn’t just the first time the world got their hands on Sony’s first PlayStation; the internet had arrived. 

Now gamers could connect with each other and play online. Online casinos began to pop up, including a range of online pokies sites that allowed gamers to hit the pokies without having to leave the house. 

The Nokia 6110 mobile phone hit the market in the late 90’s. Mobile technology had been around for a while, but this device had Snake. 

Being able to play games on the go had been around since cards, and pocket-sized mobile electronic devices since the 70s. But the combination of a phone and a game was unique, and it was about to change the way in which we played. 

The first iPhone was launched in 2007 and, suddenly, smartphones were mainstream. Sure, Blackberry and IBM’s Personal Communicator had been around for a few years, but Apple captured the public imagination. 

A year later the App Store allowed users to customise their devices in a way that truly changed to way we interact with games. Thanks to 3G (2001) users could already connect to the internet, so games could be played online, anywhere with a connection. 

In terms of where we are today, that sort of brings us up to date. Sure, the technology is being constantly tweaked to make it faster with constant improvements to the graphics/sound etc., but what’s next? 

AI has been a thing for a while now, in terms of games, it has transformed the way businesses interact with their customers. In slots, for example, AI can improve the user experience by changing or tweaking the dynamics of gameplay to keep the customer happy/spending money. 

This will continue to improve and drive the online casino industry forward, worth in the region of US$107.30bn by the end of 2024. To put that into context, the industry is predicted to be worth US$138.10bn by the end of 2028, that’s an annual growth rate of 6.51%. 

And that’s before we’ve properly considered where the metaverse will be in a few years from now…