Governmental and regulatory advancement

September 1 1994 was the day that the ESRB started regulating video games in the US and giving them age ratings. Since July of the same year congress were making a decision that would affect the games industry for years. Games were given a rating so that children were not subjected to certain things that could be in a video game such as violence, Tobacco reference or scenes of a sexual nature. The UK took up this practice shortly after.

• Kohler, C. (2009). July 29, 1994: Videogame Makers Propose Ratings Board to Congress. [online] Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/2009/07/dayintech-0729/#:~:text=Congress%20was%20satisfied%20with%20the [Accessed 9 Oct. 2020].

Commercial advancement

Perhaps a controversial topic for commerce in video games is the use of “pay to win”. Pay to win is exactly what it sounds like, a person in a video game is able to pay their own money to win in a video game. This may be done in the form of upgrades or items in the game that can only be acquired through paying into the game. This is a big problem for a lot of gamers who either don't have the money to pay for the upgrades and feel cheated by the game's developers or gamers who feel pressured into paying money into the game to stay ahead of the curve.

Perhaps the most controversial example of this is the release of EAs “Battlefront 2”, on the games release certain characters were only available through currency in the game that players had to spend real money on. This would have seemed like a good idea to the developers who would have gotten a lot of money from this however the developers experienced backlash from the community surrounding the game. People felt as if they had been cheated out of the experience they paid for as the game was lacking and unfair for those who did not pay for these additional characters. The way EA dealt with this and a lot of developers have followed has set the base of purchasable content within video games since. EA created a system in the game so that players could earn the in game currency by playing the game, this allowed the characters that were exclusive purchases to be earned overtime in the game, however EA also kept the ability to purchase the characters meaning EA could still get money from in game purchases and the players of the game were satisfied. Most in-game purchases now use a currency specific to the game that can be earned over time or purchased using real money, another way developers get around this is to make in-game purchases cosmetic only meaning they have no effect on gameplay.

• www.gamasutra.com. (n.d.). Resurgence of the Pay to Win model in mainstream gaming. [online] Available at:  https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanHastings/20200821/368665/Resurgence_of_the_Pay_to_Win_model_in_mainstream_gaming.php

Cultural advancement

A large cultural advancement for games development has been the introduction of gamers on platforms such as youtube showcasing specific games in their content. Since the early 2000s youtubers have been creating content playing games and this has been further advanced by streamers on sites like twitch some years after this. 

By allowing people to play their games on a public platform, game developers can get a good source of publicity for their game as well as feed back from the creators and viewers of the videos or streams. Some game developers have capitalized on this by giving the games to content creators before the initial release date, this helps build “hype” for the games and also provides feedback from the public even before the game is released. Content creators can also be given codes that can be given to viewers so that they can also get the game for free, this supports the content creator enticing them to showcase the specific game as well as enticing the viewer to purchase the game on release.

• MakeUseOf. (2017). How Twitch and Streaming Have Changed Video Games for Good. [online] Available at: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/twitch-streaming-change-video-games/.

Technology advancement

Virtual reality has been a vision of games developers since the very inception of games development, even in 1962 a man by the name Morton Heilig created the first VR machine. Heiligs device was a large machine that could fit four people at a time inside, the machine had full 3D video and audio as well as vibrations and various smells and atmospheric effects.

Technology has now come a long way from Heiligs stereoscopic 3D screen in 1962, games developers are now able to develop games for virtual reality devices that are semi mobile and far more immersive, Oculus and Vive are the leading producers of virtual reality products such as the recent release of the Oculus quest 2 which is a lightweight headset with two controllers that sense movement so that the player can control the player and objects within the game.

• Mentalfloss.com. (2015). 11 Unbelievable Advances in Gaming Technology. [online] Available at: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/61764/11-unbelievable-advances-gaming-technology.
• virtualspeech.com. (n.d.). History of VR - Timeline of Events and Tech Development. [online] Available at: https://virtualspeech.com/blog/history-of-vr#:~:text=Cinematographer%20Morton%20Heilig%20created%20Sensorama [Accessed 18 Oct. 2020].