Online Gaming Facts That Will Blow Your Mind
Online video games are a cash cow, and the video game industry as a whole is generating over 100 billion $ a year itself. Video games are becoming increasingly popular as previous generations continue to play into adulthood. Sometimes what’s happening in the online gaming universe is extraordinary and here are some online gaming facts that will blow your mind.
Video Games are Getting As Big As Sports
I’m sure we’re all comfortably familiar with the concept of Esports by now. League of Legends to Starcraft II to Counterstrike. All have a large following, and audience when their tournaments are taking place. If you’re thinking that video games are different from sports and that it’s a fad based sport, you’d be wrong. League of Legends has been around for more than a decade, and games like CSGO (Counter-Strike: Global Offense) have been around for 7-8 years.
The highest tournament payout in video game history was close to 10 million $ to be divided among a team of 5 players in DOTA 2. In fact, gambling on Esports has become prevalent just like their real-life sports counterpart. If gambling in video games isn’t something you’re familiar with, click here, and the specialists at EQ2 can inform you. Gambling in video games is a relatively new type of industry and having some guidance is essential before dipping your toes into the water.
The Corrupted Blood Incident
It sure takes me back thinking about playing World of Warcraft (WoW) back in the day when MMORPGs were the bread and butter of online gaming prior to battle royales. In 2005, the introduction of a new “raid” (a type of gameplay that involves 20+ players involved in the same quest) included a new boss named Hakkar the Soulflayer. The boss casts a spell that did damage over time, but was removed from players after the raid. However, players’ pets were able to carry the spell (or debuff) outside of the raid and infect other players.
This led to a massive pandemic online, with players attempting to flee from the infected players, as some were intentionally spreading the debuff. Remember WoW was an especially big game back in the early stages, and epidemiologists still study this incident to monitor how real-life people may interact during an epidemic.
It’s A Viable Profession
One only need take a trip to Twitch’s online site and see the multitude of online gamers, to realize that playing video games has become a viable profession. In fact, some of the more popular Twitch streamers are making well over 250 000$ a year. Even gamers who are participating in tournaments on a consistent basis are pulling numbers in the 6 figure range. With the addition of YouTube as a platform for gamers to target their audience, and sell merchandise, the industry is a thriving community of people playing games for a living. That’s not to say that it’s an easy profession to enter, but it certainly has a population of successful individuals.
Whether it’s epidemiologists examining an online game (who thought, right?), the rise of Esports, or people making a profession out of the industry, online gaming isn’t going anywhere. These are just some of the examples of what happened and what’s happening in the online gaming community, and I’m sure there will be lots more mind blowing facts in the future.
