GAMING BECOMES MORE POPULAR DURING THE PANDEMIC
During the last year and a half with the COVID-19 pandemic, people have had more time on their hands at home, and with a lack of mobility, gaming quickly became one of the most popular activities. In fact, there was a huge surge between February and April 2020 during the first lockdowns.
Paul is an award-winning Games Designer and producer for Neon Play. He said, At the minute it’s actually quite an exciting time for us because understandably, over the last eighteen months, or so people have found they’ve got a lot more time on their hands, a lot more time at home. So being a company that makes mobile games, people are spending more time on mobiles, so we’ve actually seen demand go up which has been great to see.
NEW TECHNOLOGY AND CHOICE
As well as smartphones, there has also been a rise in new gamers because of new technology developments such as virtual reality providing world experiences.
It is not just people sitting at home on their devices who are driving the industry growth, but also corporate activity in video games, esports, cloud gaming, and online competitions.
Ahmad is an international esports star and professional footballer. He said he plays the games to provide the designers with potential ideas for improvements.
"We will try the game, give our feedback. And then they see our feedback, they take our feedback seriously and try to manage with the game and hopefully deliver us a better version than last year."
Khalifa Al is Mr Q, and he has a huge online fan base. He has millions of viewers from his informative videos about Qatar and culture, to more than 2.7 million subscribers on his unboxing channel ‘Raqami TV’ which is one of the world’s largest online tech channels that showcases state-of-the-art gadgets.
Mr Q said people want to customize their own things, so companies are providing different options, so there is more of a choice.
"I definitely think that the customization and modularity is something that everybody wants. So of course when people pick something with RGB lighting it’s not meant to be constantly in the rainbow mode, but it’s supposed to give you options, so you can select a color that represents you."
CAREER CHOICE
The industry has also become a career choice for some young people. Paul said there's a lot of people like him who've been playing games since they were toddlers.
There’s now a new wave of people like myself who’ve been playing games throughout their childhood. And when they get to adulthood and decide what career they want to go into they choose games because firstly it’s exciting to work on something that you’re passionate about, but also it’s a big industry and there are opportunities here.
GAMING WILL CONTINUE TO GROW
Ted Pollak, Gaming Analyst says gaming's popularity will always continue to increase. “What we’re seeing is that there’s probably fifteen years of natural, what I call free growth."
"And advanced gaming costs a lot of money," Pollack added. "People spend five hundred dollars a year with the high-powered PCs and the good consoles. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of new customers in the next ten years.
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